Thailand, Japan and US—The Ag Ties That Bind

By Neil Melançon
Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation

There are just some songs that I just don’t like. There are also songs that I used to like, but overplaying them made me sick of them. I’m not even sure from one day to the next what I’ll be in the mood to listen to, if at all—sometimes silence is indeed golden. After 14 days traveling with 30 people, this introvert is looking for some of that gold when he gets home.

What I do know is that tomorrow I’m going to want to eat something. If there is a universal language, it is food.  Sure, some of the more exotic items we’ve had aren’t for everyone, but at each meal there was something everyone loved.

On a much bigger scale, I saw many similarities in the way food and ag products moved. In Kashima, Japan, that movement was easy to see. We have a grain loading terminal in Convent, Louisiana on the Mississippi River. In Kashima, that grain is unloaded. The direct movement is easy to see.

Rural Ibaraki prefecture’s landscape is very different from the states, but in those rolling hills ringed with mountains, something is very familiar. The Mizuho ranch, the largest of its kind in Japan, sees Holsteins and black beef cattle being moved around. They have a very modern carousel milking system, but similar systems can be found in the U.S.

Yes, the cattle still moo the same, too.

Speaking of cows, there was a moment of deep confusion I had in Thailand, where before me was wagon wheels, cacti and Brangus cows. I could’ve sworn for a second I was in Texas and only the view of steep-sided mountains reoriented me. The cows move through a system of grazing and pens before they’re off to slaughter. One thing they do a little bit different there is prepare them for halal slaughter, the Islamic version of kosher. While they are a Buddhist nation in Thailand, there’s a demand for halal products in markets close by that make it economically feasible.  

Not far away in rural Suphanburi, Thailand is KTIS, the largest sugar mill in the world. The place is surrounded by the same green stalks so familiar to south Louisiana. The sugar producers this year are dealing with weather problems, disease pressure and changing economics, just like back home. KTIS also struggles with convincing them that changing their ways from the same varieties, grown on tiny plots and harvested by hand to more modern practices.

One advantage KTIS has is that they are extremely vertically integrated. A producer there can get their new varieties, financing and equipment from KTIS, the same place that will send trucks to come get their cane for processing.

More than 3,000 trucks move through that facility each day during grinding, and while they’re about half the size of US vehicles, that’s still five times more capacity than Louisiana Sugar Refiners in Gramercy. KTIS can make raw sugar, refined sugar and molasses. The bagasse, the fibrous by-product of sugarcane processing, is used for two purposes. One is for power generation, just like the U.S. The other is making paper products I can only compare to Chinet back home—very durable and a viable alternative to plastic, paper and styrofoam containers. It’s a value-add product that has tantalizing prospects for increasing both producers and mill bottom lines.

Rice is definitely a language all three countries speak. In fact, in Japan, asogohan is the word they use for breakfast, but its literal meaning is morning rice. The sticky, short-grain rice they use there is seen in small plots everywhere you go once you leave the big cities. I’ve even seen plots in suburban Tokyo, along with vegetables used to make the more traditional dishes there. Rice production and its farming is an industry the Japanese fiercely protect. In fact, in the most recent trade deal that went into effect Jan 1, rice imports from the U.S. weren’t included. We got beef back into that country, but we’re no closer than we’ve ever been to mass export of rice to Japan.

As we walked through the Thai Rice Farmers National Museum, their own pride in the staple crop speaks for itself. Pottery from millennia ago and tools from stone grinders to mechanized harvesters decorate its halls.  There’s a whole section devoted to the King of Thailand’s visits to Suphanburi and each time he participated in rice cultivation rituals. It seems even the head of state there knows he too must pay tribute to the farming that has been there since before there was even a Thailand.

In a rural village not far from there, traditional rice cultivation is preserved. The group was greeted with Thai dancers, who proceeded to show the Ag Leadership class both straw-thatched huts in the rice fields and a modern rice mill. The sweet smell of Jasmine rice filled the air and was a popular buy for the class, along with traditional Thai textiles. 

One very big difference between these Asian nations and us is in the U.S., we have a feed-the-world mentality. Feeding ourselves is a given—we want to feed everyone else with our largesse. That is not the case in both countries we visited. Sure, there is some exporting, but that’s mostly seen as lagniappe. The main pre-occupation with farming in these Asian nations is to feed themselves. While our advantage is obvious, there’s also a downside—with the food supply so tenuous, people in both Japan and Thailand have a much more reverent attitude towards farming and farmers themselves. With less than two percent of the U.S. actively engaged in agriculture, we struggle to convince people that this most noble of pursuits is worth preserving. Our capacity to feed ourselves can be lost, something that is in the minds of our host countries.  

In Japan and Thailand both, American pop music blared almost everywhere we went, some of which I was already sick of back in the States. Equally speaking, I don’t think I’ll be having rice dishes anytime this weekend (say it with me: hamburger). However, I definitely am taking back many of the things that I saw on this trip, as well as a renewed appetite for Japanese, Thai and American dishes alike.  I can only hope we always appreciate whatever we eat when we get the chance to do so.