That organic rice cultivation can and must be an issue is something we tend to forget about the discussion about fair-trade coffee and fair-trade chocolate. But here, too, it is worth taking a closer look and asking: Where does my white miracle on the plate actually come from?
The fact that I seriously dealt with this question is thanks to GEPA, who invited me to their cooking show in Wuppertal as part of the Fair Week. Here, the small white grains were the absolute focus. GEPA is a fair trade organization that buys organic rice from the Green Net cooperative in Thailand, among others. Its managing director was the guest of honor at the cooking show mentioned above - and together with Ayurveda chef Volker Mehl cooked a creative rice dish for the other guests.
But why is the rice thing so important?
Rice as a staple food
Rice can certainly be described as a food technology miracle without exaggeration: According to the current state of research, there are around 8,000 varieties of these grasses - ranging from classic white to red and black to high-quality whole grain rice. Rice is generally regarded as a staple food - it is the main source of food for over 50% of the world's population.
The immense importance of rice, especially in the Asian growing region (where more than 90% of the rice consumed worldwide is still produced), is shown by the fact that in many Asian languages the terms rice and food are identical. In some regions the question is asked instead of a greeting:
Conventional rice cultivation
Rice growing can look back on more than 7,000 years of history - and in many areas, it is still done by hand. The generally classifying name for the rice plant is Oryza sativa - its original distribution area stretched around the legendary and historically rich rivers Euphrates and Tigris, but also to the deltas of the Yangtze and Ganges. However, the original form of the rice plant has been lost due to numerous cultivation and adaptation processes by humans today, so that we can only consume rice that has been altered by the crossing and breeding efforts of human farmers.
As a rule, rice is cultivated on well-known rice terraces, which are permanently flooded in order to create the typically humid and swampy ambient climate that the rice plant needs for rapid and abundant growth. For this purpose, seedlings are first grown, which are then planted in the fields after a 30-50-day growing period. In the industrialized regions of Asia, these steps - as well as the subsequent irrigation of the fields and harvesting of the ripened plants - are fully automatic and mechanical, although in many rural areas rice production is still carried out manually.
Problems with rice
The cultivation method roughly outlined above is a method of rice cultivation - the widespread and at least visually more well-known wet cultivation method. It is the classical variant of rice cultivation practiced by many rice farmers - an alternative is dry rice cultivation. Although irrigation systems are also used here, water consumption is much lower than in wet rice cultivation.
It is precisely this wet cultivation method that brings with it a number of problems that end consumers may not even be aware of when they are faced with the small steaming bowl of satiating carbohydrates.
Ecological problems
For every kilogram of these rice grains that cavort in this bowl, between 3,000 and 5,000 liters of water were consumed - and freshwater is one of the most precious goods on our planet. Rice production, therefore, first of all, eats up huge amounts of resources - wet-rice production naturally consumes much more than dry rice cultivation.
But this consequence of rice cultivation is comparatively harmless if one takes the ecological problems that took place with and through the "Green Revolution" at the end of the 1960s in the so-called "developing countries" into consideration: in the course of the industrialization of agriculture through ultra-modern machines, artificial (genetically modified) high-performance cereal varieties, pesticides, monocultures and an increase in the efficiency of cultivation methods, the environment had to pay a high price for its transformation by man.
What was initially praised as an economic miracle soon turned out to be an unsustainable solution - especially in the face of Asia's hunger problem, for which these comprehensive agricultural reforms were initiated: Groundwater resources were overused by intensive agricultural use, local ecosystems were affected by pesticides and monotonous cultivation methods, and soils were dried up by artificial fertilizers.
Social problems
And not only that: Due to the monopoly position of seed giants such as Monsanto, who sold their hybrid seeds as well as their artificial fertilizers including pesticides to the farmers (which are often offered as a complete package), they suddenly became compulsively dependent on external seed producers. Because the seeds sold are hybrid varieties that no longer float after a harvest. Since rice is harvested every year, farmers have to buy seed at least once a year - storage of the grains is neither sensible, as they do not survive a long interim period between purchase and sowing, nor permitted by patent law, which many rice varieties are now subject to.
The farmers thus find themselves in a network of relationships consisting of dependence, debt, environmental destruction, and insecurity.
Because the hybrid plants of large corporations have another problem: they are less resistant to environmental changes and influences than the native varieties. In the event of an unplanned flood, an entire harvest - and thus life insurance for an entire year - can quickly be lost.
Buy or replace rice?
In view of the huge quantities of water that rice production consumes, the question has often been asked as to whether it makes sense to forego rice consumption, especially in the industrialized countries, where we can easily switch to alternative products that even grow in our latitudes due to the wide range of products on offer.
After the occupation with alternative and biological rice cultivation, as it is promoted among other things by the GEPA, I am (before also skeptical) no longer of this opinion. I believe that rice is a little different from other overseas products, such as many types of nuts or coconut products: While these are usually luxury culinary products that are not consumed by many people around the world because they cannot afford them and because there is no need to survive, rice is the livelihood of over 50% of the world's population.
The legitimate question is whether a complete private boycott would send the wrong signal about the consumption of such an important food: rice will probably be urgently needed for at least the next decades to keep at bay at least the most urgent world hunger - wouldn't it make more sense from a European perspective to support the alternative and sustainable cultivation methods with our consumption and to send a signal to the growing cooperatives that they are on the right track? Because precisely because rice will continue to be so important in the future, conventional agriculture has no perspective in this respect. What should be cultivated on mineral-polluted soils and in broken ecosystems?
Slow and sustainable agriculture seems to be the key here as well - both for the global climate and for world hunger.