Migration Policy & Resource Center

MPRC Afilliated Programs

International Networks and Transnational Activities

In 2001, MPRC Director Susan Alva had the opportunity to participate in the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights delegation to the UN World Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia. That experience allowed Susan, in conjunction with other immigrant rights advocates, to bring the issues faced by immigrants in the U.S. to an international stage, and exposed U.S. participants to the international community of migrant rights activists, in particular the similarities of issues and potential for partnerships. At the conference, the UN Special Reporter for Migrants Rights noted that U.S. migrant groups were unique among the major receiving countries for failing to put forward alternative policy proposals. Nor were the U.S. groups effectively utilizing the UN’s complaint procedures or such policy instruments as the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families. Read More

FAIR TRADE THAI JASMINE RICE:
SOCIAL CHANGE AND ALTERNATIVE FOOD STRATEGIES ACROSS BORDERS
Executive Summary
Ellen Roggemann
ENGAGE
Migration Resource and Policy Center
Urban & Environmental Policy Institute

August 2005
International trade policies linked to global food system interests have upended communities, undermined long standing food growing practices, and sought to decouple the rich cultural meanings and significance of particular foods. Efforts to counter those trends have emerged both in developing countries and among key constituencies in Europe and the U.S. The contrast between these two differing approaches to creating a global food system– how food is grown, its cultural meaning, and the type of food system and cross border relationships established – is at the heart of the debates over a crop that has been grown for millennia: Thai Jasmine rice.
In Northeast Thailand, where much of Jasmine rice is grown, an organic rice growing cooperative movement has begun to develop new strategies to counter the more than five decades of global food restructuring that has impacted Thai rice farmers. Farmers connected to this movement have been able to sell their rice through a fair trade network, which sets a floor price for their prized Thai Jasmine rice and guarantees them an additional social premium, long-term trading relationships, and the option of pre-financing. Through their farmer owned co-operative, the farmers now own and control the milling and sale of the rice, instead of relying on exploitative middlemen, and invest in community and agriculture development projects. Through fair trade Thai farmers retain their traditional livelihoods and reverse the social and cultural deterioration that accompany the erosion of those livelihoods within the conventional global food system.
A fair trade relationship is needed between U.S. consumers and Thai Jasmine rice farmers because conventional rice trade and production exploits small-scale rice farmers and poses a serious threat to the markets of culturally-specific rice varieties in the future. Inequalities are created through the global rice trade by an emphasis on chemical and mechanized farming fostered by the Green Revolution, first introduced into Thailand in the 1950s, along with U.S.-backed international trade policies. Mechanized agricultural methods have raised the costs of farming, leading to increased debt amongst farmers, while trade policies and trade agreements, such as the proposed Thailand-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and policies related to patents and the place name of products like Jasmine rice, have further exacerbated the situation facing Thai rice farmers.
Therefore, activists, academics, and farmers in Thailand have voiced a strong opposition to current domestic and international developments. While Thailand engages in trade with many other countries, the United States has been the focus of this opposition because of the power it holds within the global economy and global governing bodies, and its role in facilitating Jasmine rice bioengineering projects that are aimed at co-opting the Thai Jamsine rice market by creating a U.S.-grown Jasmine rice that replicates the taste, aroma, texture and, therefore, cultural meaning that consumers, especially Asian American immigrants, have with respect to Thai Jasmine rice.
The emerging Fair Trade Rice Campaign in the U.S. not only addresses these trade justice issues, it also presents a new alternative food strategy and fair trade model based on linking fair trade with the emerging “social change across borders” approach. Thai farmers are working on this campaign with the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), a non-profit started by former students of an community based abroad program in Thailand, to raise demand for this new fair trade product and educate consumers about international trade regulations and practices marginalizing small-scale farmers.
The Fair Trade Rice Campaign being launched raises important issues for the community food movements and alternative food system advocates about what constitutes an alternative food system approach. By challenging the development of U.S.-grown Jasmine rice because of its implications for Thai rice farmers, the Fair Trade Rice Campaign reorients the discussion about alternative food strategies to more directly consider both the geographic and cultural implications of crop choice. For example, the “buy local” strategy is complicated when considering the global effects of growing crops indigenous to other regions and the international trade regulations allowing U.S. based agriculture to profit off of the biodiversity of developing countries.
In addition, the fair trade approach that ENGAGE has begun to explore has the potential for diversifying and expanding the consumer base for fair trade products. The U.S. fair trade movement is expanding rapidly, with a fifty-year history of promoting an alternative trading relationship based on principles of equity and social standards. However, fair trade products are seen as niche markets, focused on upper-end consumers and not necessarily on system and place-based issues central to the sustainable food movement. The fair trade movement is, thus, limited by its lack of diversity and exclusiveness as a consumer movement, its disconnect from the domestic workers and immigrant rights movement, and by the difficulty in establishing cross-cultural connections.
A Thai Jasmine rice campaign provides a unique opportunity to overcome these hindrances by utilizing the “social change across borders” concept. This approach seeks to identify opportunities for civic engagement that strengthen both immigrant communities and those immigrants’ country of origin. While remittances (funds sent back by immigrants to family members and others in the country of origin) have long been used to support families and even some social, cultural and civic projects back home, the social change across borders approach seeks to reorient such initiatives through community-based sustainable economic development efforts, with the dual goals of generating long-term sustainability of the projects and by reducing the need to consider migration as the only alternative for livelihood. Along these lines, the Thai Jasmine rice farmers have begun to explore a social change across borders relationship with the Thai Community Development Corporation, a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization founded and directed by Thai immigrants, as well as with other Thai immigrant groups and networks.
The fair trade movement, which ensures a sustainable price for producers, has invited consumers in the United States to think about the farmers picking their coffee beans in Argentina, the workers growing their tea in India, and the men and women completing the first stages of chocolate production in Ghana. In this way, it has complemented the trade justice movement, which calls on officials to create a system of trade that benefits all countries equally. This empowering movement has seen large growth, but its internal weaknesses must be addressed if it is to truly build a world order based on justice and respect. As Jasmine rice farmer Dhamma Sungsali says, “if we are able to expand the fair trade network, we would be a country that is able to place emphasis on community; we would place more importance on producers and consumers throughout the world.”
The fair trade, immigrant rights, and sustainable food movements each stand at a crossroads, needing to expand their constituent base, conceptual framework and partnerships among movements. Fair trade needs to diversify and extend beyond its current niche market, and incorporate systemic change as part of its mission. The immigrant rights movement is poised to adopt a sustainable development framework as part of its social change across borders approach. And the sustainable food movement needs to incorporate social justice and cultural relevance to its alternative food system framework. Together, these movements can assume a critical role in the development of a global justice perspective and an organizing and coalition building model. The fair trade Thai jasmine rice issue provides one such opportunity.