Rice crisis?

As the price of rice rises around the world, Bryony Moore looks at the ethical issues.

The staple food crop for more than half the world?s population, has been been making the news headlines this year.(2) Rice prices are up by 75%, according to the World Bank, as a result of the increasing price of oil, rising demand, speculation and uncertain supplies. Millions of people are struggling to feed themselves and protests and riots have been occurring as a result all over the globe. Reports, perhaps unconvincingly, have also been received of Wal-Mart running out of rice in the USA because of panic buying.(35)

In addition, GM varieties of rice cultivated outside the UK have been accidentally finding their way into our food chains. The Food Standards Agency declared in April that illegal GM rice found in the food chain eighteen months previously was 'unsafe' and should be recalled.(36)

The food crisis is also being used by the GM industry as an opportunity to re-introduce its products as a potential solution to world hunger, through breeding pest and other resistances into staple food crops.(18) Environmental campaigners are outraged that the GM industry is "abusing the misery of millions of hungry people around the world, using it as propaganda to sell a product by claiming it would reduce hunger." As far as they are concerned, GM food is making the situation worse, by tying farmers to huge biotech companies. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN), the world already produces up to one and a half times the amount of food needed to provide everybody with an adequate balanced diet. And pushing farmers towards industrial-scale production in order to generate commodity crops for export means they may not be growing the food for themselves.

Rice varieties

Although there are many different varieties of rice, they fall into two main classes: white and brown. Brown rice has not had its bran layer removed and is therefore nutritionally superior. However, according to Joanna Blythman, "rice farming is chemically intensive and most residues will concentrate on the bran....if you like brown rice, it is a good ideas to buy organic varieties."(37) Short grain rice is farmed in Europe, but long grain varieties of white and brown rice will be farmed outside of Europe where there may be issues with food miles and workers' rights.

Organic and fair trade certification schemes now offer assurances addressing these issues to consumers on a wide range of rice products.

Fairtrade and organic rice

The first Fairtrade rice was brought onto the market in 2005(16) and now there are 15 rice producer organisations who are Fairtrade Certified.(17) In the UK, sales of Fairtrade rice have increased dramatically, from 27 tonnes in 2005 to 385 in 2006.

The Fairtrade system's environmental standards and guidelines currently forbid the use of GM seeds by farmers, and encourage active monitoring in nearby fields. However, it may not always be possible for small farmers to prevent contamination from a neighbouring field, so Fairtrade products are not labelled as 100% GM free.(16) It does, however, guarantee a fair price for farmers, and provides support with things like advance payments as well as paying an extra premium to be spent on local development.

All organic food is GM free. In supporting organic farming, you are not only helping to prevent the take over of GM crops, but also supporting natural, sustainable farming systems that encourage development of the ecosystem. These methods protect the environment from damage from pesticides and protect farmers from high pesticide prices.

Gene Erosion

The dominance of only a few rice varieties in Asian rice production poses a major threat to the crop's genetic diversity. From many thousands of varieties only a few decades ago, most rice fields in Asia now grow a small number of high yielding rice varieties (HYVs). In the Philippines almost half of the rice area is devoted to four of the most widespread HYVs. In Cambodia, one single variety accounts for around 90 percent of the rice area. And in Pakistan, only four HYVs are planted on 99 percent of the countries rice fields. These figures illustrate the immense 'genetic erosion' that has occurred since the onset of the 'Green Revolution'.(19)

Many rice varieties are preserved in seed banks, but these are not normally accessible to small farmers. In addition, seed banks do not allow rice varieties to adapt to changing environmental settings and agricultural practices. With on-farm conservation, the varieties are subjected to continuous selection by the farmers and are thus allowed to develop and evolve.(19) The use of so few standardised crop species is also leading to extinction of wild rice species.(34)

In 2001 there were over 600 biotech patents on rice genes, plants and breeding methods worldwide.(38) Some of these companies further increase their control over global agriculture by making their GM crops resistant to just one brand of herbicide ? guess whose?(19) Greenpeace opposes all patents on plants, animals and human genes: "when we force life forms and our world's food supply to conform to human economic models rather than their natural ones, we do so at our own peril."(19)

Food Crisis

Rice makes up 20% of the total food energy intake of the world's population. In Asia, more than 2 billion people derive between 60-70% of their daily dietary energy from rice and its by-products.(1) Poor families in some countries can spend up to 80% of their budget on food,(4)compared to the 15% we spend on food in this country.(5) Food riots have already occurred in Mexico, Egypt, Tanzania and Senegal.

