Sustainability in Action: An immersive education approach for addressing food security in Thailand

Founded in 2022, the Future Dynamic Program (FDP) is a collaborative educational initiative between Loftwork and Atelier Future, a center for multidisciplinary initiatives and incubation at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University. Within the FDP are several working groups investigating social innovation and sustainable development. The most recent initiative is the Sustainability in Action (SIA) workgroup, which began with a program centered on food security, focusing specifically on rice. The SIA workgroup spearheaded a cross-country collaboration supported by the FabCafe Taipei and FabCafe Bangkok team.

SIA’s inaugural program focused on the challenges facing Thailand’s rice agriculture. As the world’s second-largest rice exporter and the fifth-largest producer by cultivation area, Thailand relies on industrial-scale farming that utilizes only a handful of its 20,000 indigenous rice species. This limited species diversity poses significant risks during droughts, floods, or blights. Meanwhile, rice farmers, who are often already in debt, must navigate difficult negotiations with government buyers and rice mills to secure fair compensation for their crops.

The design challenge presented to participants was threefold, aligned with the triple bottom line of people, planet, and prosperity: How could innovations enhance the livelihoods of rice farmers, preserve rice biodiversity, and create new value for rice? Students collaborated in teams to ideate and prototype solutions with these objectives in mind.

As part of the Future Dynamic Program, SIA’s primary goal is to cultivate autonomous thinking through hands-on experiences addressing local challenges in a foreign setting. Tackling complex issues like food insecurity, where there are no easy solutions or predetermined answers, students learn the fundamentals of problem-solving and research design by working in interdisciplinary teams and directly engaging with stakeholders.

Sustainability in Action was a nine-week workshop that assembled a small cohort of Thai, Taiwanese, and Indonesian students from NKCU and Thailand’s Silpakorn University (SU). The first four weeks comprised lectures to introduce the challenge at hand. In addition to diving deep into the Thai rice industry, students also explored case studies from neighboring countries like Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Indonesia. These four sessions prepared them for the design portion of the program.

From week five, students worked in groups to design innovative solutions for a particular challenge in the Thai rice industry. They followed design thinking methodology, ideating widely with a focus on user experience. Once they had drafted their proposals, students needed to deepen their understanding of their stakeholders — for that, they needed to conduct field research.

The eighth week of the program saw students spend a week in Nakhon Sawan, a key rice-producing area. First, students visited the Thai Buffalo Conservation Village, a traditional agrarian village that aims to preserve and showcase the traditional knowledge and wisdom of Thai people through ecotourism focused on buffaloes and rice farming. During their visit, the students learned about the role of buffalo in plowing fields, and about traditional seed sowing methods. After a lecture, students were allowed to experience traditional farming for themselves.

Students then went to the Nakhon Sawan Wangdee Rice Mill to understand more factors and stakeholders within the Thai rice economy. Rice mills are a key player, collecting paddy rice for processing and then distributing it to the market through middlemen.

The last stop was the Rice Hub & Farmer Foundation, where students were able to try organic farming and learn about the importance of rice species diversity. Rice Hub works with farmers and schools to showcase the wide range of flavors and textures that rice can offer, similar to how people appreciate coffee and wine. By partnering with chefs, innovators, and institutions, Rice Hub seeks to educate consumers on the vast array of rice flavors and textures; they organize rice tasting events to showcase different varieties of rice and preparation methods.

The Farmer Foundation aims to educate farmers, foster collaboration and knowledge exchange, promote agricultural research, and coordinate with organizations for public benefit. Through various initiatives, it works toward reducing chemical dependency, improving farmers’ lives, and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. They have developed eight new rice varieties through natural pollination and offer a variety of educational programs to support Thai farmers.

After these site visits, teams worked together to refine their designs, and the weeklong excursion was concluded with presentations of student prototypes. Each of the four prototypes addressed a different facet of Thailand’s rice industry, refined by fieldwork  interviews and insights.

One team wanted to promote transitions to organic rice farming methods, which are often out of reach due to high costs; many farmers operate at a loss for the first 1–3 years. Their crowdfunding platform RiceRich would connect individual and corporate investors with farmers interested in adopting organic farming techniques and selling organically grown rice products.

Another prototype also helped farmers match with stakeholders. RiceLand, created by the Thai students participating in SIA, was created to help connect farmers with landowners and buyers. For farmers who don’t have the means or ability to cultivate a plot of land year round, renting is much more feasible. Moreover, contract farming would also be facilitated through RiceLand, providing farmers with reliable, high value income.

Another team wanted to support the diversity of Thailand’s indigenous rice by targeting people trying to eat fewer carbohydrates. Many health-conscious people avoid rice when cutting carbs, so this team created TURN RICE to curate and market various rice varieties as food supplements. Their marketing strategy extended to packaging similar to protein powder, and even to partnerships with fitness centers. By selling rice high in protein or functional nutrients, TURN RICE would highlight the benefits of rice species diversity to human health.

The final team wanted to tackle the issue of farmers in debt by encouraging agricultural financial literacy. Their prototype was a board game, Nee Sin Sin, a combination of the Thai words “nee sin” (debt) and “sin” (gone). The game teaches players how to borrow, invest, spend, and save while facing random challenges like floods or broken machinery. By cooperating to diversify risk and get out of debt, players gain a better understanding of managing their finances.

The four prototypes were part of the SIA exhibition at the Isan Creative Festival 2024. The festival showcases creative endeavors and opportunities in Isan, the northeast region of Thailand. Sustainability in Action was given an opportunity to exhibit students’ final prototypes and the areas of the rice industry they hoped to improve.

Sustainability in Action is the latest workshop in the Future Dynamic Program. Workshops in the program are designed to offer immersive educational experiences regarding real-world challenges. The curriculum was created based on extensive research on the rice industry of Thailand and beyond, as well as best practices in design thinking and design research. The key to SIA’s success, however, was in allowing students to explore the problem for themselves.

Today’s issues cannot be solved with a single prototype; therefore, it was crucial for SIA participants to understand the background to create a localized design challenge. To facilitate this process, the curriculum began with international case studies to contextualize the issue. By the final week, students were on site, interviewing farmers and other stakeholders about their needs. Addressing modern problems requires both knowledge of global context and insight into user experiences.

Contact us if you are interested in…

• Conducting innovative educational programs related to global challenges.
• Implementing design thinking principles, on-site prototyping and testing into your curriculum.