Getting Young People to Farm: How Effective Is Thailand’s Young Smart Farmer Programme?

Abstract

In 2014, the Thai government initiated the Young Smart Farmer (YSF) programme to counter the decline in the number of young people involved in farming. The YSF programme has three desired outcomes: first, to increase participants’ financial independence; second, to enhance the adoption of innovative farming methods; and third, to retain participants in the long-run by satisfying them. This study aimed to evaluate if these outcomes have been achieved. A Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method was applied to analyse the data collected from programme participants (61 responses) and non-participants (115 responses) through a survey in the Prachin Buri province in Thailand. Participation was determined by education, farmland size, farming experience, and challenges to farming. Most participants (~79%) stated that they were satisfied with the programme; however, the programme did not increase financial independence and the adoption of innovative farming methods. As such, the programme might not be very effective in motivating young people to continue, return to, or enter farming. We recommend that the programme can be improved by adjusting training and field trips to meet the needs of participants in different production systems. The programme should also be expanded beyond providing knowledge and information, and it could offer additional monetary and non-monetary support to participants, such as loans for technology investments needed for farm expansion and competitive advantages.

Innovative price-setting approaches to high-value products: A pricing method for agribusiness farmers

“…In order to find a good way to price high-value (agricultural) products ( Hinterhuber and Liozu, 2018 ), pricing becomes an act of innovation. Our findings back up what Jansuwan and Zander (2021) found, but what we offer is a look at the marketing side of things. Overall, our research finds that smart farmers are likely to know marketing-based pricing strategies for their own agribusinesses.…”

“…Therefore, this paper suggests that Thai smart farmers should utilize marketing platforms (especially online platforms) in order to succeed in the economic, agricultural sustainable transition and improve the ease of doing business in the agricultural sector. As argued in the work of Jansuwan and Zander (2021) , the farmers need to network to share information about new farming methods, form large-scale farming groups to have more bargaining power when buying inputs and distributing their products, and feedback government agencies directly about their needs and thoughts. This is also related to open innovation , which aims to meet the unique (agricultural) requirements in our areas of interest by collaboration and marketing to the innovation community ( Jansuwan and Zander, 2021 ; Leckel et al., 2020 ; Srisathan et al., 2020 ).…”

“…As argued in the work of Jansuwan and Zander (2021) , the farmers need to network to share information about new farming methods, form large-scale farming groups to have more bargaining power when buying inputs and distributing their products, and feedback government agencies directly about their needs and thoughts. This is also related to open innovation , which aims to meet the unique (agricultural) requirements in our areas of interest by collaboration and marketing to the innovation community ( Jansuwan and Zander, 2021 ; Leckel et al., 2020 ; Srisathan et al., 2020 ). Our findings show that openness to innovative pricing highlights that smart farmers must understand market focus, brand management, customization, and customer and product value quantification; these are insights from Study I.…”

“…Concerning the Context of Thai smart farmers, Jansuwan and Zander (2021) argued that traditional farming has many risks, such as fluctuating agricultural markets and product prices, rising product costs; labor shortages; deteriorating soil quality; climate change; natural disasters, and fraud by intermediaries. They showed that smart farming would be a good solution to such issues because the agricultural outputs could be easily predicted and transparent.…”

Multifunctional farming as successful pathway for the next generation of Thai farmers

“…Of those, 544 responses were complete and valid, but for the analysis presented in this study, we used only a sub-sample of 176 responses from young farmers. As ‘young’ we defined farmers between the age of 18 and 45, in line with Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives recruitment strategy for the Young Smart Farmer (YSF) programme [ 42 ]. The lead author conducted face-to-face interviews with the selected farmers in 2018, using a semi-structured questionnaire.…”