The 11th National Economic and Social Development Plan aims to “restructure the economy towards quality growth and sustainability” which forms the overarching framework for the development of the Creative Economy during 2011-2015. (Thailand International Creative Economy Forum, 2012).
In order for the Plan to be successful, CAI, as one of academic institute, has been conducting innovative researches that should benefit to the country’s strategies in order to achieve goal. To systematically address the Farmer Shop Project that was initiated as a pilot project by utilizing the value network, the integrated supply chain management and fair trade concept has been used to conceptualize the framework of the new business model. The project was done in coordination with cooperatives, community enterprise, SMEs and OTOP.

The "Farmer Shop Model Operation and Development" research project aimed to design the operating system of the alternative retail store using the integrated supply chain management which covered the creation of supply chain network, the development of products' quality and standard and packaging, the procurement and feedback systems, the retail store was expected to be a choice for communities, co-operatives, and entrepreneurs to solve the peoblems and limitations resulted from free trade agreement and current competitive impact of hypermarkets.

Farmer Shop Project

Agricultural sector has played an important role in Thailand’s economy. The revenue from the agricultural sector contributes 9 percent to the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country. Agricultural labor is the highest proportion in Thai labor force accounting for 38 percent of the total. Due to the recent inflationary cycle of global food commodities, not only have the agricultural products been vital for domestic consumption, the agricultural products have been the key to Thailand economic growth. Thailand is ranked eighth worldwide in the export of agricultural products. Major exported goods are rubber, rice, cassava, shrimps, and chicken. Although the exporting agricultural products is increasing in values, Thailand has encountered high competition in the market resulted from the implementation of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS), and other quality control measures.