กรุงเทพฯ--27 ก.ย.--Today Communications
Despite being the backbone of the country, Thai farmers have always faced with poverty and been taken advantage of due to a complex and unfair market mechanism.
Pakpoom Wongsakvanich, a young man of 25 years old who has experience working at leading international corporations and is today the business development manager of his family business, Hah Hong Trading, the distributor of Shimano bike components in Thailand, has been following news and interested in how each government tried to solve this problem, to no avail. Therefore, he tried to come up with his own way of helping Thai farmers to be able to stand on their own two feet with sustainability.
Pakpoom had the opportunity to learn with Rungsawang Boonna, a lecturer at Sisaket Industrial and Community Education College, who invented a rice-threshing bike that can help farmers become less dependent upon mills and middlemen. With his interest as well as background in engineering, Pakpoom reworked the original bike by Rungsawang until he could develop a new model suitable for practical use.
“I asked Rungsawang Boonna for the bike he invented and brought it back to Bangkok to test and redevelop. The trial and error period lasted for three to four months. I changed the body of the bike to that of a racing bicycle, put in Shimano parts, and reworked the paint to make it look new and appealing. Finally, I was able to develop a new model that is more efficient and requires much less effort for pedaling. For an average, easy speed, it could thresh 5 kilograms of rice in 10 minutes. So, it can be an option for farmers to lower their milling costs,” Pakpoom said about this achievement that was born out of cooperation.
He named this innovation: Bicycle Thresher. It consists of two mechanisms.
The first mechanism is the threshing. Unmilled rice is put into the threshing device that has a transparent plastic cover. The rice is passed through two rollers, whose gap can be adjusted in accordance with the size of different kinds of rice. Then, the threshed rice is sent to a container on the side. The wind originated by the pedaling blows the husks out in front of the machine.
The other mechanism is the pedaling. It features gearing that can be adjusted for suitability, using the concept of a mountain bike.
Once the testing and development of the Bicycle Thresher were completed, Pakpoom contacted a group of farmers in Ban Nam-Priew District, Chachoengsao Province, and gave this bike for the group to test. But there was a condition: the red jasmine rice threshed by this machine had to be sold to Pakpoom so he could try to market it.
Once more Bicycle Thresher were built, they were given for free to farming cooperatives in different provinces. Farmers who are members of these cooperatives could then ask for these machines to thresh their rice.
Now, the red jasmine rice produced by the farmers in Bang Nam-Priew, Chachoengsao, with the Bicycle Thresher is marketed under the brand “Thai Red Rice” as a premium product. On its vacuum packaging, there’s a label telling the story about Thai farmers and the invention of the Bicycle Thresher.
“Now, I’m selling it via small booths at big office buildings to test the market and trying to promote the brand by occasionally joining events. I’ll also contact large corporations to get my rice to be cooked at their canteens with a CSR concept, promoting it as the red rice produced by local communities. In the future, I’m planning to sell it at shopping malls.”
Pakpoom said he’s in the process of testing this business model of selling red rice that is threshed by the Bicycle Thresher and finding out if his business really allows the farmers to make a sustainable living. If the feedback is good as expected, Pakpoom will apply this business model to other rice-producing countries, including Vietnam and Laos. Or even countries in Africa also present a possibility.