Fair Trade Rice from Thailand

Back before Thanksgiving, I interviewed a man named Mathieu Senard.

Senard, who is French, now lives in San Francisco and is the CEO of a company called Alter Eco, which imports fair trade foods from all around the world to the U.S.

Our conversation focused specifically on the varieties of rice his company sells, which is grown in Thailand.

Alter Eco works with two different cooperatives in Thailand to produce one variety of white jasmine rice, two different red rices and a purple rice.

Long before I spoke with Senard, I'd always wondered why jasmine rice was called "jasmine." I'd never asked anyone, though, thinking it was just a name.

However, Senard cleared that all up for me. He told me that jasmine rice is actually native to Thailand and that the original grain, the heirloom grain, smells like jasmine when cooked. It is this heirloom grain that his cooperatives produce.

The fact that most of the jasmine rice sold today smells nothing like jasmine is, as far as I'm concerned, proof of just how far-removed from its roots and how mass-produced it has become.

I haven't tried the box of Alter Eco white jasmine rice sitting in my kitchen cupboard yet, so I don't know just how much like jasmine it smells.

But now that my article with Senard has been published, I'm reminded it is there waiting for me to cook it up and give it a sniff.

If you're interested in reading all about Alter Eco rice, you can go here:

Alter Eco rice builds healthy communities one bag of rice at a time.