– Bangkok, 14 August 2025

Social Business should be part of the post-2030 Agenda.

This was one of the visions set forth by Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Thailand, H.E. Mr. Faiyaz Murshid Kazi, while opening an afternoon dialogue session on Social Business for Inclusive Rural Development at the Bangkok campus of Thailand’s National Institute for Development Administration (NIDA) last week. Progress on the SDGs falls short of the ambition and urgency needed. Halfway through the decade of action, the United Nations declared 6 July as Rural Development Day, inspired by the work of the Dhaka-based Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific. Referring to the urban-rural interdependencies, the Ambassador reminded the room that leaving no one behind recognizes rural development as a foundation–not a standalone pillar – of sustainable development. As the dynamics of global leadership continue to shift in 2025, enhanced triangular conversations and “South-South” collaboration on areas like social business innovation can pave a new way ahead beyond the years of the SDGs.

Enter the ESG conceptual framework.

Prof. Faiz Shah, Executive Director of the Yunus Center AIT and President of Yunus Thailand, explained that current Environmental-Social-Governance frameworks provide a common language at the interface of business performance and stakeholder expectations. Over the past 25 years, ESG has become recognized as a credible way to capture the value-added to local markets, as well as the global economy beyond financial performance. He drew attention to the high environmental and social cost of urbanization in South and Southeast Asia and the growing capacity gap at the local levels for sustaining regenerative agriculture and food production in rural spaces. In its present shape, this dual threat poses a risk to large-scale food insecurity. Contrary to historical evidence, where the foundations of a robust economy lay in well-developed local food systems, the corporatization of highly efficient food production serves to disempower local food producers. Looking ahead, the world needs a new form of Agri-food entrepreneurship, where local farmer communities become a vibrant part of global food value chains. And hence, investing in social business solutions for rural communities is a corollary to food security and ecosystem regeneration.

What is, then, the role of Social Business? According to Prof. Vesarach Aumeboonsuke, Director of NIDA’s Master of Management Program and an ESG research specialist, Social Business can serve as the value-adding engine for Agrifood value chains to deliver on the social elements that markets have failed to account for in the past. To this effect, leveraging market-based tools like social procurement can build social equity while being captured in ESG performance metrics. As such, social procurement provides an anchor for decision-making in the short term and serves as a risk management response in the mid- and long terms.

A constructively disruptive trajectory.

In the era of a majority-urban civilization, the services of rural systems ought to be internalized by economic transactions. Whereas traditional procurement practice may be designed for convenience, social procurement offers an alternative that embeds a layer of commitment to responsible consumption and production, while factoring in the needs of consumers in the market. NIDA President, Prof. Tippawan Lorsuwannarat, reflected that applying wisdom for sustainable development in rural communities relies on embedding social services. Beyond access to nutritious food, health, and education services, low-income or marginalized rural communities also need people-centered avenues to access finance. Programs like the honest community program of the Islamic Bank of Thailand (iBank), partnered with community-based organizations to offer a respite from loan sharks while de-risking microfinance, while ensuring Shariah compliance to serve Thailand’s muslim communities. Ms. Nuchjaree Pakdeecharoen, Executive Vice President of iBank’s Retail Banking Division, notes that their ongoing programs can benefit from increased services to build financial literacy in Thailand’s Southern Border Provinces.

A call for fair pricing and market access.

Building trust among consumer groups to make informed procurement decisions often comes in the form of certification. In the case of freshwater aquaculture, consumers ask for good agricultural practice (GAP) certification, which members of the Thai Frozen Food Association help initiate alongside smallholder entrepreneurs to enter fair-priced export markets, as explained by Mr. Shah Faisal Ali Khan. Certifications, however, most often incur costs for agroentrepreneurs, many of whom already struggle with unfair pricing models set by mediators. In the Nakhon Pathom province, Mr. Arut Nawaraj and the Sookjai Foundation team pioneered initiatives like the Sampran Model, capacitating smallholder farmers on organic practice, cultivating area-based partnerships with consumer groups, and leveraging Thailand's Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) for low-cost verification of organic agricultural compliance.

Educational partnerships for social agroentrepreneurship.

On the education front, the Kasetsart Entrepreneurship Education Program (KEEP) at Kasetsart University leverages faculty expertise to support social entrepreneurs on various aspects of agroentrepreneurship. Associate Professor Dr. Methinee Wongwanich Rumpagaporn leads collaborative efforts to this purpose via the Biotechnology Industry Network Association to provide guidance and assistance on various aspects such as regulatory compliance, shelf-life expansion, packaging optimization, and distribution strategies. With a similar vision, NIDA’s Sikhio Campus in Nakhon Ratchasima is working to enhance an integrated approach to drive Social Integrated Enterprises’ mechanism by establishing a NIDA holding company mechanism downstream, investing in a midstream smart agriculture center, and connecting various farming communities upstream on specific crops for enhanced market access. As highlighted by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Patthareeya Lakpetch of NIDA’s Research Bureau, universities can serve as a living laboratory for community-oriented social entrepreneurship.

The way ahead for inclusive rural development surely extends beyond the range of actions covered by the coffee-time dialogue at NIDA’s modern urban campus. And yet, a sense of newfound optimism for localized forms of leadership was clear as the snacks table emptied in the hallway. Looking ahead to the balancing acts of cultivating and capturing the rural development co-benefits of agrifood value chains, the discussion reminded us that tools are already within reach. There is growing evidence in Thailand on the satisfactory performance of companies reporting on ESG performance. In this context, investing in social business via regular spending lines does not need to wait for the 2030 agenda to expire.