Today, Chearavanont has focused his company’s sights on what is perhaps the world’s fastest-growing agricultural market: China. It is beneficial for Chearavanont that his roots in China’s agriculture industry go so deep; in 1979, he was awarded the very first foreign investor certificate. Due in no small part to his history and popularity in the country -- a 2009 Chinese poll ranked Chearavanont the country’s fourth most important business leader -- Charoen Pokphand is frequently chosen to lead major agricultural projects like megafarms. One planned megafarm is projected to produce 840 eggs a year.
But Chearavanont is not only concerned with increasing his own wealth and his company’s stature in Asian markets and abroad, he also wants to help Asian farmers not affiliated with CP. By teaching new agricultural methods and helping the farmers gain access to modern technology and techniques, Chearavanont hopes, for instance, to help a farmer whose hog capacity was fifty a year to increase to one thousand or more.
Thanks to Chearavanont’s far-sighted planning and emphasis on company synergy, he is poised to not only be the head of the largest and most important corporation in Asia but its most generous chef as well.