He dreamed of becoming an engineer, but fate took over for Somchai Nitikanchana, a mechanical engineering graduate from Prince of Songkhla University.

He was forced to pursue a new career, which changed his life forever.

Instead of moving into an engineering field, Somchai inherited his father's pig farm in Ratchaburi province. The fresh graduate with his heart set on an engineering career had to put his dream on hold and start on a career as a pig farmer, taking care of all the family's swine.

"There was no choice for me except to make the farm better," Somchai says.

While his life had to move in another direction, Somchai was determined that even though he could not become an engineer, he could still apply his knowledge to improve his farm.

During three decades as a pig farmer, he has adopted various kinds of technology on the farm to increase the competitive advantage for local farm businesses. "I realised that to make the farm a business success, the important thing was to control our costs," he says.

As supply and demand was something beyond his control, Somchai kept internal operating costs down in order to maintain margins - and technology was the means to do so.

In 1976 when computer technology was still out of reach, the engineer-farmer decided to pour Bt300,000 into buying an eight-bit Radio Shack personal computer, together with a software program to help the farm calculate the pigs' feed formula.

The new technology helped the feeding process become more efficient, he says. When compared to the old system, which calculated the feeding formula manually, the computer helped Somchai get a precise formula that was suitable for his stock - and this saved Bt200 on the cost of feeding each pig.

That was the start of a hi-tech farm for Somchai. He says that after the adoption of the new technology, he could manage his farm better and expand his number of sows from only 200 to 2,000, and then 4,000 in five years.

The hard work did not end there. After spending more than a decade improving the farm for his family, Somchai decided in 1990 to set up his own business. He established SPM Feed Mill to produce pig feed, and three years later he set up his own swine farm under the name SPM Farm.

Somchai always kept engineering in mind. He knew that technology was important to improve the business, and he constantly explored new technology for use on the farm. "I believed that the adoption of technology would make farming systems far better," he says.

Of the Bt50 million Somchai poured into building up SPM Farm, about Bt10 million was invested in new technology to help the farm utilise waste and generate its own energy. The development of biogas technology was his target.

Biogas is the result of recycling biomass, the waste from agricultural products, to produce energy and electricity. This technology is only now becoming more popular, especially when oil prices are high, but at SPM Farm it was in use more than 10 years ago.

"We utilised all waste from pigs, using a fermentation process to generate electricity," he recalls.

About 70 to 80 per cent of the electricity used on the farm is produced by biogas, and this has cut the cost of electricity from outside.

"We invested in biogas technology to reduce costs. At first we planned to break even within seven years, but when it came to practical use, the break-even point was within five years," he says.

Apart from biogas, Somchai has also adopted Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the farm's feeding process. The technology was first used at SPM Farm in 1995, 10 years before it became well known in the industry.

"When managing a pig farm, the problem is that we have to control the sows' health. They must be not too thin and not too fat so that they can give healthy piglets. RFID helps control feeding to suit each individual pig," he said.

An RFID tag is attached to the pig's ear. When the pig comes to get a meal, a chip embedded inside the tag communicates with an RFID reader, allowing the feeding system to know automatically the proper quantity of food it will release to each pig individually. Somchai said this eliminated the problem of some pigs eating too much or too little.

Using technology has helped SPM Farm grow rapidly. The complex now has 10,000 breeding pigs plus another 80,000 fattening pigs on its eight farms.

Even though various technologies have already been put in place, Somchai never stops finding new ideas to improve his farm. He believes it is now time to go far beyond RFID technology in the feeding system. His next plan is to adopt biotechnology to develop a new kind of feed.

Somchai has worked with a research team at the National Centre of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology on a project to develop what he called liquid feed. He said the new kind of feed would help the farm reduce costs while the pigs became healthier.

The idea is to mix bacteria with raw material, including corn or bean waste, and create liquid feed through a fermentation process. The feed will come with a special enzyme which can help strengthen the pigs' health.

Liquid feed is expected to be the next technology step at SPM Farm to help the farm reduce feeding costs by 10 per cent. Somchai said the farm was in the trial process of using liquid feed for some of its animals and it planned to switch completely to liquid feed in the next two years.

Meanwhile, he also has an idea to develop what he called a heat-exchanger system after he noticed heat being released from the biogas electrical generator being wasted. "I had the idea to use the heat as a new source to produce our own energy," he said.

Heat from the biogas electrical generator will be sent to a hot plate on the ground to warm new-born pigs in the shelter. This way the farm could further utilise the waste to generate energy instead of using outside electricity.

The project has received a Bt1.5-million grant from the National Innovation Agency to continue development.

Even at the age of 55, Somchai never stops thinking of new technology for his farm as he believes that technology is a key tool to improve local farm businesses.

"It's something that farmers should not overlook," he said.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation