The humble rice bowl: a critical analysis of the constitutional and legal effects of the global trading frameworks for rice on the Tolima province of Colombia

Rice is the third most farmed crop in the world after maize and wheat. It is consumed everyday by more than half of the global population, having been a staple of human diets for at least eleven millennia. And while academic literature in the biology and agronomy of rice is more than abundant, regrettably the same does not apply to its trade, or to the effects of international and local legal frameworks within the so called “spaghetti bowl” of global trade including the World Trade Organization and Free Trade Agreements on non-Asiatic rice producing nations.

In view of these facts, this thesis asks: What is the nature of the legal framework that allows rice to be traded internationally? What are the legal effects of apparently imbalanced trade agreements between developed and developing nations for a staple like rice? What is the role of Colombian constitutional law in the rice trade amid the somehow recent integration of the country in the legal global economy? And how do the integration of those agreements to Colombian law, via constitutional assessment fit in the entrenched neoliberal philosophies that have come to dominate legal systems and consider them as the main tools for development?

What this thesis finds is that rice is predominantly an inelastic product, with demand remaining constant around the globe from a variety of consumers which include buyers with medium to high purchasing power, but for the most part from the world´s poorest inhabitants. Rice´s supply is also a complicated story. Since for the most part it is consumed within kilometres of where it is farmed, upsetting the availability of the grain for international trading and turning it despite its preponderance in food production and in human diets, into a rather disappointing commodity.

As a result of this, the cereal´s political nature is constantly emphasised and explain why it has been practically impossible to discipline its trade from a multilateral perspective, and instead most exchanges of the cereal have taking place for more than a century within the legal frameworks provided by barters, free trade agreements and government to government contracts conducted by state-owned foodstuff enterprises, that are riddled with regulations at the national level in the absence of representative private actors. Furthermore, because of rice´s political sensitivity, cultural affinity and place in people´s diets, nations historically have shown a marked inclination to overregulate the crop, therefore seriously amplifying ripple effects on markets during times of crisis, as mirrored in the last two global food crises.

Likewise, because rice is an agricultural product, it is plagued by the many imbalances that affect agricultural markets, particularly protectionism. And although for years mounting evidence proved that for the most part protectionist practices were deployed by industrialised nations, with notable examples being the United States, the European Union, and Japan, nowadays it is possible to clearly recognise that as countries develop, they are prone to do the same, therefore distorting global agricultural markets all around.

Similarly, this research corroborates that while the common international economic and trading narrative surrounding agreements of economic and trading nature, indeed portrays them as the main avenues for development, their outcomes are more nuanced and complex than they appear, as they intertwine domestic and international interests. This turns out to be self-evident in the Colombian case-study, of the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (USCTPA), as it embraces a wide range of aspects that include dramatically different levels of development, international division and specialisation of labour; legal traditions and therefore procedures for incorporating international agreements to national legislations; the multifaceted dynamics of illegal drugs trafficking, and in the case of Colombia, the constitutional evaluation carried out by the country´s Constitutional Court. Certainly, the Colombian case study shows that at least for rice, the spaghetti bowl has become nothing less than untangled thanks to the provisions of the USCTPA, even if the correlation between Free Trade Agreements and development in Colombia remains to be proven and that somehow, in the case of the USCTPA continue to be bittersweet for many sectors involved, including rice, despite its emergence as a sensitive and therefore protected product, protection that slowly but surely is running out.

Finally, this research finds that the decision of incorporating the USCTPA to Colombian law via constitutional assessment of the country’s Constitutional Court, mostly rested upon the political perspective, rather than a legal one. This is clearly discernible from the arguments replicated by the ruling majority of the bench, which in several instances seemed to bypass the need to consider and apply in a conscientious matter, instruments provided by the national legal system, such as the abstract and concrete control of constitutionality, and the relinquishment of Colombian jurisdiction on many aspects of the USCTPA, in the name of neoliberal arguments, with a deficient legal and economic analysis of the outcomes.