APRACA FinPower, in tandem with the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, the Thai Rice Foundation, Thai Department of Agriculture (Rice Department), Kasetsart University and the Vocational Education Commission, conducted the first sub-regional Rice Youth Camp, at the Pathum Thani Rice Research Center, Thailand, on May 2-10, 2010. A total of 20 youth-children of farmers from Indonesia, Lao PDR, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam participated in the camp.

The Rice Youth Camp was borne out of two key issues of food security, particularly rice food security, and the sustainability of the rice-farming professions. In most of these countries, a commonly raised question is whether in the future there will be enough farmers to grow rice to feed the world, noting that there is a clear trend that majority of the children of the present farmers, under the present rice farming systems, have no intention to continue rice farming. In fact, the majority of present rice farmers, both in Asia and elsewhere, have no desire to see their children take up rice farming, as they believe that this type of work is hard with no hope of lifting their lives out of poverty and that they fear their children will remain poor too, if they continue in rice farming.

 
The Rice Youth Camp was intended as an avenue to bring together youth-children of farmers for cross-cultural exchange and knowledge sharing on rice farming management; to expose them to modern rice farming technologies and processes, with Thailand providing the rich background landscape; and to provide observation-study visits on the rice value-chain and linkages from rice production, to processing and warehousing, to promoting value-added products of rice, to domestic marketing, and finally to exporting. The youths visited rice production areas, rice mills, rice technology areas, rice markeing distribution and marketing centers and other rice-related value-adding activities in and around Bangkok.