A fair price for rice

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How much should a kilogram of rice cost? That’s one of the central questions of our community agriculture project. I’m not asking how much does a kg of rice cost. The question is, how much should it cost.

The price of rice

"Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows, precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled on diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a (flood) of tiny seed-pearls. It is beautiful when cooked by a practiced hand, pure white and sweetly fragrant." --Shizuo Tsuji (Photo by Jeff Rutherford.)

We know something about the price of rice in the area. If you’re my next door neighbor and you’re selling at the price guaranteed by the Bank of Agriculture and Cooperatives as part of the government’s rice mortgage scheme, then the answer is a simple but debilitating 6 to 8 baht per kg of unmilled sticky rice. That’s 18 to 24 US cents per kg. At the high end, that’s a US dime for a pound of rice!! How in the world is a farmer ever going to be anything but poor selling food for such a price?! (That’s another central question of our research.)

The prices get a bit higher as you move from farm-gate to market, or if a farmer is selling into an organic cooperative. (This does not refer to formal state-sponsored cooperatives, but rather to NGO-organized co-ops.)  At nearby Rainbow Farm, Ajarn Tawan buys unmilled organic rice from farmers in their network for 12 baht/kg. (1 US dollar = 33 baht.) That’s better than the norm, and the price comes with training and support to transition into organic farming. The farmers in this network reportedly spend less on inputs, and diversify their production to reduce risk. But they’re still getting less than an extra dime for their rice – and it’s organic!

At the nearest market to Fair Earth Farm, the Ba Koi evening market, milled rice ranges from 26 baht/kg for standard white rice to 35/kg for white jasmine rice. You generally can’t get either brown or organic rice at this market. About 10 km away at the much larger Ruamchok fresh market, the cheapest stuff goes for only 17 baht/kg, while Rainbow Farm’s organic brown-milled black jasmine rice sells for 40 baht/kg.

What kind of price do you put on food grown by a way of farming that ensures food safety, environmental integrity and the survival of small farming families? This is not a rhetorical question. The objective of our research is to put food eaters and food growers together and talk about a fair price for rice. (Photo by Daniel J. Powell.)

Next door to Ruamchok is the boutique supermarket Rimping, which is popular with expatriates and upper middle class Thais. This supermarket sells a bewildering range of products, many labeled organic, including a large variety of rice. For organic brown rice, one can choose from products ranging from 45 baht/kg. to 150 baht/kg. At the lower end is rice certified through the auspices of Green Net, which sells jasmine rice at 54 baht/kg. At the upper end is V Life germinated (or gaba) rice, which goes for 150 baht/kg.

The internet is full of on-line shops selling organic rice. On buythecase.com, a 1-kg. jar of organic Texmati brown rice goes for USD8 – on sale.  Organic brown rice is a wee bit cheaper on Amazon.com, going for USD7.4/kg. On efooddepot.com you can buy Thai red rice for USD3.58 for a 2-lb. bag, but it’s not advertized as organic. I suppose in Berlin or New York City or Tokyo, the high end of organic rice can get really high.

Good food, good people

So, there’s a big range of prices for rice, from pennies for chemically grown white rice with its nutrients polished off, to a few dollars for certified organic brown or germinated rice. But let’s get back to the question of what rice should rightly – justly, fairly – be priced. The emerging slogan of the Fair Earth Farm CSA is this: “Bringing good food to good people from good farmers at good prices, and telling the story.” The “good people” are the consumer-members of the CSA network. The “good farmers” are the producers for the network. The good food implies several things: It tastes good. It’s nutritious. It is “safe” – either demonstrably organic or approaching organic. (At the very least, toxic chemicals are not sprayed on the food.) It is produced in a way that is beneficial to the farming agro-ecosystem, not harmful to it. In short, the “good food” addresses two ethical values that are steadily altering the world food system: consumer safety and environmental protection. If you throw in animal welfare, you have the driving concerns of the organic food movement.

What is the cost to farmers and society of dead soil? Of biologically impoverished landscapes? Of children tricked into thinking their future will be beautiful if they leave the land and become addicted to computers? Of cancer in both food growers and eaters? Of climatic instability and economic turbulence? All of these things are the real costs of unsustainable food systems. (Photo by Daniel J. Powell.)

But what about the farmers? That’s where the “good price” comes in, and where we flip conventional marketing on its head. Normally, the term “good prices” refers to the cheapest possible price for the consumer. That’s not what we mean here by “good.” Instead, we’re talking about consumers sometimes paying more than they normally do. “Good” here refers to a good deal for the food producer, not a price so cheap for the consumer that it drives farmers off the land and turns the food system over to giant companies. On the other hand, the high price of organic produce seems to us to be somewhat arbitrary. If we’re talking about a kind of farming that costs less to do – no imported chemicals, for instance – then organic produce doesn’t really seem to warrant the price differential. So, if you buy chemical rice at the Ruamchok market, then we’re saying you should pay more for rice that’s naturally produced and gives the farmer a chance to survive. If you’re paying top baht for organic rice at Rimping, then you can do all of the above and maybe save money, too.

