thayford
Cultural Downfall of Rice in Thailand
Sometimes, when something is such a crucial part of our society people lose touch with how it got to be and still is so. Such is the case in Thailand with rice, and especially with the most popular, Jasmine rice. A staple food in most diets around the world, Jasmine rice has become more than that to the people of Thailand. As such discourses show, with the help of texts like The Help, connections between cultural roots and the exploitation of them for gain of power or economic benefits become clear. The cultivation of rice in Thailand has turned from a spiritual practice into a big business that demands cheap labor and has allowed other countries from around the world to create their own cultural ties to the food.
The history of rice in Thailand is quite rich. Rice farming in cultivated fields has been done on the land that is now Thailand for at least five thousand years, around one thousand years earlier than in India and China. It takes up over half of their fertile land and is one of the main sources of nutrition for Thais. Rice farming continues to be the primary farming activity nationwide. I mean, the word for farmer in Thailand, chaona, literally translates to “rice field person”. All of the discursive political and social impacts associated with this one food is packed into the very word.
Thailand has led the world as the largest rice exporter for decades, much due to jasmine rice. This can be seen as an attempt for the global spread of their beliefs and practices, or it could be taken as a loss of cultural roots.
Rice is part of something larger for the people of Thailand. The word, the food, and everything that it is been through amount to much more than simply exporting. It represents their religion and how agriculture has always been an important sector of it. Rice is always present in some form at religious gatherings and is thought to be blessed in every stage of life, parallel to the human cycle. It isn’t just about their religion, though, “rice is in music, particularly folk songs. It is in various forms of the arts – from poems to paintings to sculptures. It is in tradition, folklore, ritual and even language” (Gomez 1). All of Thailand’s culture is packed into each grain of rice that gets shipped all around the world. Whether we as Americans think about that or not, we’re still eating it.
Rice is very much a political topic in Thailand and the active involvement of the government in the promotion of Thai rice exporting has placed jasmine rice on a global scale. But not without disrupting the country’s cultural roots. Within the last few years and partly to appease angry farmers, “the government put in place a price guarantee system that has hurt competitiveness, leading to stockpiles of unsold rice” (Fuller). This is typical behavior from a government who oversees a large cash crop. Rather than keep the local economy stimulated, they took rice and guaranteed it on a world scale,