Concern about health and environmental hazards has led 'clean and safe' agricultural products to be an important issue among consumers, farmers and governments worldwide. This has been reflected in the increasing supply of and demand for organic and eco-labelled products. While developed countries' interests are focused on certified organic production, developing countries such as China and Thailand develop their produce along various levels of 'clean'. The clean continuum ranges from production practices including high chemical, safe-use chemical, chemical-free and no chemical to environmentally friendly practices (organic). The ideal clean produce system is perceived to be one that utilizes organic practices that allow the use of alternative fertilizers and bio-pesticides rather than chemicals. Safe-use and chemical-free practices are between organic and conventional practices and are a possible step before converting conventional farms directly to organic farms. Organic farming in Thailand was initially developed by farmers and non government organisations (NGOs) in the 1980s, and was subsequently implemented by the Thai government through a series of policies on clean produce to meet international standards. The progress began in 2004, where, in order to meet the requirement to export and improved domestic food quality, the policy on agricultural chemical-use reduction had established and extended the Good Agriculture Practice (GAP) program for major economic crops including vegetables. The government also declared 2004 as the year of 'Health for All' and highlighted clean and healthy food in a public campaign to raise consumer awareness. In 2005, the government promoted organic agriculture as a national agenda. In 2007, the government restated the advanced policy for 2007-2008 on ‘food safety’ which takes into account the food chain or ‘from farm to table’. There are various 'clean and safe' agricultural systems being developed in Thailand, although there is some confusion about what they actually mean and how they operate. This paper aims to review the initiatives on 'clean and safe' agriculture with emphasis on vegetables in 'clean and safe' farming systems in northern Thailand. The background of 'clean and safe' agriculture such as definitions, aims and principles will be briefly described. Then the discussion will focus on some important components of 'clean and safe' vegetable production systems in northern Thailand including research and development, certification systems, and market.

'Clean and safe' agricultural products are an important issue among consumers, farmers and governments. Many developing countries develop their produce at various points along the 'clean' continuum based on four different production practices related to use of synthetic chemicals. Organic farming is applied to technologies with no chemicals or synthetic fertilisers used during production or processing. It was initially developed by farmers and non-government organisations in Thailand, and subsequently implemented by the Thai government through a series of policies on clean produce to meet international standards. Safe-use and pesticide-free practices lie between organic and conventional practices, and are possible steps when converting conventional farms to organic farms. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the production efficiency of four different vegetable farming practices. We compare the technical efficiencies and technology gaps of the four farming systems in northern Thailand of which three - organic, pesticide-free and safe-use - are designated 'clean and safe'. Farm-level data on vegetable production were collected from random samples of farms using these technologies. A standard stochastic production frontier was estimated for each system to obtain technical efficiency (TE) estimates with respect to their respective cohorts. The likelihood ratio test indicates that significant technology differences exist between these farming practices. Accordingly, a metafrontier model was estimated, enabling the estimation of technical efficiencies and technology gap ratios (TGRs) for vegetable farms operating under the different production systems. The model was checked for self-selectivity bias and it was found that there was no such problem.

"Clean and safe" agricultural products are an important issue among consumers, farmers and governments. Many developing countries develop their produce at various points along the 'clean' continuum based on production practices related to use of synthetic chemicals. Organic farming is applied to technologies with no chemicals or synthetic fertilisers used during production or processing. It was initially developed by farmers and non-government organisations in Thailand, and subsequently implemented by the Thai government through a series of policies on clean produce to meet international standards. Safe-use and pesticide-free practices lie between organic and conventional practices, and are possible steps when converting conventional farms to organic farms. We compare the technical efficiencies and technology gaps of the four farming systems in northern Thailand of which three - organic, pesticide-free and safe-use - are designated 'clean and safe'. Farm-level data on vegetable production were collected from random samples of farms using these technologies. A metafrontier model was estimated, enabling the estimation of technical efficiencies and technology gap ratios (TGRs) for vegetable farms operating under the different production systems. Conventional farms were expected to have the highest mean TGR (smallest distance from the metafrontier) as they are least constrained in the way they farm, and results bear out this expectation. The mean TGR for conventional farms is 0.80, significantly higher than that for organic farms at 0.45. But all production systems have farms lying on the metafrontier. In contrast to the TGR results, conventional farms have the lowest mean technical efficiency relative to their group frontier (0.33) and pesticide-free vegetable farms the highest (0.47), most likely reflecting the different degrees of technical assistance provided to farmers in these groups. Organic farming is that farmers in this group did not perform markedly worse than farmers in other groups in terms of productivity. There are numerous organisations and projects providing assistance for 'clean and safe' vegetable farming in northern Thailand. Scope exists to improve the performance of farmers in all groups as technical efficiencies and TGRs of farms vary widely in all groups. Improvements are needed for agronomic technology, supply chains, farmer capacity in production and marketing, and effectiveness of technology transfer strategies.