FOOD SECURITY BUILDING FOR THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF THAI SOCIETY A CASE STUDY PHRA NAKHON SI AYUTTHAYA PROVINCE

Abstract

This study consists of the following objectives: 1) to study the state of food security for sustainable development of the Thai society; 2) to study the process of building food security for sustainable development of the Thai society; and 3) to present food security-building for sustainable development of the Thai society. It was conducted by using qualitative research, in which the data were collected by reviewing the concerned documents and particularly in-depth interviewing the farmers groups in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province with the help of interview-forms tool. The collected data analysis employed content analysis technique.

The research’s results have been found as follows:

            1) As for the state of food security, it was found that Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province is a lowland area being suitable for farming, in which most of the population is mainly in the field of agricultures with plenty of rivers flowing through, including an abundance of food as well as several groups of farmers promoting food security. Meanwhile, contexts of communities are very different. Furthermore, there are several structures and interactions to promote food security, i.e., (1) sufficient food and suitable quality, (2) sufficient food-access, (3) utilization emphasizing on healthy food consumption, (4) food stability with high quality standards, and (5) food products and processed food, viz., processed rice in fish shape, fish strips, as well as processed fruits, etc.             2) As for the process of building food security in Phra  Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province, it was noticed that the process consists of 5 steps: namely, (1) Farmer's learning, (2) Farmer's awareness, (3) Farmer's recognition, (4) the application of agricultural products, and (5) using innovations to build food security.

    3) As for the food security-building for sustainable development, it was found that there was a pattern of food production by farmers' joining-groups, agricultural promotion, and community enterprise group. There are two kinds of farmer-groups: groups of production and processed-product groups, for example, rice-planting group, vegetable-product group, milled rice processed-product groups, fruit-processed group, as well as fish processed group, etc. Finally, the researcher intends to propose a food security model for sustainable development of the Thai society by applying the concept of social development process to build food security, which can be summarized in 3 groups: (1) garden-based community, (2) mixed farming-community, and (3) food production and processed product community. The 3 groups are to be driven by enhancing food security in community as the learning spiral being connected in 3 consecutive stages, namely: (1) learning to rehabilitate and develop community way of life and self-reliance to enhance food security; (2) learning to transform community towards enhancing food security together; and (3) learning to develop food security for communities in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province with the aim to create food security for the sustainable development of the Thai society.