Harry Jay Cavite

While the organic food market continues to grow globally, millennials' purchase intentions for organic products often lag behind their expressed interest in sustainability. This study investigates the factors influencing millennials' purchase intentions and examines the moderating role of environmental concerns in the organic food context, addressing business strategy gaps in leveraging environmental concerns for increased organic food consumption. Using a unified framework based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), data were collected from 499 millennial consumers through structured online surveys. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to validate the proposed direct and moderating hypotheses. The results reveal that attitude, perceived behavioural control and trust in organic food are significant predictors of purchase intention. Moreover, environmental concerns moderate the relationship between subjective norms and purchase intention, suggesting that societal expectations combined with ecological awareness drive millennials toward sustainable consumption. This study offers a new lens to understand sustainable consumption patterns among younger generations globally and provides actionable insights for business managers to align sustainability strategies with evolving consumer preferences, particularly those of millennials. The findings highlight the importance of emphasising the environmental benefits of organic food, improving product accessibility and strengthening community engagement programs to drive sustainability, promote market growth promote market growth and reinforce trust in the organic food sector.

Agriculture is a key economic driver but also a significant contributor to environmental challenges. Despite promotion, uptake of agricultural technologies remains low due to various challenges. This study explores challenges and solutions in the adoption of agricultural technology in Thailand, emphasising its positive impact on agri‐food sector sustainability. We developed a conceptual framework based on technology adoption literature review. Employing multiple case studies, our research uncovers challenges not only at the farmer level but also within the agricultural ecosystem level. Addressing these challenges requires comprehensive changes in physical, digital, and legal infrastructure. Solutions include reshaping farmer mindsets and enhancing awareness of technology benefits. Despite limitations to the agri‐food industry in Thailand, the study offers valuable insights for technology providers and policymakers, contributing to the literature on technology adoption by smallholder farmers. Our findings emphasise the need for sustainability strategies in the agri‐food sector through greater technology uptake to enhance environmental sustainability.

The alternate wetting and drying (AWD) as water-saving technology aligns with the good agricultural practices (GAP) principles, particularly in the environmental management of water conservation. Thus, GAP adopters as farmer groups are seen as viable AWD adopters in the initial stages of scaling out the adoption in Thailand. However, the understanding of integrating AWD as water-saving management among GAP adopters remains scant. Using the case of rice GAP farmers in Thailand, the study found a higher probability of adoption intention among GAP compared to non-GAP. AWD perceived advantage, knowledge, and the suitability of rice farms for AWD adoption trials are positively associated with higher adoption intention. While higher fixed cost lowers the probability of adoption, variable cost is positively associated with higher adoption intention in the short-run production decision. In order to scale out the adoption of AWD, farmers’ understanding of the safe and proper application of AWD, together with assistance for crop insurance in the case of crop failure, will be crucial. Risks connected with the adoption decision continue to be the biggest barrier to adoption, especially among small-scale farmers.

Organic production has gained increased attention worldwide because of its sustainable way of producing food crops apart from its significant contribution to agricultural development. While some policies and programs encourage rice farmers to adopt organic farming, its uptake is far less than expected, particularly in the rural areas of Thailand. Hence, this study attempts to explain rice farmers’ adoption intention towards organic rice farming, drawing insights from the diffusion of innovations theory, and incorporating consumer information as an important alternative information source. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 201 community enterprise farmers using a purposive sampling technique. Results found that farmers have a generally high-level perception towards consumer information items. These items were further explored using binary logistic regression with the commonly used adoption factors. Results revealed that education level, seed input source, buying price, training attendance, and credit access significantly impacted farmers’ adoption intention. Although farmers have a generally high level of agreement towards consumer information, this factor does not affect their adoption. The findings provide critical insights to the community enterprise and policymakers to fully understand community enterprise farmers’ adoption motives and devise targeted strategies to promote widespread adoption of organic rice farming.

Purpose: Organic rice forms the largest portion of the Thai organic food market. Because of its increasing popularity, marketers need to better understand consumer behaviour to address emerging concerns regarding product safety and quality and to tailor better marketing strategies relevant to the development of organic rice. As such, this study aims to examine consumers' purchase intention towards organic rice, using traceability information, and to investigate the direct and moderating roles of product traceability knowledge, using the theory of planned behaviour.Design/methodology/approach: Responses were collected from 243 organic rice consumers in a farmers' market in Chachoengsao Province, Thailand, following a convenience sampling approach. The gathered data were analysed using structural equation modelling to evaluate the strength of the relationship between the constructs.Findings: The findings reveal that subjective norms, health consciousness and product traceability knowledge have a significant positive influence on consumers’ intention to purchase organic rice. This study also establishes the moderating role of product traceability knowledge in perceived behavioural control and purchase intention, indicating that elaborated product information through traceability is essential for consumers who feel capable of buying the product. However, the direct effects of attitude and perceived behavioural control are insignificant, indicating the presence of external barriers to the purchase of organic rice, and that people may have a negative attitude towards the product. In addition, the cost perception result reveals that consumers consider price as an indicator of organic product quality, thereby increasing their desirability.Social implications: The findings of this study will help community enterprises in Thailand develop a more effective marketing strategy based on the identified motivators of organic rice purchase intention.Originality/value: This study develops a model that integrates important factors related to organic food consumption to generate a more comprehensive analysis of this mainstream research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first study to investigate the moderating role of product traceability knowledge to obtain a new and more focused understanding of how this factor influences purchase intention when applied explicitly to organic food. Finally, the findings provide theoretical contributions and implications for both the community enterprise and policymakers on developing strategies for organic rice marketing among community enterprises in Thailand.

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are known to stimulate plant growth because of their versatility in nutrient transformation. However, the success of PGPR inoculation depends not only on their ability to promote plant growth but also on their capacity to metabolize substrates that can be used as energy for the development and survival of the crops. Given the important influence of seed germination and vigor on crop yield, this study investigated the biochemical characteristics and effectiveness of multi-trait PGPR isolates in enhancing upland rice seedling growth and vigor. Biochemical identification was done using Biolog GEN III Microbial Identification System. Isolates were characterized based on their ability to metabolize all major classes of biochemicals in the carbon source utilization and chemical sensitivity assays. Identified rhizobacterial isolates were tested in vitro to evaluate their inoculation effects on the growth of PSB Rc23 upland rice seedlings. Biochemical identification results showed that rhizobacterial isolates have extensive metabolic activities in a wide range of carbon sources. Inoculation effects revealed that isolate IBBw_1a was the most effective in enhancing root length and vigor index of rice seedlings in vitro, yielding a significant increase of 60% and 53%, respectively, over the uninoculated control. This study suggests that rhizobacterial isolates from upland rice may have commercial significance to improve seedling growth and vigor. These isolates will undergo a further assessment of their effectiveness in actual upland rice field conditions as they were already proven effective growth promoters in laboratory and screenhouse conditions. Such future activity can uncover their efficacy as potential biofertilizers in the actual soil environment.