JatujakMall. Doi Kham

กำเนิดดอยคำ

(“ดอยคำ” เกษตรเพื่อชุมชน ผลิตผลเพื่อคนไทย)

The Doi Kham Company (Thai : ดอยคำ ) is a rural farm development project of King Bhumibol's started in 1969. The meaning of the words "Doi Kham" comes from two northern Thai words. The word "doi" means "mountain" or "hill" while the word "kham" is a shortened word for "thongkham" which means "gold". The company produces a variety of agricultural products including ready-to-drink fruit juice, fruit juice concentrates, dehydrated fruits, fruit jam, canned fruits, tomato paste, frozen fruit and full fat soya flour.

At the beginning, there was an obstacle financial for royal project basement, however, in order to fix this problem, King Bhumibol took his personal fund to create and develop many projects in their start-up stage. After that, by His Majesty’s savior, the government and foreign agencies were persuaded to offer their support in terms of finance and technology. From then on, this project has been an incredible success. The Royal Projects Foundation currently takes charge of four research stations and thirty-five development centre which work with and care for 295 villages containing 14,109 families. This is an involvement of approximately 85,000 rural Thais and hill tribe peoples. Doi Kham Royal Project which is located on the outskirts of Chiangmai, Doi Kham Royal Project is a wealth of flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables that are produced in order to increase the value of agricultural products and help the seeder to gain more income. There are various organic vegetables that were produced in this project such as leeks, carrots, lettuce, and broccoli. Exotic fruits and flowers such as kiwi fruit, protean, pussy-willow, avocado, carnation are in abundance. Herbs like mint, lemon thyme, rosemary, and basil were also planted in this project. There are also canned and frozen juices and vegetables, dehydrated purees, dried flowers and pot-pourri, and more.

Doi Kham Food Products is a private limited company with registered capital of US$120,000. The company has total annual revenues of US$4.5 million. With its head office located in Bangkok, Doi Kham Food Products employs total of 200 persons including five engineers and five quality assurance staff.

Origin

The Doi Kham Company farms along the irrigation canal named Klong Chonprathan, on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. The Doi Kham Royal Project was begun when King Bhumibol Adulyej visited Chiang Mai during the cool season in 1964. He had the opportunity to observe the problems of rural villagers. In the hilly northern region, farming was of the slash and burn variety and was causing the forests to be reduced to ashes. Also, the number of people growing opium poppies was increasing. At the king's command, the royal project was created to provide alternative sources of income for hill-tribe villages that formerly relied on opium production and slash and burn farming. All of products of the Doi Kham Company are produced by the royal project. The company produces a wide variety of agricultural products including ready-to-drink fruit juices, fruit juice concentrates, dehydrated fruits, jam, honey, and flowers. Doi Kham Company exports 30% its output to the Asia Pacific region.

The Doi Kham Company objective is to support the development of Thai agricultural products and to produce goods which have a high nutritional value without chemical additives. Their products do not contain preservatives or artificial flavors.