Reinventing value chain to boost farmers’ revenue share 

At the recent Recovery Forum, NXPO invited Assoc. Prof. Bundit Innawong, Director of Silpakorn University Food Innovation Hub to share his view on reinventing value chain to boost farmers’ revenue share. At present, the revenue share of suppliers of the local/community products is quite low, yet this group represents about 123,000 individuals. Though local economy is insignificant in comparison to mainstream economy, it affects income and livelihood of relatively large population residing in local communities and rural areas. Therefore, stimulating local economy will significantly increase income of people in the communities and facilitate better income distribution in the society.  

To boost revenue share, Dr. Bundit suggested that farmers adopt smart farming and work together to form a value network to co-produce value.  It is estimated that the value network concept will increase farmers’ revenue share by 40% and strengthen fair trade. Science, technology and innovation can play a major role to promote smart farming and value network.  

NXPO President Dr. Kitipong Promwong commented that Dr. Bundit’s suggestion is indeed a solution to targeted poverty alleviation, which is one of the key issues NXPO is working on. The challenge of poverty alleviation lies in the scale-up, because each community has different problems and backgrounds, therefore requiring dedicating team to investigate problems thoroughly in order to design solutions specific to each community and also implement the solutions from start to finish. Dr. Kitipong further informed the forum that targeted poverty alleviation will be included in the Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Policy and Strategy (2023-2027) which is currently being formulated.