At Thailand Rice Fest 2025 and Thailand Coffee Fest Year End 2025, the Ministry of Commerce launched a “premium rice” initiative alongside a GI Pavilion — organized by the Department of Intellectual Property in collaboration with The Cloud — to showcase rice and coffee certified under Geographical Indication (GI) from communities across Thailand. Twenty farmer-groups from various provinces participated, classified into Tier 1 and Tier 2 based on production and market readiness, highlighting regional rice varieties and unique identities.
The “premium rice” concept is positioned not as a substitute for everyday rice, but as a premium alternative — with support from cultivation to processing, milling, drying, packaging, and marketing. This allows even smallholder farmers to transform local rice varieties into high-value products with distinct identity and market appeal. According to organizers, such support can raise the selling price by 5–10 times compared with ordinary rice.
The event’s built-in Business Matching platform yielded immediate concrete results: a first order of 450 tons of premium rice, worth around 16 million baht, showing strong demand and market potential. Organizers say this marks a promising start toward building a new system for Thai agricultural products — especially rice and coffee — to enter premium domestic and international markets sustainably, benefiting local farmers and preserving regional rice identities.
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