World Food Policy
do this. They enjoy the lifestyle changes
and consumer power that connection to
the market gives them. Although Thai
farmers are facing environmental chal-
lenges and market vulnerability, they
appear to want other ways to face these
challenges and it appears that demand
for change is not coming from farmers
themselves (Walker, 2010).
Health Care (PHC) program which was
rolled out nationwide. Nutrition inter-
ventions pioneered in the 1960s formed
a key part of the PHC policies (Wini-
chagoon et al., 1992).
The identification of nutrition
as a major element of human develop-
ment and the emphasis on community
mobilization have been fundamental to
Thailand’s success, achieving: changed
consumption behaviors; nutritional
status monitoring particularly of young
children; supplementary foods produc-
tion; and cost effectiveness through the
use of community-based Village Health
Volunteers (VHVs). Volunteers were
local people, often related to the villag-
ers, who could gain trust and pass on
knowledge and skills gained from gov-
ernment training (Tontisirin & Win-
ichagoon, 1999). During the 1980s,
these community mobilizations were
based on a holistic “basic minimum
needs” theory. Seeing nutrition as part
of overall primary healthcare and hu-
man development was crucial (Kelly
et al., 2012; Tontisirin & Winichagoon,
1999) By 1986, 500,000 village health
communicators and 50,000 health vol-
unteers had been trained and were ac-
tive in nearly every village in the coun-
try (Tontisirin, 1992).
3. Food and Nutrition
Security of Thai Consumers
B
eginning in the early 1960s, a se-
ries of innovative nutrition inter-
ventions were trialed by a group
of Thai medical doctors and support-
ed by the World Health Organization.
In some of Thailand’s poorest regions,
these doctors introduced improved
protein production, iodine supplemen-
tation, fortifying fish sauce with iron,
and localized fish oil production, all
using technologies which were avail-
able and appropriate for rural Thais. As
well they developed Thai Food tables to
assist with nutrition monitoring (Non-
dasuta, 1998). By the mid-1970s, these
programs were considered so successful
that the Thai Ministry of Public Health
adopted them for countrywide replica-
tion and they were incorporated into the
first National Food and Nutrition Plans
in the late 1970s (see Table 1) (Winicha-
goon, Dhanamitta, & Valyasevi, 1992).
Also importantly in the late 1970s,
Thailand began to modify its approach
to development from a top-down to a
bottom-up approach (Kelly, Yuthaporn-
pinit, Seubsman, & Sleigh, 2012). Part
of this new approach involved the de-
velopment of a comprehensive Primary
Since the 1970s, malnutrition
has been aggressively targeted and
rates have fallen dramatically, interact-
ing with community development and
primary healthcare programs which
have improved the overall health status
of the majority of Thais. By the 1990s,
rapid socio-economic development had
affected most of the Thai population
16