Apr 29, 1998

ANOTHER US BIOPIRACY, NOW OF THAI JASMINE RICE

BY WITOON LIANCHAMROON & MS PIENGPORN PANUTAMPON*

Bangkok, 26 April 1998 (TWN/Biothai) -- Jasmine rice belongs to Thailand. It is a local variety. The origin of Jasmine rice is in the eastern part of the country, Chachoengsao, where the soil is saline and sandy. Thai Jasmine rice grown in this area has a fragrance and is soft. So it is called Khao Dawk Mali. Khao means white. Dawk means flower. And Mali means Jasmine. Khao Dawk Mali therefore evokes the perfume of the white Jasmine flower and is how it got its name in English.

The story of Jasmine starts perhaps a hundred years ago when Thai farmers developed the ancestors of this now very important rice. After the Second World War and nearly two decades of testing, the government Rice Board officially released Jasmine - Khao Dawk Mali in the vernacular.

This was in 1959, so we look at it as a pre-Green Revolution rice that foreign agencies like IRRI (the International Rice Research Institute) had nothing to do with. It grows well in drought conditions and on saline soils, so it suits the farming conditions of Northeast Thailand.

By contrast, IRRI's famous IR8 and other subsequent rices are made to suit high-input chemical agriculture in irrigated lands, which the poor people cannot afford.

It took about 15 years, and further selection work, for Jasmine to develop a stronghold in the Isan areas of Northeast Thailand, particularly Toong Kula Rong Hai. By now, the breeding efforts of Thai farmers and scientists have resulted in more than 200 different lines of Jasmine in the country. Virtually all Thai Jasmine rice is produced by five million farmers in the Northeast. These are resource-poor farmers, whose monthly income does not exceed the poverty line of $200 per capita. Their livelihoods depend on Jasmine.

Jasmine rice is a very good quality rice, highly favoured by Thai people and abroad. Exports have been growing, which gives Isan farmers confidence in a brighter future. Normally, Thailand exports 4-5 million tonnes of rice per year. In 1997, Thailand exported 5.3 million tonnes and in 1998 the figure may be higher. Over 25% of the rice export is now Jasmine rice. Guangzhou province alone, in China, wants to purchase four million tonnes of Jasmine rice this year. There is also strong demand from Hong Kong, the Middle East, the US and other places.

Former Prime Minister Chavalit said last August that he expected that in the next four years, the country could earn 100 billion baht ($2.5 billion) from exports of Jasmine rice. So his administration tried to expand the rainfed areas under Jasmine, from north to south. However, this and other attempts to develop Jasmine production outside of the Northeast have not been successful. Yields may be higher than the traditional Jasmine's 1.6 t/ha, but the quality is never as good.

The government even released two new high-yielding Jasmine rices earlier this year, but they are not resistant to brown planthopper - a resurging pest in Thailand. Their quality is also not as good as those produced in the Northeast. The King of Thailand now says that one of the solutions to the Thai economic crisis is to control the quality of the Jasmine rice exported.

In fact, because rice exports are so important for Thailand's economic stability, the government tried to promote Basmati production in the north of Thailand about ten years ago. Companies came in but the project failed because the yields were very low and the quality was never as good as Thai rice.

Then, when the GATT negotiations ended in 1994, the government tried to have Thailand grow and export Japanese rice. The opening up of Japan's rice market was seen as a lucrative opportunity. But again, the quality could not match that of Thai rice.

So truly, Thailand's future - and the future of the poor farmers in the Northeast - will rely on sustainable management of the Jasmine rice sector and the Thai collective heritage.

The RiceTec patent on Basmati (a variety of rice native to and grown in a particular region of India and Pakistan) has become a serious concern in Thailand. Here is an American company claiming monopoly rights and getting huge benefits from India and Pakistan's rice culture and giving nothing in return.

RiceTec says their patent is not on India's Basmati but on "their own" Basmati which they claim to have "invented".

This cannot be. Basmati is Basmati, whose qualities derive from the soil, the climate and the culture which produce it.

RiceTec's is fake Basmati. But the US law lets RiceTec misuse another peoples' heritage.

Farmers' movements and peoples' organisations in Thailand fear the same will happen to them. RiceTec is marketing another proprietary rice called Jasmati, which has nothing to do with Jasmine or Basmati except for the name on the packaging.

RiceTec's 'Jasmati' is derived from a variety called Della, developed in the US. Della is a selection from Bertone, which is from the Piedmont area of Italy.

However, RiceTec deceives the public and uses an Asian-sounding name which connotes quality to lure people to believe they are being offered a cross between Jasmine and Basmati.

To our knowledge, RiceTec and other US companies marketing 'their own versions' of the Thai Jasmine rice have not patented the germplasm, but are exercising their own claims to the name. This in itself is an offence. But they have also distorted the name to the direct disadvantage of Thai farmers.

We asked RiceTec why they market a rice called Jasmati if it is not derived from Jasmine or Basmati.

