What to do with American rice offered by Japan

About a month ago I went into a couple of grocery stores in the centre of Ouagadougou to check which kinds of rice were on the market and at what price. I was surprised to find in one and the same shop rice from Thailand, Vietnam and Burkina but also American rice, called “Cathwel rice” and finally also “Japanese” rice, which however originates from California in the USA.

 The salesman first showed me Thai and Vietnamese rice, sold in 50 kg bags at 20 000 CFA francs per bag (in other words 400 francs/kg). He then brought out other bags carrying  the  USAID logo. He called this rice “Cathwel rice”. It is actually rice offered to the American NGO Cathwel, which then sells it to traders in the city, following an invitation to tender.  The labels are marked “parboiled rice”, which means that the rice has been processed (precooked), just like the domestic  “riz étuvé”. The price was 12 000 CFA francs/25 kgs (or 480 francs/kg).

I then saw some bags labelled “Rice from Sourou – Burkina Faso”. Here the price was 10 500 for 25 kgs (i.e. 420 francs/kg). I asked if the content was white rice, to which the grocer said “No, this is American rice!”  He held out some rice grains and  I  could see that it was in fact parboiled rice. Usually, in  the current popular understanding American rice means parboiled rice (riz étuvé). For the simple reason that Cathwel rice is well known and very much present on the market.

In the town of Koudougou one  finds parboiled rice from the Sourou district at 9500 CFA francs/25 kgs (380 francs/kg), that is, at a lower price than for any of the other varieties.

I was about to leave the grocery store when the salesman told me that he also had Japanese rice. He showed me bags of 30 kgs, on which a label had been glued “Gift from the people of Japan”. (I recommend a closer look;  click on the picture to the left). Since I know that Japan does not give away Japanese rice (on the contrary, it rather protects it  by taxing imported rice at 700%). I therefore asked to see the entire bag. And there was a label very much like the picture to your right, with only one difference. The last line but one reads “Harvesting year: 2004”. Thus, this was indeed American rice, 4-5 years old (very likely banned from sales in the United States!) When I asked for the price I was told 13 500 francs (450/kg).

Today’s issue of the daily paper l’Observateur Paalga carries an article under the title:

Food aid in Burkina – how are we to eat Japanese rice?

But no, the rice offered by Japan is not Japanese.

Already  this Monday another daily, Le Pays, published an article referring to “the food aid of 5 270 tons of Japanese rice”. This is however not the case. The rice is not Japanese but American and it has been shipped off  to Japan in transit, in order to comply with World Trade Organisation rules. To convince you, I refer you  to another title:  “Who benefits from the food aid?”

But at present we must study this further. Would it not be possible to get rid of food aid, by using  aid itself as a tool? This is in fact a request from the National Farmers’ Confederation (Confédération Nationale du Faso, CPF) :

“Without calling  food aid as such into question, we address a request to the government  to work out  a policy which will enable the people of Burkina to do away with food aid.

The success of the “white revolution” in India (the milk trade) has shown that it is in fact possible to efficiently use food aid for the development of agricultural sectors, that is : use aid to eliminate aid.”

Since indeed 90% of the 5270 tons offered by Japan are sold, why not use half of that income to help Burkina’s rice sector? Why could Cathwel not set aside  50%  of  its earnings from the sales of parboiled rice from the U.S. to help rice farmers in the large rice plains and their wives processing paddy rice into the “American” rice mentioned above?

I am convinced that if this could be achieved, Burkina Faso would be self-sufficient in rice in a few years’ time. And consumers would be happy to abandon old Asian or American crops for the good home-grown rice harvested a few months earlier. Poverty would decline in the rice districts. But is the will really there to do away with food aid?

Koudougou, April 10 2009

Maurice Oudet

Director, SEDELAN