Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Some pro-market economists have suggested that the reluctance of successive governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines–the three great Southeast Asian importers of rice where the crop is also grown in abundance –to open their rice sectors to allow higher quantities of cheaper foreign imports from such countries as Thailand and Vietnam, for example, is rooted in deeply held Asian cultural values and norms. Rather than relying on static, primordial cultural understandings, this paper argues that maintains that these governments’ protectionist rice policies have been the products of concrete historical experience and political-economic struggle. More critically, the lessons these governments have chosen to learn from their experiences and conflicts not only have helped shape their subsequent policy choices, but that the lessons themselves have been selective, self-serving, and constructed. In short, what ultimately matters have not been whether past policies were effective, but that these governments, at least in the public realm, believe they were. While there is a surfeit of evidence to refute their claims, there is also evidence in support of them. Therefore, to better grasp the rice politics of these rice-deficit countries, we need to understand how the production successes of the Green Revolution shaped rice policies for decades even as technological advancements of the Green Revolution faded. These production successes led to an institutional entrenchment of vested interests along with the belief that through government intervention achieving self-sufficiency in rice is an obtainable and therefore worthy goal.