She may be known amongst many as the daughter of Thailand’s telecom billionaire Boonchai Bencharongkul, but Suparatana “Nina” Bencharongkul has come to build a niche for herself in the past few years.
As the General Manager of Rakbankerd, a subsidiary of her family’s business Benchachinda Group, Bencharongkul is positively disrupting Thailand’s agricultural environment by introducing the concept of agriculture technology consulting into the country. She first launched the Farmer Info App, which connects farmers with open data about yields, supply prices and other information that lets them compete with large operations. She hopes to build a strong network for the agricultural community by focusing on creation of a new agricultural domain. This will bring together technologies that upgrade farming techniques as well as those who devise strategies to make food production more efficient.
Technology has always been a part of agriculture; a tractor is a technology as is a fertilizer. But today there are new technologies available that are fundamentally different. Under Bencharongkul leadership, in addition to the Farmer Info App, Rakbankerd has introduced a wide array of agricultural technology into Thailand, such as data capturing devices and sensors, data analysis software platforms using artificial intelligence and machine learning, biotechnology and gene-editing, robotics and automation, and novel farming systems such as indoor agriculture.
Industry disruptors like Bencharongkul, who pushes technology forward in the food system stand to grow rapidly and become the new cornerstone of the industry.
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