Thai startup harnesses tech to turn abandoned lands into sustainable farms
An agritech startup aims to give agriculture a new lease of life at a time when abandonment of agricultural land in Thailand has been a major problem due to beliefs that crop cultivation was difficult amid the impact of climate change impact, as well as lack of knowledge.
Ricult Thailand recently launched its farming-as-a-service to enable people who have no idea how to cultivate to benefit from their lands. The company will generate income for the land owners by using its expertise to grow crops.
“People are talking about artificial intelligence [AI] and technology era, so this is my dream to change agriculture and community life with technology to boost competitiveness,” the company’s CEO and co-founder, Aukrit Unahalekhaka, said during an exclusive interview with The Nation.
Solutions to agriculture
Powered with cutting-edge technology developed over many years, he said the company could make effective decisions — which crops should be grown and when the cultivation should begin to ensure maximum crop yield.
Apart from farming-as-a-service, digital and AI solutions are also being offered to more than 1 million farmers and more than 10 agricultural factories and businesses nationwide.
Digital solutions like satellite images and big data allows the company to forecast weather, crop yield and carbon footprint effectively, he said. Meanwhile, AI helps boost the company’s efficiency in data management throughout the supply chain.
“These are our differences and advantages as we have a lot of data and AI to help on production planning,” Aukrit said.
Ricult Thailand is currently monitoring the cultivation of agronomy, such as rice, cassava, sugarcane, palm and rubber. However, the service will be expanded to horticulture like durian, mangosteen and mango in the future, he said.
With successful funding of more than US$10 million (360.62 million baht), the company plans to offer more services to support the agriculture sector worldwide, such as the US, Europe and ASEAN.
The company also aims to encourage Thai farmers to grow premium agricultural products and is offering solutions to facilitate generating carbon credits in a bid to boost their income and competitiveness in the global market.
“We want to create sustainable agriculture that takes part in carbon footprint reduction and forest preservation, with traceability of where the agricultural products came from,” Aukrit said.
Shifting to digital
One of the key challenges that Ricult Thailand faced was encouraging farmers to apply digital solutions in their agriculture, he said.
Thailand has 15 million farmers with an average age of 55 years. Hence, 1 million farmers under the company’s care accounted for less than 10% of farmers nationwide.
“We have to accept that farmers are the elderly in Thai society, but we need to encourage them [to apply technology in agriculture],” Aukrit said, adding that there were still more opportunities to drive Thai people towards the digital era.
