Blood, Sweat and Takeaways - Rice

Six typical young British food consumers go to live and work alongside the millions of people in South East Asia's food production industries. They must catch, harvest and process food products that we eat every day, seeing behind the scenes of the tuna, prawn, rice and chicken industries for the very first time. They eat, sleep and live with food workers in the poorest regions of Indonesia and Thailand, surviving on the same wages. The average wage for food workers here is around three pounds a day. The group leave Indonesia behind and head to one of the poorest and most remote regions of Thailand to live and work in the rice-growing communities. They take on their toughest challenge yet, as they must survive on only the typical rice worker's wages they earn. Can they handle the back-breaking working conditions of the 90 degree heat in the rice fields, with only one banana and a slice of bread to eat? Will they be able to do enough work to afford to pay the rent on their simple wooden shack or will they end up hungry and homeless, resorting to desperate measures just to survive? Thailand is the biggest exporter of rice to the west and practically all the jasmine rice we eat in the UK comes from there. But the group are surprised at the high price being paid by the rice-growing communities forced apart from their families because of our high demand for such a cheap staple food. The heavy workload catches up with Josh, who is sent to hospital with a serious infection picked up in the mud of the rice fields. Manos must come face-to-face with the killing of his favourite food, before the group follow the migrant workers from the open spaces of the countryside to the biggest slum in Thailand, to find alternative ways to earn a living.