When I buy rice, it’s almost always Californian brown rice, usually from Trader Joe’s. This means I rarely buy fair trade rice.
Yes, I support fair wages and prices for rice growers all over the world. But, unlike coffee, which is just not grown in California, rice is. I heart my Californian farmers. And as Umbra says, when push comes to shove, local reigns supreme.
On the other hand, I’m not a rice afficionado. Most of the time, all rice is about the same to me. The only times I really notice the rice is when I go to Thai or Indian restaurants, where they serve fragrant, super yummy rice. You know — jasmine rice and the like.
Meaning: If you’re wondering why the US imports some rice despite the fact that we’ve got US rice farmers, remember that almost all of US rice imports are of aromatic rice, with jasmine rice accounting for 75% of the imports in 2001.
If you’re just looking for “regular” rice to pour your homemade curry over, you might stick with Californian rice, like I do. But if you’re looking for that special aromatic rice, you’ll want to look into fair trade rice.
Specifically, go fair trade if you want jasmine or basmati rice. Both of these rice varieties clearly have a lot of cultural cache — jasmine for the Thai farmers, and basmati for the Indian. In fact, there’s been a protracted struggle to prevent biopiracy of these rice varieties — including an effort to stop a Florida-based plant geneticist from genetically engineering jasmine rice to make it growable in California. Dude — If jasmin rice can’t naturally grow in Californian weather, maybe we shouldn’t grow it here!
Mathieu of Alter Eco points out that trying to grow jasmine rice in California is akin to stealing Thai culture and history. Being a Frenchman, Mathieu compares the issue of jasmine rice to that of champaign. As bubbly lovers know, only the bubbly grown in the champaign region can be called champaign — The rest of it’s dubbed “sparkling wine.”
But unlike the wealthier champaign makers of France, most rice farmers just don’t have the funds and resources to fight patent laws in the US legal system.
4/5 of the world’s rice is grown by small-scale farmers in low income countries (90% from Asia) who could benefit from fair trade. Moreover, fair trade encourages organic production — 50% of fair trade rice farms are organic, with many other farms in the process of getting certified.
Unlike coffee, which has a baseline fair trade price, the price offered to farmers for fair trade rice appears more fluid. It’s a combo of a contracted price — which has to be 10% higher than the local market price — plus a variable premium intended to offset market fluctuations.
Interested in buying? Alter Eco‘s a company that’s been helpful not only in bringing fair trade rice to the US but also educating people like myself about the issues surrounding the stuff.
I’m glad that TF is expanding the line of certified products, and I’ll definitely look for Alter Eco’s rice the next time I buy jasmine or basmati. I’m a little confused by a couple points raised in the post, though.
The first is the issue of “culture theft.” I’m not sure I understand how being able to grow jasmine rice in a place it did not originally grow allows one to effectively steal all of Thai culture and history.
I do understand how growing it in California — close to a conceivably large specialty rice market (although, I would think, probably not as large as the Thai market for jasmine rice) — might change the economic situation for Thai growers who have invested in the fair trade certification, or for whom we might feel ethically compelled to give our business to in any case. But this is a different question entirely, with different solutions: “culture theft,” if such a thing is possible, should clearly be prevented at all costs, whereas a hypothetical undercut of Thai jasmine growers by (presumably unscrupulous, industrial, high-volume) California jasmine growers could be solved at least in part by refining reseller marketing, finding or creating new markets, and shifting to other crops. (Thailand is not like Ireland or Western Bolivia, where only one crop grows.)
(Of course, those growers who were competed out of business and unable to shift crops would probably migrate to the cities, exacerbating the problems — crime, environmental degradation, loss of community, unemployment, and so on — already endemic to cities everywhere [and especially in developing nations]. But these problems are symptomatic of urbanization and occur as a result of improvements in agricultural efficiency even within countries — not just when globalization strikes and jobs leave developing countries. They’re larger structural issues.)
Basmati rice, for example, is grown in California. (Some of it is organic, and grown by family farms.) But Americans are still willing to pay for (more expensive) Indian and Pakistani Basmati, ’cause it’s better. This is probably fortunate because if American Basmati were just as good, we’d have to ask ourselves: which is more important, buying local or supporting Indian and Pakistani farmers? In any case, I’m not certain that American agriculture has managed to steal Indian culture or history by growing Basmati in the States.
The second source of my confusion is the relationship of genetic engineering to the issue. There are profound problems with the way GM foods have been handled politically thus far, and the jury appears to still be out on the science for many products. Concerns about further corporate/industrial consolidation of control over the global food system (and continued exploitation of the environment and an uninformed consumer population) appear legitimate, but so do the outcries of starving millions denied access to food for those very reasons.
Obviously the issues are complex enough to prohibit a thorough treatment in anything less than UNEP-Report-length, but I’m curious as to your thoughts on these issues and their obvious and thorny relationships with agricultural economics and food sustainability.
Comment by six — July 3, 2006 @ 10:36 pm
Interesting thoughts here, many of which I have to say I’m going to have to research before going into more depth — especially the idea of culture theft.
A few impressions for now: I guess it’s really difficult to separate out the cultural cache of a food product that’s been associated with one place from the fact of the product’s commodification. I see your point in that a lotta food has originally been only produced in one place, but is now grown all over the place — and after all, the postmodern culture is about appropriation, reappropriation, amalgams, etc…
Perhaps it comes down to what happens when a specific, previously place-product starts getting produced in a different place. If the new product’s inferior, does it then hurt the “reputation” of the product as a whole, thus somehow hurting the “culture” it’s associated with?
At the time we were speaking about it, the culture theft somehow struck a chord with me — especially since this is something that’s been used by, say, the champaign makers to preserve both the quality and the cultural cache of their product. I can see how, if I were making a product, I’d want that for myself. That said, I see your point that that doesn’t necessarily mean letting current sparkling wines to be called champaign will “steal” the French culture, necessarily.
Does it just come down to the economics? That certainly seems to’ve been a motivation for the champaign people — and, I’m guessing, one for the jasmin rice farmers too.
The question as to whether or not to grow Cali jasmin rice is a lil easier in this case cuz — while much of fair trade rice is or is going to be organic (and by default not genetically modified), Californian jasmin rice — if permitted — would be by default genetically modified crap…
Comment by Siel — July 7, 2006 @ 7:29 pm