Rice cultivation is the principal activity and source of income for about 200 million households in Asia and Africa.(1) About four-fifths of the world's rice is produced by small-scale farmers and is consumed locally.(1)

21 of 36 countries suffering a food security crisis are in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO). The region imports 45% of its wheat and 84% of its rice.(4)

There's not much that we can do as consumers about these events, but we can join organised political protests which address some of the underlying causes. Oxfam has joined with two other groups Avaaz and GCAP, in calling for world leaders to take action. They have an online petition which they are inviting people to add their names to:
"We call on you to take immediate action to address the world food crisis by mobilizing emergency funding to prevent starvation, removing perverse incentives to turn food into bio-fuels and managing financial speculation, and to tackle the underlying causes by ending harmful trade policies and investing massively in sustainable agricultural productivity in developing nations." Sign the petition at: www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/actions/global_food_crisis.htm

Price Comparison

For this price comparison we have used prices of organic and Fairtrade basmati rice where possible. Where not possible we’ve used the closest product offered, i.e. organic only. As in previous reports, the organic Fairtrade varieties are not consistently the most expensive options. [O] means organic and [F] means Fairtrade.

Campaign Links

• Oxfam?s Make Trade Fair Campaign
• Christian Aid?s campaign for trade justice
• Give free rice to hungry people whilst simultaneously expanding your vocabulary, with this online game. Donations go to the UN World Food Program.

References

1 http://www.fao.org, viewed 11/06/08 2 The Observer “Food riots fear after rice price hits a high” 06/04/2008 4 http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/foodprices/ viewed 11/06/08 5 www.thisismoney.co.uk, viewed 11/06/08 6 www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=27807, viewed 11/06/08 8 ‘Greener and leaner – how the west could stave off the disaster,’ The Guardian, May 31st 2008 10 www.independent.co.uk/environment/letthemeatspuds, viewed 11/06/08 15 www.oxfam.org/en/news/pressreleases2005/pr_051130_subsidies_truth, viewed 11/06/08 16 www.fairtrade.org.uk, viewed 11/06/08 17 www.fairtrade.net/rice.html, viewed 11/06/08 18 The Independent article “GM crops needed in Britain, says minister” 19/06/08 19 www.greenpeace.org, viewed 16/06/08 20 Tilda Ethical, Environmental and Social Policy, viewed in July 2008 21 www.walmart.com/catalog (19 May 2006) 22 National Foreign Trade Council www.nftc.org:www.nftc.org (25 May 2007) 23 www.mars.com (20 June 2008) 24 www.heals.co.uk (23 July 2007) 25 ECRA company questionnaire response from Waitrose(8 August 2005) 26 www.asda.co.uk/asda_corp (25 August 2005) 27 Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc Corporate Communications:Company CSR report 2007 (1 May 2007) 28 BUAV Campaign Report:Summer 2005 (July 2005) 29 Tesco plc Corporate Communications: Corporate Responsibility Review (2008) 30 Big Campaign Website (Boycott Israeli Goods) www.bigcampaign.org:www.bigcampaign.org (16 March 2007) 31 Big Campaign Website (Boycott Israeli Goods) www.bigcampaign.org:www.bigcampaign.org (27 April 2006) 32 BUAV website www.buav.org:www.buav.org (14 October 2004) 33 The Ecologist, March 2007 34 www.isb.vt.edu, viewed 22/07/08 35 Shops ration sales of rice as US buyers panic: Guardian 24/4/08 36 GM Rice unsafe says FSA Friends of the Earth press release March 27th 2008 37 Joanna Blythman The Food we Eat 1996 38 www.grain.org/briefing/?id=172