Daonapa Panyawong
Homenet Thailand
April 2023
Tian Kaew Organic Rice Group
Baan Bua’s Organic Rice Group established in 1980 with 153 members. Later, it was registered as Baan Bua Organic Rice Cooperative under Phayao Provincial Office of Agriculture and Cooperatives. At registration, they must restructure their internal management system to follow cooperative rules. The Cooperative Board need to organize lots of meeting to make decision in all activities, the operation get difficulty with high expenditure. It’s hard to develop new products and not flexible to run its business as well.
In 2016, members of the cooperative produced organic rice for 1,500 Rai (equivalent to 240 Hectare). Therefore, they have lots of organic rice in inventory which cannot be sold. It created big problems for the cooperative in terms of revolving funds and storage space. There are 8 members who decided to leave the cooperative and established a small group named Tian Kaew Organic Rice Group to support the operation of the cooperative. It aims to process organic rice into multiple products and create more value products. This small group will have faster and easier operations to meet the needs of the market which will help to reduce inventory of the cooperative and increase marketing competitiveness of organic rice. The cooperative and the small group will focus on different marketing channels. The cooperative will focus in wholesales by selling a big lot of product in one deal but Tian Kaew Organic Rice Group will focus on retail sales. On the other hand, it will process organic rice into cosmetic and finished food products such as soap, lipstick, shampoo, and crispy rice.
To focus on retail sales, the quantity of rice must be changed to half a kilogram or one kilogram to make it easier for customers to carry. Tian Kaew Organic Rice Group will sell at markets organized by both private and government within the province and outside. After observation from several sales, they found out that the rice packaging is not attractive enough, it can’t take people’s attention to buy products and the brand is still not well-known among consumers. In 2020-2021, the coordinator of HomeNet Thailand in the north and group members worked together to develop packaging of the products to get more attraction and improve branding to get acceptance and well-known by consumers as following.
- Installed a group name sign in the production location to show standardization and impression to people who pass by. Develop promotion sign at the sale booths for publicize of the group.
- Develop group logo and packaging of crispy rice and organic rice to attract consumers’ attention.
- Working with group members to identify uniqueness of the products for communication with consumers such as products of the group are environment-friendly products, it produces and journey from watershed forest to consumers, consumers who buy products of the group will help promoting decent work by creating jobs and good quality of life for producers.
Products of Tian Kaew Organic Rice Group get accreditation of organic standard from government agencies every year. To build trust among consumers, the production process is certified organic with no chemical substance, it created safe environment from upstream to downstream. The rice field located in the forest upstream. It is safe because there is no farming that uses all kinds of chemicals. The fertile ecosystem has water to nourish agricultural areas. All group members have been trained in organic rice processing. Therefore, all products of the group that are processed are safe from chemicals. Purchasing group products is not just the mutual support between producers and consumers but also to contribute to the environment preservation as well. It can be considered as Social Solidarity Economy development.
Improvement of attractive packaging as well as communication stories of the products resulted in sales at both provincial and national markets. It also helps the group to export to China through private trade agents about 3,000 kilograms per month. Based on this export, the group members earn regular and greater income because the group pays 2 THB more expensive than the general market to its members. The organic rice production process requires more attention than normal rice that in general uses chemicals in the production process. Selling rice at a higher price is therefore creating morale and encouragement in members. At the end of the year, the group members will receive dividends from profits gained which depending on the sales of each year.
At present, HomeNet Thailand play role as a group consultant of Tian Kaew Organic Rice Group. The group is well-known to government agencies. Therefore, government agencies such as Community Development, Phayao Province, Rice Department, Provincial Commercial Office, University of Phayao, Chiang Mai University, and Maejo University continuously support development of the group. These agencies and universities help in research and development of the group products as well as financial support for different kinds of development. However, the group still faces many challenges such as
- Raise quality of the products to meet standard of the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) as well as maintain standard quality of the Department of Community Development as the group product has been selected as a 5-star product of the province.
- Develop packaging of all products, as of now, there are only 2 types of products improvements while there are 5 types of products.
- Development of products for export both at the provincial and foreign level. Even though some products got foreign attention, the group still has limited management knowledge and skills for export level.
- Enhance processing products into different types of rice products for more value added.
- Use processing equipment in the production line to increase productivity such as large rice press equipment, crispy rice processing machines, soap forming mold etc.