I told my wife, Sarah, that my goal was to sell our rice for 150 baht per kilo (about two dollars and change per pound). She laughed and told me to pull my head out of the clouds. Am I crazy? When you can buy nutritionally deplete and chemically produced white Wonder-rice for 50 cents, why would you spend more? But I argue that some people are willing to spend more if they, like more and more people around the world, want to use their food purchases to make a difference in society; they’ll spend their food baht more carefully and responsibly if they hold dear certain ethical values. We’re not trying to convince the mass consumer to embrace these values. It’d be cool if they did – and our descendants would appreciate us for it – but that’s not our job. Our job is to provide opportunities for people who already hold these values but need some help putting them into action. And all we need is a dozen or so families in all of Chiang Mai city to give it a go.

The ethical values I’m referring to are these:

1. Family health
2. Environmental protection
3. Farmer wellbeing

In the Western world, the first two are still niche concerns – judging by the continuing popularity of McDonalds and Fox News in the US, for example – but the boom in markets for organic food like Whole Foods and all the heat and noise about climate change suggest that food health and the environment are not reserved to the hippie fringe or merely passing trends. The slow growth of the fair trade movement also suggests that concerns about farmer wellbeing are lurching along as well, though the popularity of Walmart and its ilk should dampen claims that we’re headed toward a paradigm shift anytime soon. Certainly, the offerings at Whole Foods or the organic section of Tesco Lotus don’t tell us much about the wellbeing of the food producers, and the reporting of Michael Pollan reveals that much of the hype is just that – propaganda and hustle.

How much should we pay farmers who use their intellect to find better and safer ways to grow food for our families? Farmers who spend time teaching their kids so that they can farm profitably if they want to for another generation at least? (Photo by Daniel J. Powell.)

So people are increasingly making decisions about their food purchases influenced by concerns about food safety and environmental impacts; it’s still a niche thing, but it’s a growing one. Concerns about farmer wellbeing have a long way to go for shoppers worldwide. But that’s where community supported agriculture comes into play. We’re talking about a reconnection of concerned food eaters and struggling food growers. It’s a pact between the two sides, promising economic viability in return for health of body and peace of mind, a pact held by the logic of familiarity and periodic visits to the farm, not the logic of certification schemes and government inspectors.

Sound good? We’re betting that there are at least a handful of people in Chiang Mai who think so. And that brings us back, again to the question of a fair price for food you can trust. How much should a kilogram of rice cost?

The fair price of rice

This is not an easy question, though conventional economists might have us believe so. We factor in the costs of production and labor, add a little profit margin, and hope demand is higher than supply so we can meet our costs, plus that margin. Of course, there’s no such thing as economics without politics. If the price of rice gets too low, farmers threaten to block roads. Government throws them some crumbs. The price of rice gets too high and … well, that only happens once the rice is out of the fields and in the mills. One thing is clear in recent years in Thailand: costs like fertilizers and petrol follow a generally upward trajectory. The price of rice paid to farmers remains depressed.

But bottles of chemicals and tractor rentals aren’t the only costs. There are the hidden or “externalized” costs. What is the cost to farmers and society of dead soil? Of biologically impoverished landscapes? Of children tricked into thinking their future will be beautiful if they leave the land and become addicted to computers? Of cancer in both food growers and eaters? Of climatic instability and economic turbulence? All of these things are the real costs of unsustainable food systems.

How much would you pay – should you pay – to farmers who recover degraded ecosystems by growing healthy food? How much would you pay farmers who build topsoil and plant trees that sequester carbon, instead of emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through dependence on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides? (Photo by Daniel J. Powell.)

How much would you pay – should you pay – to farmers who recover degraded ecosystems by growing healthy food? How much would you pay farmers who build topsoil and plant trees that sequester carbon, instead of emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through dependence on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides? How much would you pay farmers who clean water instead of polluting it? Farmers who plant native trees instead of cutting them down? Who plant flowering trees and bushes to support bees and birds and other beneficial animals, instead of spraying toxic chemicals on both harmful and beneficial insects? How much would you pay farmers who raise animals in a humane way and use their waste to replace expensive imported fertilizers? How much to farmers who use their intellect to find better and safer ways to grow food for your family? Farmers who spend time teaching their kids so that they can farm profitably if they want to for another generation at least?

In essence, what kind of price do you put on food grown by a way of farming that ensures food safety, environmental integrity and the survival of small farming families? This is not a rhetorical question. The objective of our research is to put food eaters and food growers together – and when does that ever really happen in the “market”? – and establish a dialogue between them to discuss these and other important questions. And at the end of the year, we want to know the answer to the question asked at the beginning of this essay: How much should you pay a farmer for a kilogram of clean, safe and delicious brown rice grown in a way that leaves the ecosystem better off than when she started with it and that ensures her economic survival? We believe that one of the key reasons why farmers are too often such lousy stewards of the environment is because the rest of us pay them such lousy prices for the food they grow for us. If we want safe food grown in an environmentally friendly way, then we need to talk about putting our (food) money where our mouth is. Any takers?