Good Agricultural Practices and Coordination Strategies in Garlic Supply Chains

Abstract

Garlic is one of the economic products cultivated in the northern region of Thailand, especially in the Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son provinces. Currently, good agricultural practices (GAP) and supply chain coordination are the important mechanisms in which growers and other actors in the garlic supply chains share the same interest. Thus, many actors in the garlic supply chains have been attempting to find many appropriate practices or strategies to achieve their expectations in return. However, the practical intensive levels in GAP of each growers are different and the coordination strategies are accepted in some growers. Consequently, this paper aims to assess the GAP practical intensive levels and explores the best way in decision making on coordination strategy implementation by applying the game theory. The selected samples are GAP garlic growers in Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son provinces for playing this game. The results showed that the strategy of horizontal coordination is among the GAP garlic growers as the cooperatives and the grower groups, and the vertical coordination is applied by making the contracts between the GAP garlic growers and buyers as the best choice of growers. It brings high economic payoffs and social utility. However, the effective outcomes of strategy implementation lies within the trust of GAP garlic growers and buyers, and the same standardized control in the GAP garlic products. These findings are obviously useful for the GAP garlic growers in Thailand to make a decision for changing their production behaviors from private cultivation to cooperation, as well as not selling the GAP garlic products by themselves, but exploring on the partner contracts instead.