Introduction
Most individuals have eaten rice sometime in their life, but for Asian cultures, it is consumed on a daily basis. In the comfort of your own home or in the convenience of a restaurant, no one really stops to think how those grains of rice ended up on their plate. This side option for many Americans is a necessary food source for several countries. Rice is an extremely vital grain that is consumed by a large portion of the world’s population. Due to the world’s constantly increasing number of inhabitants, rice farmers are finding it difficult to keep up with the high demand. Since rice consumption is an essential part of many Asian countries’ diets; Farmers in regions such as Thailand, China, and Vietnam are struggling to make ends meet. Rice production is a tremendously labor intensive commodity to produce and many of the farmers receive little pay for their work.
Rice is a particularly unique grain that involves a substantial amount of water in order to thrive. In Thailand, there is a high dependency on rainwater to irrigate the rice crops. However being so heavily confined to the environment, the crops are more prone to natural disasters. Much of the Thai person’s life revolves around rice. Whether they are the farmers producing it or the wealthy families consuming it, rice is an everyday necessity. In Thai, the verb “to eat” translates to “to eat rice,” which shows how important this commodity is to the country.
This paper will focus on Thailand’s rice production. It is the world’s number one rice exporter and one of the world’s top leading producers of rice (“World’s Top,” 2011). There are many factors involved in rice production, such as the working conditions of farmers, the impact of Mother Nature, effe...
... middle of paper ...
... predicted. Voice of America. Retrieved from http://www.voanews.com/khmer- english/news/Thai-Floods-Damage-Rice-Fields-Small-Impact-on-Global-Market-
Predicted-133876518.html
The stories behind our food: Fair trade rice from Thailand. Engage The World. Retrieved January 16, 2012, from http://www.engagetheworld.org/Rice%20Organizer%20Materials/The%20Stories%20Be hind%20Our%20Food%20-%20Fair%20Trade%20Rice%20From%20Thailand.pdf
University of California – San Diego (2010, August 9). Higher temperatures to slow Asian rice production. Science Daily. Retrieved January 8, 2012, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100809161138.htm
World’s top 20 rice producing nations. (2011, October 24). Rediff Business. Retrieved January 9, 2012, from http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-worlds-top-20- agricultural-producers/20111024.htm
Gupta, A. "Stuffed & Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System." War Resisters League. N.p., Dec. 2009. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.
rice which are left over from the season. When the food runs out and the
"***THIS AWARD HAS BEEN CAO REVIEWED BY (MSgt Stancel on 10 April 2018) AND DEEMED UNCLASSIFIED FOR BOTH THE SUMMARY OF ACTION AND CITATION DO NOT SUBMIT FOR FURTHER REVIEW***
Bierlen, Ralph, Eric J. Wailes, and Gail L. Cramer. "Domestic Reforms and Regional Integration: Can Argentina and Uruguay Increase Non-MERCOSUR Rice Exports?" Agribusiness (1986-1998) 12.5 (1996): 473. ProQuest. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
Whenever I was asked if I was having rice for lunch today, I felt a sense of a macroaggression in that question. However, I understood that it was not meant to be insulting but was a common stereotype among Asian Americans. This stereotype assumes that we always eat this source of refined carbohydrates because it is commonly seen among most of our meals. However, what society seems to disregard is that our meals are more varied than just having rice each time. In fact, many Asian American dishes can range from complex soups and intricate side dishes composed of fermented beans, steamed fish, pickled cabbages, and more. By regarding these different sides to our diet, society cannot assume that the Asian American diet is completely “consumed” by rice. Rice does serve as a basis of the diet, but is not the larger component of every meal nor is it present each time. I do agree that rice is inherently part of our culture, which makes this stereotype partly true, but it cannot be fixed into all aspects of our
Every culture has its "staple" food. This is the food product that anchors each meal. For some cultures, it is meat and potatoes. However, for most of the world, regardless of region, rice is the staple that is served most often. . It is “A food staple of half the planet’s population” (Reynolds pg 1). But why rice? Why not bread or potatoes as is common in western countries? Within nutrisional basic food pyramid, rice is part of the breads, cereal, rice and pasta family. This family is the baseline foundation of human nutrition. Rice is a popular crop as it can be grown and cultivated fairly easily. Rice is grown by individual families for their personal needs, or can be cultivated by large farms for supply to the world. Rice is simpler to grow than wheat or potatoes because it does not have a long growing time and can grow in smaller areas and provides a greater yield per square acre than wheat or potatoes. Regardless of how you like your rice, it is basically prepared the same way, boiled. Once the rice is cooked, cultures take a different approach to the completion of a rice-based dish. Rice has a long history of being the perfect accompaniment for even the simplest of foods.
