Welcome to Outer Voices

The Price of Rice

From Outer Voices | 00:52:00
Producers: Stephanie Guyer-Stevens
Promo / Billboard / Segment A / Break 1 / Segment B / Break 2 / Segment C /
Transcriptarrow

The price of rice is the price of life in Vietnam: the country is now the second largest exporter of rice in the world. But one out of every seven people in this country are going hungry - with not enough rice to eat. And farmers are spending more on fertilizer than they are earning from their profits. What is the real cost of the globalized economy on the human scale? And is there a practical alternative? Outer Voices travels to Vietnam and Laos, to find out.


Lao woman

War decimated the landscape of Vietnam. The drastic economic times that followed drove Vietnam into the globalizing economy at lightning speed - and the country soon became the second largest exporter of rice in the world. After the war, Vietnam catapulted into the global marketplace, fast becoming the second largest producer of rice in the world. But the price of this rice is still being calculated: one out of every seven people in VIetnam goes hungry, for lack of rice, and farmers are spending more on chemical fertilizer than they are earning in profits. Outer Voices travelled to Vietnam and Laos to see first hand what environmental leader, Tranh Thi Lanh, has done to create a movement for sustainable agriculture in this region.

This is a story about farming - the pressures of global economy on people and land, the deep spiritual relationships that people develop with land, and that they in turn use to preserve it. And underneath that, there's what it is to build an environmental movement in Vietnam, after agent orange.

Reviews

"Thank you for sending me “Price of Rice” ….we will definitely air this first-rate documentary on during our Public Affairs Hour on WDCV FM, Carlisle, PA.  What a splendidly edited and crafted piece."
- Davis C. Tracy, PhD
WDCVFM

Sponsors

The Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
The LEF Foundation
The Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation
And many other generous donors for their support. 


Content for Radio Stations:

» The Hula Lesson

» Girls from Cambodia

» The Story of Lata

» Kawthoolei

» The Price of Rice

© 2009 Outer Voices