The unlucky rice

Its growers complain of importation – it’s one of their many problems.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

PIURA CITY, Peru – At a chifa near Merino Square, our graphic producer and I have dinner. I order my favorite, pork and tamarind. Him, a chaufa, that is not more than grained rice and a put-on egg, spiced with soja sauce also known as sillao, [siyao] and it was added boiled little cubes of beef or chicken.

 

The chifa is one of the most celebrated culinary fusions of Peruvian gastronomy. It’s about the kitchen techniques mainly imported from Canton region, China, with the products brought by the Spaniards beginning 16^th century, and that got to adapt to the lands and climate of Peru.

 

This type of food is just a century old when Chinese inmigrants started it here, as they were recruited to work in slavery conditions mainly at reedbeds of Lambayequé and La Libertad. The chifa food is not cheap. A plate at a good restaurant, like the one we referred, is not below 3 dollars.

 

Our producer’s chaufa is not the only plate having rice as an basic ingredient. Almost all Peruvian cuisine uses it, only that in its creole variety, each portion at a similar-quality restaurant can be gotten at the half of price. What maybe his chaufa couldn’t promise is itt’s about the Chinese technique with Peruvian ingredients, because the most part of consumed rice in the country comes from, ironically, Far East.

 

Even in Conchinchina

The Peruvian association of Rice Growers (APEAR, as in Spanish), quoted by the Peruvian Center for Social Studies (CEPES, as in Spanish), reported that the grain importations in the period of January to May 2011reached 54,000 tons. This means 93% more than it entered in 2010. FACTORTIERRA sources pointed out Peru imports rice from Vietnam and Thailand, and it was expected that China sends cereal’s containers through the Pacific.

 

The CEPES reference signs out that the immediate consequence is a fall of the national product’s price, especially at the northern. And, what is the solution offered by Apear? That organization’s Javier Zamudio said they will continue planting the existent 350,000 hectares across the country so supplying our market… even exporting. But, if the imported rice floods Peru, why to hold the plantation area? The rice growers leader has not responded us.

 

Peru is not the only country exporting rice from Asia. Colombia also does it and the effects over its local production are the same. The reason is the price, much lower than it would cost to buy the national harvest, although the quality, as some tastes say, is muchly bad.

 

APEAR has established that the net price of a ton of imported rice is 650 dollars, but the dealers sel it almost double. There are not updated numbers of the national pile rice; nevertheless in 2010, it went between 1500 and 2000 dollars per ton, basing us on the mills costs, and the difference explains why the national growers are disappointed. In other words, even provided the ddealers  gain, the national rice comes out to the market in disadvantage, and it’s almost ever sacrificed quality instead of price.

 

A productive chain?

Discounting the land, producing a hectare of rice, at least in Piura, costs between 1000 and 1500 dollars depending on the given handle. In average, that surface can release between 10 to 12 tons of harvest.

 

For that moment, the profit in the same lot may be double or triple even provided there is a definitive buyer, even when it’s planted. Usually, the Piura rice’s buyers are mills located in the entrance of Chiclayo, Lambayequé, those fund the whole production in exchange of the pile is made in their facilities, so they treat the farmers as borrowers.

 

The mills revenue their investment by selling the rice, which gains the farmer has access to a little percentage. In fact, a grower, in the best scenario, receives until 150 dollars per paddy rice ton, just harvested in other words.

 

Only the big growers can fund the season, especially if they are land owners. And in Piura, where the small holding is a constant, others are who get the biggest bit. People, mainly from the cities, cover the whole production costs. As the Farmer offers the space, the gains divide 50/50. Other option is renting the land, that to the owners offer a monthly flat income not needing to plaw, plant, care, and harvest.

 

About this, there is a mixed model, as the applied by the so-called Chotanos in San Lorenzo Valley, who are owners and rent big lots to get the cereal, what gives them a great competitive advantage – control of price.