In the first chapter of the book the author discusses a brief world history and evolution of rice crops. It is interesting to see that even though parts of Africa had their own rice crop variety, the globalization of rice crop Oryza Sativa has been slowly replacing the African variety. The author also starts
Globalization of goods /services and fair trade has helped in providing developing countries with more output of products, selling and producing techniques that are more ethical, open future investments through funding and technology. While some have benefited, others have lost jobs and resources. Coffee the second valuable traded commodity in the markets, has needed help in this industry with fair trade. These farmers crops usually grown in remote areas, have no access to credit , are indigent and in need of funding and technology. “A labor-intensive crop, coffee grows well on small and steeply slope parcels of land. Small scale producers often with landholding smaller than 3 hectares, constitute the majority of coffee producers in the country and are concentrated in some of the poorest regions.” Case Studies...(2009). The reasons these farmers do not profit well in the markets today, because they have lost their place as the foreign exchange earner allowing other competitors like Vietnam, Cost Rico, Ethiopia, India ,Tanzania and Uganda to emerge. “When the collapse of the ...
Many ordinary people in Indonesia still think that eating white rice for their meals will
Nierenberg, Danielle. "Factory farming in the developing world: In some critical respects, this is not progress at all." World Watch 1 May 2003: n. pag. eLibrary. Web. 3 Dec. 2013. .
The developed world’s love affair with local/organic farming (peasant farming as Collier describes it) has decreased food production worldwide because it does not use the land efficiently enough as with commercial agriculture companies. It also requires government subsidies that large commercial farming companies do not necessarily need. By increasing commercial farming, the world food supply will inevitably increase over a short period.
(see Figure 4, Zhao Guozhi, 2005) Up to now, as the world's largest importer of sesame seeds, Japan imports an amazing amount every year. It imports almost all its domestically consumed sesame. In 2013, the nation imported 141,573 tons. (Ippei Tanoue, 2014). Its trade accounted 25 percent for the world trade volume. Japan was importing sesame seeds, in the past, mainly from China, followed by Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Tanzania. Sudan and Burma were important souring country to Japan, but due to political instability, they produce and export less. To stabilize supply source, Japan is still looking for more stable supplier, although African countries now export more than half of their sesame seed to Japan. But it is still not enough. Many factors contribute to the variation in market price and supply of sesame. Like in China, who used to be a major exporter of sesame, but the tedious harvesting process, mostly done by hand, discouraged many farmers there from cultivating the crop. Numerous farms have now switched to growing more profitable vegetables. The reduction in domestic yield, along with rising domestic demand for sesame oil, has pushed up sesame
Vietnam has variety types of food for every occasion, from an everyday meal to New Year’s festivities food. The flavor of the Vietnamese food varies from sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. However, rice, the mainstay of the Vietnamese diet, is grown throughout the country but particularly in the Red River delta in the north and Mekong River delta in the south. As Vietnam’s population started to increases, farmers had to produce quicker as well; making Vietnam the third country to produce the most rice. In fact, the Vietnamese people say that their country resembles a bamboo pole (the narrow central region) with a basket of rice at each end.(Food in Vietnam) Rice is eaten almost every day in the Vietnamese diet. Even though three-fourths of country is either a hill or mountain, the long waterway along the country provides a small variety of seafood like fish or shrimp.
Many organizations do not achieve the profits they anticipate by using incorrect methods or models to determine the true costs of products and services. This failure to correctly assess the costs associated with business not only affects the profit margin, but the organizations competitive advantage as well. In order to asses whether the organization is failing to realize optimum resource allocation, the organization should look at the methodology first popularized by Michael Porter titled the Value Chain Analysis (VCA). "VCA seeks to define the entire chain through which goods are supplied to a customer" (Booth, 1997, 2). The VCA can be a powerful tool in increasing an organization's competitive advantage; by correctly pricing products and assessing the true costs of materials and labor, organizations can align the improvements in efficiency, quality, and profits with its strategic objectives.