Are agricultural subsidies the way to go?

In the U.S, I’ve come to know organic consumers as somewhat of food elitists. Sure maybe they’re healthier for it. But after watching the type of customers that stroll down the aisles of Whole Foods Market, I can’t agree that they are aware of anything more than the price they are paying for it. Being caught in the act of buying organic food, what I call “I’m better than you” food, reflects the power U.S. subsidies has on not just the producer side but consumer side of agriculture.

I never really thought whether this was the same behavior of consumers in Thailand or not; I more or less assumed it would be at least in comparing consumers between Bangkok and Isaan. But I realized through a week of exchanges with Northeastern farmers in Thailand that it’s clearly not the same. In an exchange with some members of Yasothorn’s first Organic Green Market, I felt it important to bring up the question of price dynamics and the difficulty poor Thai consumers may have in switching to buying a more expensive product. Apparently, my question was completely irrelevant as they informed me that organic vegetables are priced no differently than chemically-grown vegetables, sometimes even cheaper.

Later in the week we had another exchange with contract farmers at a sugarcane farm. Again, I felt a necessary question was something along the lines of “do you get paid differently for selling the company organic sugarcane versus chemically-grown sugarcane?” They quickly responded that despite all the terrible agreements they knowingly and unknowingly signed for in their contracts, the company had no preference whatsoever on the manner in which their product was grown so long as the appropriate yield was received.

So here’s the explanation from the perspective of a farang (white person) working with farmers in Isaan: The only reason prices are actually different in the States is due to the agricultural subsidies which create artificially low prices for large-scale cash crops. Without the aid of premiums, organic farmers are forced to sell at a higher price, but in doing so reflect the true costs of producing. Fair enough, I learned something new, still shocked.

My reflection over this unit brought back these thoughts of America’s agricultural subsidies. I really feel that increasing consumer demand would be a successful attempt in expanding the amount of organic farmland in Thailand. Furthermore, I want to think that a way to do that would be by incorporating subsidies in which Thailand could take advantage of promoting organic food as a better product and eventually push for a more organically grown, environmentally-safe agriculture industry- assuming consumers begin demanding it the way in which American consumers do. But at the same time, it could so easily take a turn for the worst too, as I have observed in the States. Take for instance, the latest push for Fair Trade products in the U.S. Another very interesting fact that I learned in my time here was that in order to get a certification label for a “Fair Trade” product, the company need only 2% of its product to actually be certified, a percentage lowered from 5% after Starbuck’s fought it down.

Although Fair Trade is not necessarily associated with organic, certainly it relates to my point in that regardless of the benefits in increasing consumer demand for organic food, it creates the potential for companies to exploit that demand by manipulating well-intentioned policies to fit their own agenda, thereby throwing out the purpose of such policies in the first place. So then how should Thailand or any country really, go about appropriately convincing its citizens that the way to farm is organic?

Kara Heumann
Indiana University