What's Cooking in Thailand?

Jasmine, Not Jasmati

By Jeremy Mak

Click to see full size
Image

KHON KAEN, THAILAND—Yesterday, three rċice farmers from Thailand's Surin Province embarked on a three-week tour of the US, trailing just behind their Prime Minister, who last week began his own nine-day tour of the US.

Driven to solidify Thailand as an economic leader, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has pursued an ambitious agenda of trade liberalization and economic development through numerous bilateral trade agreements. His efforts have culminated in four signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), with six more on the way.

The FTA that Thailand and the US are negotiating is "one of the key purposes" of Shinawatra's current visit to the US, Business Day reported last week. This Monday, Shinawatra and President George W. Bush agreed the "deal should be wrapped up within one year from now, before the president's fast-track power under the Trade Promotion Authority Act expires," according to The Bangkok Post.

FTAs represent a trend in trade liberalization policies promoting "free trade," or the lowering of tariffs on trade. Such agreements are often made in the name of international economic growth, lowered costs on a global scale, increased choice and availability of products, and the creation of jobs in China, India, Southeast Asia and the global South.

Under increasing pressure from Western agribusiness and foreign demands for Jasmine rice—an aromatic grain that can only be grown in Northern Thailand—the Thai government is urging small-scale farmers to abandon their traditional livelihoods of subsistence farming for a cash crop, export-oriented rice economy.

In his drive to maximize Thailand's exports, Shinawatra has already made strides: Thai exports to the US rose by 16 percent last year, to a total of $17.6 billion, making it the US's eighteenth largest trading partner.

But Phakphum Inpaen, Kanya Onsri, and Arat Saengubon—the three small-scale organic farmers currently touring the US with the transnational organization Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE)—along with many others, whom I have had the privilege of talking, working, living and eating with during my semester abroad here in Thailand, tell a different story.

As trade liberalization policies and an increasingly corporatized global economy have replaced small-scale farming and village economies with a national, commercial economy, these farmers say they have been silenced and marginalized.

Farmers and activists say that the proposed US-Thai FTA would only benefit rich multinational agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies, at the Thai farmers' expense. While the 500,000 US farmers account for 2 percent of the US population, the 30 million, mostly small-scale Thai farmers, make up almost half of the Thai population, according the book "Riches in the Soil, Wealth in the Water: Struggle for Renewal of Small-Scale Agriculture in Thailand."

Stealing sovereignty, security and seeds

The shift towards the monoculture economy needed to compete in an increasingly export-oriented climate has altered the spirit of Thai farming from one of self-sufficiency to one of market capitalism dependency wheremany farmers no longer grow everything that they eat and must rely on outside sources for food, Bamrung Kayotha told me at his house, through a translator. Kayotha is an organic farmer from Kalasin Province.

In order to produce high-yield monoculture crops, Thai farmers have also had to begin using genetically-modified (GM) seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

This transition has impacted both the health of the farmers as well as the local environment. It has also resulted in a loss of biodiversity. In the past, Thailand has rankedfourth in rice diversity in the world, with tens of thousands of varieties or rice, with most households growing about five varieties. Today, most grow only two varieties. This reduction in the diversity of plant species on farms counteracts the natural ecological defense mechanisms that bio-diverse areas have against insects and disease, leaving monocropped areas susceptible to vector and climatic onslaughts.

The proposed US-Thailand FTA also includes a Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) amendment, which would allow US pharmaceutical companies to receive exclusive 20-year patents over indigenous plants that Thais have used without regulations for thousands of years. TRIPS would thus freeze local production and access to affordable life-saving medicines, which Thailand's neighbors, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam also depend upon. Under the FTA, the present costs of HIV/AIDS medications would soar from 1,200 to 30,000 baht a month.

The genetic resources of Thai farmers are under assault beyond the FTA. The US Department of Agriculture commissioned scientists Chris Deren, Neil Rutger, and James Gibbons to spearhead the "Stepwise Program for Improvement of Jasmine Rice for the United States", whose goal is to genetically mutate Jasmine rice to enable its growth on US soil. Deren attained a strain of Jasmine rice from the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in December of 1995, but many farmers believe it violated the Thai Plant Protection Act and the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources. Deren insists that his team will not patent its research, but Thai farmers remain skeptical, and perhaps rightly so. Thai farmers have had dealings with US corporations like Rice-Tec, which insist on using "Jasmati" on their packaging of Italian-grown rice, perhaps confusing consumers into thinking they are purchasing Thai-grown Jasmine rice, or Indian-grown Basmati rice. The Federal Trade Commission has played along, maintaining that the "Jasmati" label does not cause Thai or Indian farmers "significant economic harm."

Show me the money

Buying the chemical inputs and tractors needed to transition into a monoculture economy has caused 68 percent of farmers in Northern Thailand to fall into heavy debt. The average debt incurred from these purchases is 60,000 baht per household, or $1500, which amounts to almost three times their annual income.

These sacrifices have not paid off. Farmers receive less money for chemically grown rice than they would for organic rice. One ton of organic rice can fetch a prince of 10,000 baht,while a ton of chemically grown rice can only get 8,000 baht, Vijit Boonsoon told me at his rice mill in Yasothon Province, through a translator.

While farming organic rice would increase the income and standard of living for Thai farmers, farmers and their allies say that US government directives and noncooperation in multilateral agreements at the behest of US agribusiness firms aim to flood the world market with US grown genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). As a matter of fact, the US-based Monsanto is the number one seller of chemicals and GMO seeds in Thailand today. Thai farmers voice concern about GMOs, saying they have not been sufficiently tested and may threaten local ecosystems, perhaps even hybridizing uncontrollably with local crops.

President Bush's Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 has already incited the discontent of farmers worldwide.Passed under the guise of protecting small-scale US farmers, the legislation actually only subsidized agribusiness with $83 billion from US taxpayers, according to Anuradha Mittal's Food First publication, "Giving Away the Farm: The 2002 Farm Bill." This distortion of global market prices allowed US farmers to sell 4.7 million tons of rice on the global world market at 34 percent below production costs, according to a July 2000 ENGAGE publication.

Should the US-Thai FTA pass, the current 17 percent tariff against US grain imports would be obliterated (Bush falsely quoted this figure as 35 percent). This would likely have a devastating impact on Thai farmers; without comparable subsidies, Thai farmers would not likely be able to compete with such a surging influx of artificially cheap US grains.

Jeremy Mak B'07, an International Relations concentrator currently abroad in Southeast Asia, trades "free" for "fair."

Back to Top

the college hill independent

http://www.theindy.com