AXONS: The AgriTech Engine Powering Thailand's Bid to Become the World's Farm

 

AXONS Managing Director Sunsern Samaisut on why precision agriculture, not cheap labour, is Thailand's ticket to competing on the world stage.
 

For four decades, long before "AgriTech" became a buzzword, a quiet operation inside Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) was building the software and technology that kept Thailand's biggest agribusiness running from farm to fork.

 

Today, that operation has emerged from behind the scenes of CPF’s success as a distinct, modern, and formidable technology brand with a mission of its own: AXONS.

 

In an exclusive interview, Sunsern Samaisut, Managing Director and Executive Head of AXONS, laid out an ambitious vision for how agricultural technology can reshape Thailand's farming sector and turn the country into a genuine force in global agriculture — not by competing on cheap labour, as it has for generations, but by competing on data, traceability, and trust.

 

 

 

A Platform Born Inside a Giant

AXONS describes itself as the technology partner that has quietly underpinned CPF's success for 40 years, supplying software and digital tools across the entire agricultural supply chain — from planting and livestock rearing through processing, logistics, and sales.

 

That expertise, Sunsern explained, has already been exported far beyond Thailand's borders.

 

"We are an AgriTech company that has been behind the scenes of CPF's success for the past 40 years," Sunsern said. "Our technologies have already been applied in 22 countries around the world."
 

 

 

Rather than keep that technology locked inside CPF, AXONS has been repositioned as an open platform available to any producer that wants to build traceability and efficiency into its own supply chain – spreading the cost and benefit of digital infrastructure across the whole industry, rather than keeping it to itself.

 

 

 

From "Farming by Fate" to Precision Agriculture

Sunsern's central argument is that agriculture is one of the hardest industries in the world to manage. It depends on living things vulnerable to disease and natural disaster, on produce that competes against the clock because of its perishability, and on food safety standards tied directly to human health.

 

For decades, he said, Thai farmers have essentially "relied on fate" — instinct and personal experience passed down individually, with wildly inconsistent results between farmers working side by side on similar land.

 

Technology, he argued, is what finally allows that instinct to be replaced by evidence.

 

"We want to change farmers from relying on fate to relying on data," Sunsern said. "Once farmers use more data and more technology, what emerges is precision agriculture — and precision agriculture is exactly what will let us compete on the world stage."
 

 

He was blunt about why this matters now. The old rules of agricultural trade, he said, rewarded whoever could produce the cheapest goods. Those rules no longer apply.

 

"We're no longer competing on cost or on cheap produce, the way we did in the past. We're competing on the ability to create value that consumers understand and trust," he said. "That, to me, is the new criterion for competition."
 

 

AI Across the Entire Supply Chain

Under Sunsern's account, artificial intelligence is not a single tool bolted onto Thai farming but a thread running through every stage of it. On farms, a photograph taken on a smartphone can be analysed by an app to diagnose crop disease or animal illness on the spot, along with recommended treatment — catching problems while they are still small.

 

Satellite imagery lets farmers and buyers assess soil and weather conditions remotely. Inside processing plants, AI-powered cameras have taken over repetitive quality-inspection work once done by hand, cutting error rates and cost while freeing workers from what Sunsern called "jobs that wear people down rather than build them up".

 

In logistics, AI calculates delivery routes for temperature-sensitive produce so freshness reaches restaurants and retailers on time. In sales, AI flags trading partners whose order volumes are slipping—an early warning that lets AXONS' partners step in with support before a relationship is lost.

 

Even livestock farming has been transformed, Sunsern said, describing how AI-linked cameras now monitor pigs, chickens, and shrimp without the stress that human handlers used to cause.

 

"Camera monitoring means livestock farms today are significantly cleaner, safer, and far less stressful for the animals," he said, adding that he was startled by the sector's progress when he moved into agriculture from outside the industry. "It changed completely from the picture I had in my head."

 

 

 

Traceability as the New Competitive Edge

One of AXONS' flagship offerings is supply-chain traceability, which Sunsern described as an emerging requirement for market access rather than a nice-to-have.

 

Export markets – particularly the European Union, in the wake of tightened deforestation and environmental rules – increasingly demand proof of where raw materials came from and how they were produced.

 

Through AXONS' platform, farmers register on their mobile phones and tag the exact location of their plots. Satellite images are then checked retrospectively for signs of land-clearing by burning before any produce is purchased.

 

"If we see black patches in the satellite images, we know the land has been burnt," Sunsern said. "We simply don't buy from that supplier — something we couldn't have known in the past."
 

 

For consumers, that same data trail becomes a QR code on the packaging, showing where a product was grown, when it was processed, and how fresh it is by the time it reaches the shelf.

 

"What we ultimately sell is food — we're selling quality of life," Sunsern said. "Eat well, stay healthy, live longer. That's why I think the food business, done with technology, is deeply compelling."

 

 

Why AI Will Not Replace Thai Farmers  

Addressing public anxiety that AI might take jobs away from agricultural workers, Sunsern rejected the premise outright, emphasising that technology is designed to empower people across the entire value chain, not just farmers in the field, rather than replace them.

 

"I don't think AI will replace people," he said. "What I believe is that the people who use AI will be the ones who succeed — and the people who get replaced will be those who choose not to use it."
 

 

He drew a parallel with the early internet era, when similar fears surfaced before connectivity became a basic expectation of doing business.

 

He also pointed to the rise of the "one-man company" – small agricultural operators who, armed with AI tools once available only to corporations with million-pound consulting budgets, can now access world-class market insight, crop management strategy, and customer support directly from a smartphone.

 

"In the AI era, it's the small players who stand to gain the most," Sunsern argued, describing AI as a "digital workforce" that frees farmers and agribusiness managers to focus on strategy, judgement, and relationships – the human elements technology cannot replicate.

 

 

Thailand's Natural Advantage

Zooming out, Sunsern was emphatic that agriculture, more than any other sector, is where Thailand has a genuine, structurally-rooted advantage: a climate allowing year-round cultivation unlike snow-bound competitors, established infrastructure, and generations of accumulated know-how.

 

Combined with Thailand's geopolitical flexibility — unburdened by tech-stack restrictions and able to seamlessly integrate solutions from both China and Western nations — he believes the country holds an uncommonly strong position to leapfrog technological hurdles rather than merely catch up.

 

"This is one of the things heaven granted this country," he said of Thailand's farming conditions. "If we can bring technology fully to bear on it, I don't see why we can't be the kitchen of the world — an even bigger one than before."

 

 

 

A Mission Bigger Than One Company

Asked about AXONS' own goals, Sunsern was careful to frame success collectively rather than competitively.

 

AXONS' stated mission is to build Thailand's digital agricultural infrastructure — not just for itself, but for its partners, suppliers, and customers across the supply chain, on the view that Thailand cannot compete globally if only one company succeeds.

 

"We're a small country of around 70 million people — our real market is the world," he said. "As a large player, we can afford to invest first and get things wrong. Once we find something that works, we hand that formula to our partners so they don't have to carry the risk themselves. The more people who share it, the cheaper it becomes. Better to grow rich together than stay poor alone."
 

 

For the next one to two years, AXONS' priority is straightforward: expand its user base and measure success not purely in revenue but in time saved and satisfaction gained by the farmers and businesses using its tools.

 

He closed with a broader appeal to Thai entrepreneurs still on the fence about adopting technology. "Technology can be bought with money. People and belief cannot — that takes time," he said. "Those who choose to change are the ones who control the game. If you wait until change is forced on you, you'll spend the rest of your life following someone else's pace."