Recently, government agencies and civil society organizations have been concerned about food insecurity and lacking of adequate healthy diets, and trying to find a proper solution. Food is one of the most important basic needs for living, and affects the health conditions and nutritional aspects directly. Hence, poor eating habits or insecure food consumption that lead to health problems, especially non-infectious diseases and cancers. or environmental issues related to toxic chemicals all cause the losses in various aspects – health conditions, economics, and society. Whereas, issues related to food insecurity tend to increase.

   The Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital is well aware of the importance of the abovementioned topics. Consequently, Ramathibodi Healthy Farm has been operated since 2012 for the following purposes:

1. To serve organic food for patients and RA staff to increase individual well-being.

2. To be a leading Hospital that can extend the health-promoting networks related to organic agriculture.

3. To extend the knowledge of organic agriculture for better health, and integrate it into the 4 curriculums of the faculty.

4. To create an appropriate environment for learning organic agriculture externally and internally.

5. To develop a learning center for organic agriculture and health, providing education in holistic botany and its application for students, staff, and community.

   To achieve the mentioned purposes, the cooperation from all networks must be integrated with compliance with the sustainable development goals coined by the United Nation:  to end hunger (the sustainable development goal 2), to integrate collaborations from the networks, (the sustainable development goal 17), to gain good health and well-being (the sustainable development goal 3), to create excellent education (the sustainable development goal 4), to create sustainable city and society (the sustainable development goal 11).

Procedures

1. Follow the strategies from RAMA MODEL as follows;                                                                                                                                                                                  

R (Raising Awareness)

      To raise awareness of the target groups for the consumers and the food producers such as agricultural networks.

A (Aiming at targeted health)

To set the target group in common by discussion, analysis, setting the target, making an agreement, and selecting the methods that can lead to a change.

• Hold organic agricultural networking conferences
• Hold conferences to develop a policy on fruit and vegetable eating habits for child development centers, schools, and organizations

M (Mobilizing change and innovation)

To drive the agricultural networks and consumers such as RA staff and students to make a change by knowledge-sharing methods.

-     Improve the potential of the network by the observational study on CSR business.

-     Produce the standards of organic merchandise for social enterprise

-     Promote organic agricultural activities, starting from the manufacturing to distribution.

-     Hold agricultural networking conferences to follow up on the social enterprise progress.

A (Assuring synergy and sustainability)

To co-monitor the assessment and results continually with the networks.

2.   Operate the learning center and disseminate knowledge and innovation

2.1 Hold activities to disseminate knowledge on organic agriculture and health to the participants.

2.2 Hold activities to exchange the knowledge between the agricultural networks.

2.3 Hold activities related to healthcare services and healthy food for the public and local authority.

2.4 Processed product improvement such as herbal tea, processed foods, etc.

2.5 Create PR media and learning materials from the hospital’s specialty on healthcare and agricultural knowledge.

3.   Expand the knowledge to other organization

3.1 Lesson learned from organizational development: management patterns, food condition management, and social enterprise model development.

3.2 Create educational materials and publish them via internal and external channels.

   The Ramathibodi Healthy Farm has been operated continually with great results in compliance with the good agricultural standard by the Faculty of Medical Technology, Mahidol University. Furthermore, it is a learning center of its community and neighboring networks which teachers, students, college students, and public can learn and visit. This is a prototype project that can be applied to launch in schools, households, and communities to have holistic food production and to provide healthy food and liquid diets for tube feeding for patients. In addition, this project distributes cheap goods directly to consumers, supports the health enhancement activity of the Faculty, creates internal and external networks, and also establishes the collaboration between the government organizations, private sections, and communities. All of the mentioned purposes aim to elevate the agricultural networks and conduct research to seek new knowledge continuously.