Fruits and vegetables

Over the past decade, the fruit and vegetable industry has undergone a drastic transformation. Food scares and the impressive progress in information and communications technology have driven the fruit and vegetable industry to be more global and more professional. Traditional farming and simple processing are giving way to modern practices. Quality management is becoming the norm not only in fruit and vegetable packing and processing but also in farming. Third-party audit and certification is becoming more and more prevalent. Consumers are demanding not only food safety and quality but also social responsibility and environmental care. To remain competitive, Thailand’s fruit and vegetable industry needs to transform itself accordingly. This transformation requires a number of services to be strengthened. Farm management training, advisory services provided by farm input resellers, soil and leaf analyses and farm management outsourcing are some of these services. Framework conditions governing food safety and export controls also need to be modernized and streamlined. The Thai-German Programme for Enterprise Competitiveness is leveraging on German development agencies’ worldwide experiences to facilitate this transformation.