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Being cheated by capitalists into buying expensive seed,
or being lured into growing special rice varieties that are then not purchased as promised, is a problem Thai farmers widely face, especially in an era of low white rice prices, when some farmers are interested in growing other special varieties because of the high purchase price. But those farmers do not understand the definition of “premium” and so cannot sell their produce. What will they do?
Today, trade in goods has changed greatly from before since we have social networks. Many kinds of goods are sold on Facebook, Instagram and Line, and now even for selling rice, Thai farmers have turned to selling it themselves on Facebook without going through middlemen. There are many cases and examples that have created enormous opportunities.
The first example is a farmer in Phitsanulok Province who turned crisis into opportunity after being cheated by a capitalist into growing Hom Nin rice that was then not purchased as promised. He milled the rice, packed it into bags with neat stickers, and sold it himself via Facebook, getting a good response, with many customers ordering. He now no longer sells rice through middlemen but sells it himself on Facebook.
Another example is Mr. Chatchana Pratthanaraks, a farmer in Phichit Province who has sold rice via Facebook for almost 2 years. This farmer grows toxin-free organic rice, whose outstanding feature is being good for health, and after growing it he did not want to sell the rice to mills or middlemen because he sometimes felt his price was pushed down, so he looked for a way to sell it himself. At that time Facebook was becoming popular and he also used Facebook, so he tried posting milled rice in vacuum bags for sale on his personal Facebook page named “Ban Chadjen Phichit Farm”. In the beginning, 4–5 people a day contacted him to ask about buying rice, and from 4–5 the number kept rising and growing gradually until now, with orders of up to 5,000 kilograms a month.
Why can the products be sold??
When farmers who grow their own rice and sell it themselves build an identity by continuously posting messages or photos of farming, produce, products or shipping to customers, consumers feel sympathy for their efforts and eventually become customers (Source: IT 24 Hours, Open the IT World, Turn to a Better Life)
The online Riceberry market
For Riceberry, searching on a search engine like Google shows a continually growing number of websites selling Riceberry, because the high-nutrition rice market in Thailand for health-conscious consumers is expanding rapidly, a result beyond the high-nutrition rice products produced under the control of the Thanyaosot mill, BAAC and the Friends in Need (of PA) Volunteers Foundation. Today many other farmers and entrepreneurs produce and sell Riceberry and Sinlek rice themselves outside that supervision, which is valuable for developing a new generation of farmers who, besides understanding consumers better, also understand the marketing mechanism that makes farmers learn that unity is strength.
