As revealed in the study, health-related problems affecting Ban Huakrok residents were caused by over reliance on agricultural chemicals. This problem has been alleviated by the residents’ adopting sufficiency economy principles on three levels: awareness, implementation, and outcome. Their success in improving health conditions together with the sufficiency evident in their community context earned them recognition as a model village, one that has succeeded in achieving success in all 6 areas of sufficiency practices: reducing spending, generating additional income, saving, way of life, natural resources and environment conservation, and giving help to others.
The centers for learning and problem solving or “community learning centers” contributed to the successful solution to problems the residents had encountered. All 4 community learning centers aimed to replace a chemical- reliant way of life with one that is organic reliant (or Biothai). These four centers, which deserve credit for the successes in sustainable community development were the Biothai Sustainable Development Learning Center on Royally Initiated Sufficiency Economy, the Organic Farming School, the Organic Farming and Environment Center, and the Herbal Medical Clinic at Smanrat Temple.
Health-related and other self-inflicted problems could not have been reduced or solved if the affected residents had not determined to change their approach to life with the knowledge they obtained from different stages of the learning process. This changed their views, and life patterns, turning them from heavily reliant on harmful industrial products in their farming practices and other life activities, to those leaning more on nature, thus resuming a traditional way of life that had been long ignored as a consequence of an influx of social changes. Now around 80% of the community residents live their lives in line with the principle of sufficiency economy, with