When I right-click a folder on the desktop, the context menu that pops up does not have an option to create an archive from the folder. This problem results in an annoying inconvenience; when I want to archive a folder on the desktop, I actually have to open a Thunar file manager window and do it from there. I'm using Xubuntu 12.10 64-bit.
This feature has been added at least in 4.12, I verfied it on Debian 9 (stretch). Is it possible for you to upgrade to a newer version of Xubuntu that has 4.12?
Yes, since then xfdesktop has introduced support to thunar plugins' actions (Menu Items).