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The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume IV - 2012 89 Marketing of Organic Honey Generally, consumers will pay a much higher price for locally-produced honey of known origin than imported honey. The high price of locally-produced organic honey could be due to many factors. First, organic honey is a pure honey repeatedly cited in the Buddhist religion as a remedy for different human disorders, so honey is highly regarded in the culture. Its scarcity also makes supplies inadequate to satisfy local consumer demand, increasing its market value. Thirdly, locally-produced honey is heavily promoted for its medicinal and nutritional values, and consumers believe it to be the best honey. The high price of local organic honey has encouraged beekeepers to persist in their beekeeping practices and motivated many young people to engage in beekeeping as a part-time or full-time business. Above all, honey production and marketing assist in redistributing money from urban areas with high standards of living to rural areas with relatively low standards of living. Currently the country imports annually more than 5,000 metric tons of table honey to fi ll the gaps in demand of 39,000 tons (CDSI 2010). The major source countries are Australia, China, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina, Pakistan, USA, Germany, and Yemen, listed in order of imported honey volume. Generally the prices of imported honey are much lower than the locally produced honey. However, neighboring Yemen supplies Thailand with the most desired imported honey, and local consumers are willing to pay up to USD 190 per kilogram (Shenouda 2004). There is competition between locally-produced and imported honey, especially with honey imported from Turkey, Kashmir and Yemen. Some producers illegally sell the imported honey as local honey or mix the imported honey with local honey to sell at the higher prices of local honey. By this literatures if the beekeepers trust in organic honey, they can change their way to keep the bees with the organic beekeeping methods and make more money than the locally-produced and even sell the imported honey. Siriwat Wongsiri, Chanpen Chanchoa and Pichai Kongpitak
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