Thailand’s hopelessly misguided rice pledging scheme has lead to a stockpile of more than 12 million tonnes of ludicrously overpriced rice, much of it of poor quality and decaying, which nobody wants to buy. The nation’s rice warehouses are full to overflowing, yet still the government pledges to take every single, last grain of rice produced by the nation’s farmers. This led to a rather dark joke about the situation.

Japan’s Prime Minister Abe visits Thailand. He sees a vast mountain of rice and exclaims:

“Wow! You have a Mount Fuji in Thailand. And snow, too!”

To which Prime Minister Yingluck replies:

“It’s not Mount Fuji, it’s Mount Rice-Pledging Scheme. And it’s not snow on the top. It’s just the rice that hasn’t gone rotten yet.”

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