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Fair Trade for Rice Farmers in Thailand
 One of the newest products to enter the US Fair Trade marketplace, Fair Trade rice offers consumers a chance to support small-scale rice farmers in Thailand. We spoke with Kyra Busch, Global Action Director for ENGAGE, the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange, whose Fair Trade Rice Campaign organizes consumers to increase demand for Fair Trade rice.
How did you first get interested in Fair Trade?
Kyra Busch: ENGAGE has been working with Thai farmers for the past ten years. In 2002, I studied abroad with the CIEE program in Thailand and had the opportunity to learn directly from many of these farmers. These personal connections deepened my interest in Fair Trade and other food justice issues. I traveled back in 2004 to work in Bangkok with Thailand’s organic agriculture certifier. As part of my job, I met and worked with farmers and by June of 2005 I was working with a Fair Trade Cooperative in northeastern Thailand. I lived with community members, farmed with them, worked in the office of their cooperative, and worked with students to help them understand small-scale agriculture in Thailand.
Fair Trade is a unique system that has the potential to bring people together as communities. It focuses on the environment, but also has a human-centric core that considers labor rights, health concerns, and holistic community building, within the democratic ownership structure of the cooperatives.
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Harvesting Fair Trade rice. |
What kinds of Fair Trade rice are available and where do they come from?
Kyra: Right now, all the Fair Trade Jasmine rice in the US is coming in through a company called Alter-Eco. All of their white Jasmine rice is certified Fair Trade and USDA organic, and comes from the Surin cooperative in Thailand. Some of their other varieties, though farmed organically, do not yet have certification, due to expense and the need to document organic production methods back five years. Their other rice varieties include red jasmine, coral, which is polished red jasmine, and also purple rice, a blend jasmine, and a black sticky rice. The purple rice comes from a different cooperative on the Isaan Plateau, in the Northereast of Thailand, close to the border with Laos.
What does Fair Trade rice mean for producers?
Kyra: Fair Trade is a stepping stone for what's right for communities. The conventional system of farming with chemicals has beendevastating to the earth, topsoil, water, and health of the Thai people growing the rice. I met one farmer who had his gall bladder removed because of the effects of working with pesticides, and he talked about three waves of physical effects for other farmers, from rashes all the way up to cancer.In fact, almost all the farmers I met had had some sort of physical effect. This damages not only people but also the eco-system and animals.
Another advantage of Fair Trade is that when a consumer buys a box of rice, they know that a certain percentage of that purchase price returns to the producing community for development projects. These farmers are owners in their own cooperative, and they own their own mill, so when they process their rice, they can log it and weigh it themselves. Traditionally, farmers have had to go through middlemen, which meant corruption, graft, and a lack of control for the farmer. In the conventional rice market, the farmer might say he brought a 50-pound sack, but the middleman can say it was only 35 pounds.
Cooperatives have used the Fair Trade premium to make small loans to community members from which everyone benefits. For example, I know a group that has used its premiums to purchase seeds and start growing other crops – lemongrass, yard-long beans, kale, all the things they need in their community – and to establish local farmers markets.
How can our readers help build this market?
Kyra: ENGAGE is working specifically on getting Fair Trade rice to universities. Most universities are already serving Jasmine rice – it’s Thailand number one export and the US is its number one customer – and they buy it in bulk to feed large groups of students. We’d love to see more of the rice market transfer from chemically or conventionally grown rice to anavenue that's more direct from producer to consumer. For more information on this, on this campaign contact us at fairtraderice@engagetheworld.org.
Read our Real Money article on Fair Trade rice »
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