09/05/2008 (The Bangkok Post), Surat Thani - More than 300 oil palm growers blockaded a highway in Tha Chana district yesterday, demanding the government tackle the problems of a fall in prices of their crop and the oversupply of oil palm fruit on the market. Oil palm planters from Tha Chana and Chumphon's Lamae district blocked a section of the No 41 Asian Highway with around 100 pickup trucks loaded with oil palm fruit by noon.

The protest caused severe traffic disruption, and prompted Tha Chana and highway police to close off part of the highway and divert all traffic from the affected section.

Suwit Thai-iat, the protest leader, presented five demands to the government. They are to buy all 100 trucks of oil palm fruit brought to yesterday's protest; speed up the purchase of oil palm from farmers; buy the produce at fair and reasonable price; establish a Tha Chana oil palm growers' association; and impose a ban on oil palm imports.

''Currently, up to 10,000 tonnes of oil palm fruit has been left stranded at our orchards for a month because processing factories gave us unacceptably low price. They also limited the buying time to just three hours a day,'' he said.

He said oil palm processing plants bought the fruit at 2.80 baht a kilogramme, down from the regular price of five baht a kilo.

''They claim that this is a result of an oversupply of oil palm fruit,'' Mr Suwit said.

By 4pm, deputy governor Damri Boonjing told the protesting farmers' representatives that the authorities had agreed to all of their demands and that processing factories would buy all the oil palm fruit the farmers brought to the protest yesterday at 4.30 baht a kilo.

Farmers were satisfied with the offer and dispersed at around 5 pm.

Meanwhile, in the northern province of Chiang Rai, more than 300 rice farmers in three tambons of Muang district staged a protest at a provincial hall yesterday against unfairly low prices of unmilled rice paid by rice traders.

They called on the government to guarantee the price of the unmilled rice at 9,000 baht per tonne. Farmers were forced to sell their rice at 6,300 baht per tonne despite a cost price of 5,100 baht per tonne, they said.

Chiang Rai governor Trisit Sinsomboonthong agreed to bring the issue to the attention of government, so the farmers dispersed by noon but threatened to renew their protest on Monday if there was no concrete response from the government.