 

Green that I don’t want you too green

The productiveness of rice crops is reversely proportional to the land’s health. Many specialist coincide this crop is one that most water and synthetized fertilizers use, generating soils with high levels of salinity in the long term, so esterile.

 

At Piura National University’s Agronomy School, experts asked by FACTORTIERRA said the farmers spend more water than they need because they believe it must be permanently flooded, or wet at least. “The problem of rice is it doesn’t have a good handle,” they pointed us out.

 

Health authorities also look suspiciously at the planted areas because the stagnant water is a nursery for malaria mosquito, what Piura is an endemic zone, although they specify the number of reported cases has coming to diminish in the last years.

 

Coming next -- cyanide

The other colateral effect is the damage the agri-chemicals cause in the human being when they are not handled right, and that at least in Upper Chira broke out, until March 2010, one monthly emergency, according to information gathered by FACTORTIERRA at the health posts.

 

Although the agri-chemicals have organic-origin substances, mixed and used wrong are lethal, the cyanogenateds (formed by carbon and nitrogen) in particular, that favor the appearance of cyanide. A report released in July 2011 by the environmental Health Direction, quoted by the Regional Government of Piura, establishes Chira River registers 4 miligrams of the substance per every liter of water.

 

Officially, it was stated this doesn’t represent contamination, but medical doctors and agronomic engineers asked by FACTORTIERRA have expressed their alarm due to the quantity. APEAR’s Javier Zamudio affirmed Chira is the valley where most rice is cropped inside Piura.

 

The usual susspect of cyanide presence is the informal mining. However, the health report doesn’t identify the source. Regarding this issue, we asked Zamudio for a reaction but he hasn’t responded us. Rather, he launched an alert for a posible appearance of Khapra beetle.

 

According to his statement to the media, he has warned about its presence to Agriculture officials and he has accused to the Peru’s National Service of Agrarian Health for its possible infestation. The related plague comes from India and FACTORTIERRA sources have established it was detected in rice loads in Peru since 2005.

 

It’s trans!

Add to the imported rice, what it’s not spoken much –or it’s not spoken at all—is the transgenic one. According to San Lorenzo Valley-based agronomic engineer Manuel Castillo, it can generate an until-18-ton-per-hectare harvest, but it’s not come into Peru yet. Castillo suggested that the rice improvement still has to depend on the natural crossing methods in the countryside. Although he neither can discard it’s already possible to get major-efficiency kinds at the lab.

 

Peru’s National Institute of Agrarian Innovation (INIA, as in Spanish), that depends on Peru’s Agriculture Ministry, has started a frontal campaign in favor of the transgenics presence in Peruvian territory, that made it to collide against Peru’s environment Ministry, that proposed to delay its arrival during Alan Garcia’s administration. Paradoxically, INIA has come developing kinds of rice through natural crossings that, among others, it exhibes at its Mallarés-based center, Sullana.

 

How much effective are their kinds on the field? There’s no regarding independent information, but since 1990, rice farmers have seen their harvest quite guaranteed because of those crosses, and they even have tripled the national production.

 

The problem is still the use of water and synthetizeds, that have put in alert to Users Boards across the region, especially beginning 2011 when summer rains didn’t fall. In some cases, the crop was not planted. The rice growers either offered contingence choices, except to continue planting and, eventually, planting more.

 

Meanwhile, the imported grain followed to coming into the country, and it was feared the fall-down of the national pile product. Add to this that the rice is the basis of Peruvian diet. In spite of the nutritionists and medical doctors effort, it hasn’t could substitute for cheaper and most nutritive alternatives as corn and beans, like it was suggested by Agronoticias.

 

We end to have dinner at the chifa in Piura Downtown. , paid almost 8 ddollars per capita, and I think to understand why the Chinese good-luck cat never leave to move the little clow.

 

With reports of Roberto Saavedra in Chulucanas and Carlos Talledo in Las Lomas. © 2011 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. Comment this in the box below or on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Would you like to know the places quoted in this story? Write us at factortierra@gmail.com for more information.