BANGKOK – Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn with Queen Suthida, addresses the audience at a Royal Ploughing Ceremony at Sanam Luang in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday, May 10, 2024.
The Royal Ploughing Ceremony, known as “Raek Na Khwan” or “Phra Ratcha Phithi Charot Phra Nangkhan Raek Na Khwan” in Thai, is a traditional royal ceremony held in Thailand to mark the beginning of the rice-growing season.
The ceremony is usually conducted in May, which is the sixth month of the Thai lunar calendar, and is considered an auspicious time for farmers to start planting their rice crops.
In the ceremony, two sacred oxen are hitched to a wooden plough and they plough a furrow in some ceremonial ground, while rice seed is sown by court Brahmins. After the ploughing, the oxen are offered plates of food, including rice, corn, green beans, sesame, fresh-cut grass, water and rice whisky.
Depending on what the oxen eat, court astrologers and Brahmins make a prediction on whether the coming growing season will be bountiful or not.
This year, the royal oxen ate water, grass, and liquor, predicting that water resources will be reasonably abundant, and crops, fruits, vegetables, and meat will be plentiful. Transportation will be more convenient, and Thailand will enjoy greater export, leading to a prosperous economy.
At the same time, the Lord of the First Ploughing picked up a piece of cloth measuring 5 cubits, forecasting that this year’s water supply will be just right, and the rice seedlings in the fields will yield abundant results. Fruits and meat will also be plentiful.
His Majesty the King also graciously granted permission to the Rice Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to use rice seeds cultivated during the 2023 rainy season in the experimental paddy field project at the Chitralada Royal Villa.
The seeds include six varieties of lowland rice and two varieties of glutinous rice, with a total weight of 2,743 kilograms. These seeds are designated as the “Royal Rice Varieties” and are packed in plastic bags to be distributed to the public, interested individuals, and farmers throughout the country as a token of good fortune and blessing for their agricultural occupations.