One of their breeders, Jim Strikey, responded that he considers Jasmine rice to be a term for "any aromatic, sticky rice" and Basmati a term for "any aromatic, long grain, non-sticky rice." Strikey went on to say that Thailand should not bat an eye about this because, according to him, Thai farmers got rice from Madagascar in the first place. This is total ignorance of Asian rice culture.

What Thai farmer groups are worried about now is that IRRI has used the original Khao Dawk Mali in so many crosses - nearly 1,500 - and distributed the original seeds to over 20 countries where presently, or very soon, they might suffer the same fate as Basmati.  

The US allows patents on life forms: plants, animals, even human genes.

The European Union is about to vote on a directive that if adopted would make patenting of all forms of biodiversity legal there.

The new World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on intellectual property rights, called TRIPS, requires developing countries to set up monopoly rights legislation for plant varieties by the year 2000. If the EU and WTO proposals are pushed through, it will soon be very possible to patent Jasmine abroad. With the demand for this good rice skyrocketing, the hopes of Thai farmers are turning into worries.

"RiceTec is attacking Basmati. Now it will be very easy to attack Jasmine ... They can patent it like Basmati. If they find the gene for Jasmine's aroma, they can claim a monopoly on it just for identifying it!"

Ten years ago, Thai NGOs discovered that Plao Noi, a plant growing in Thailand whose medicinal properties are inscribed in the ancient palm leaf herbalist books, was patented in Japan. It is a good medicine for ulcers and the Japanese extracted its active ingredient. Now, Kelnac - the patented product - has annual sales of 800 million baht ($20 million) for the sole benefit of Japan. 

More recently still, Thai television featured a chronicle about US researchers patenting the Map-30 protein from a native Thai bittergourd. The bittergourd is called Bird Droppings Gourd in Thai, because of its small size, and Thai scientists were also researching it for its anti-HIV compounds. Once again, Thai people are being pushed out of a market for a medicine drawing from the country's indigenous biodiversity.

Mr. Noo-porn Poomta, a 53-year old organic rice farmer from Mahasarakam province, sees the Jasmine problem this way:

Mr. Poomta and over 500 other farming families in the Northeast of Thailand are eagerly developing sustainable and ecological systems to produce, mill and even export Jasmine rice. They are doing this with support from local NGOs, trying to avoid profit-hungry middlemen. But they feel their future is compromised by intellectual property laws.

"Khao Dok Mali [Jasmine rice] belongs to Thai farmers, to Thai communities, since it has been nurtured in Isan, the Northeast, since our great grandparents," says Mr. Lai Lerngram, an organic farmer from Surin. "No one, but no one, could claim ownership or monopoly rights in relation to Jasmine rice. To patent Jasmine rice or to misuse its name is plundering from the poor. Anyone who would steal from poor Thai farmers is really shameless. Our basic rights are at stake."

 That is the real issue. Thailand has been working to respond to its TRIPS obligations in a way that will not be unfair to the farmers, who after all make up 60% of the Thai people.

"The WTO forces us to support formally educated plant breeders. That's why we need farmers' and community rights in the centre of our sui generis legislation. Why should we give monopoly rights to a handful of plant breeders and nothing to the millions of farmers who developed and nurtured the materials these breeders rely on?" says Bamrung Kayotha, leader of Forum of the Poor, a huge mass movement of over one hundred networks of peoples' organisations, farmers, labourers and other basic sectors throughout the country.

Virtually all of Thailand's fruits, many of the dozens of rices and most of the vegetables grown and appreciated today are farmers' selections. "We are absolutely opposed to patents on life. Breeders should not have seed monopolies. Farmers' rights must be recognised first. We are the original breeders," Mr Kayotha says.

Hundreds of members of Forum of the Poor, like Mr Poomta and Mr Lerngram, are camping outside of the Prime Minister's office since last week, demanding resolution of their problems. Jasmine is now high on their list of concerns related to the country's biodiversity.

"We want the Chuan administration to work with other developing countries to have biodiversity removed from the WTO trade regime," says Day-cha Siripatra, an advisor to FOP. "Farmers exchange seeds freely and do selection on the farm. That is important to us. It is part of our culture. But when breeders exchange seed and do selection in the lab, they patent the results. This is obstructing the development of sustainable agriculture in our countries. That is why we will go to WTO and demand that our farmers' and community rights be respected."

Mr Lerngram chimed in enthusiastically, "Yes, we ask our Government, particularly Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to fight with us!"

Thai NGOs are launching a campaign to protect the future of Jasmine rice. At stake is not only a name, but an important opportunity for the resource-poor farmers in the Northeast to make a living from what isrightfully theirs. In the words of Mr Siripatra, "Patenting or monopolising is possessive greed for only commercial interests. Life cannot be reduced to a commodity. If the EU adopts its directive to follow the USA and throw more weight behind the WTO-TRIPS Agreement, it means the Europeans are going to sell their own culture just to compete with a rootless nation like the United States."

(* Mr. Witoon Lianchamroon and Ms Piengporn Panutampon are at BIOTHAI, the Thai Network on Community Rights & Biodiversity, email: <biothai@wnet.net.th>)