‘Pangako sa 'Yo’
President's One Million Jobs Program Headed for Disaster, Say Farmers and Scientists
(First of two parts)

President Gloria Macpagal-Arroyo's job creation plan is not moving as expected since its flagship program, the Hybrid Rice Commercialization Program (HRCP) is, according to farmers and scientists, inherently flawed.

By Hetty Alcuitas
People’s Media Center Reports
Reposted by Bulatlat.com

"There can be a million jobs in agriculture and fisheries. Within the year, the Department of Agriculture shall begin to implement the program to generate them. We will approach this with a sense of urgency. I do not want the one million jobs to come in the long term. I want a timetable. I want to identify accountabilities. I want milestones."  
- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo State of the Nation Address (SONA)       July 23, 2001

More than a year after President Arroyo promised to create one million jobs in agriculture, instead of creating milestones, she is changing directions. This is according to an interview with Lulu Ilustre, chief of staff of Luis Lorenzo Jr., presidential adviser of the One Million Jobs Office.

"It was originally one million jobs in agriculture, but now the President saw that we are having modest success in the countryside, [so she decided to shift] here [to] Metro Manila where there is a greater need and a lot more people who need jobs," says Ilustre.

Arroyo's job creation plan is not moving as expected since its flagship program, the Hybrid Rice Commercialization Program (HRCP) is, according to farmers and scientists, inherently flawed.

Hybrid hype

The government has been aggressively promoting and implementing the HRCP since March this year. At that time, Arroyo issued Executive Order (EO) 76 transferring the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) as the lead implementing agency from the Department of Agriculture to the Office of the President. She also realigned P450 million from the Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Program to the HRCP.

In October last year, the President appointed Luis P. Lorenzo Jr. first as presidential adviser for creating One Million Jobs and in March 2002, as chair of the PhilRice board of trustees.

Lorenzo is former chair and chief executive officer of Del Monte-Philippines and Lapanday Holdings Corporation, one of the country's top agribusiness companies. He also made the news recently when he sued anti-pesticide activist Dr. Romy Quijano and daughter Ilang-Ilang for libel after they published a report about possible pesticide poisonings in a community near a Lapanday banana plantation in Mindanao. Similar charges filed by Lorenzo against Quijano had been earlier dismissed by the court.

The government also set aside P500 million in soft loans through Quedancor for farmers to plant hybrid rice and set up an extensive program of promotion, training and distribution. This is in order to meet its target of planting 300,000 hectares and producing 14 million metric tons (the recognized level of rice self-sufficiency) by 2004.

There are now several hybrid rice varieties approved for use in the Philippines. The first nationwide variety, PSB Rc72H called "Mestizo", was developed by IRRI in 1994 and released in 1997. Agrochemical transnational corporations Aventis and Monsanto have since developed two other hybrid rice varieties that they are now promoting in the Philippines.

Lorenzo’s One Million Jobs Office reports that since last year 27,000 hectares of land nationwide have been planted with hybrid rice.  

The high-yield solution

In a recent newspaper article, Lorenzo said that hybrid rice would benefit farmers and consumers. "We are hoping that in 2004 we need not import rice every year," he wrote. "We can produce all the rice we need using only 1.5 to 1.7 million hectares of the total 2.5 million hectares of land we currently devote to rice production."  

The Philippines, a country that used to be self-sufficient in rice, is the world's fifth largest rice importer since 1994. Still, Ilustre says that the HRCP will make farmers more efficient and make them “more competitive globally”. She adds the hybrid rice’s higher yield will give farmers more income.

Indeed, hybrid rice advocates say this variety can produce up to 25 percent more than ordinary rice. The highest reported yield obtained in trials during the 1998-99 cropping season was 12 tons per hectare. The average inbred rice variety yields 2.7 to 3.1 tons per hectare.

But some farmers and scientists are not biting, saying that the problem of low rice production in the Philippines is not due to low-yield inbred varieties. Rafael Mariano, who chairs the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Philippine Peasant Movement), says low rice production in the Philippines is part of a backward, export-oriented, import-dependent and foreign-dominated agricultural system. He, along with other farmer and scientist organizations, are warning against the government's aggressive implementation of hybrid rice technology, saying it will devastate the conditions of poor farmers and the environment, threaten food security, and consolidate the corporate takeover of agriculture.

From Green Revolution to Gene Revolution

Igmedio "Boy" Facunla, a farmer from Guimba, Nueva Ecija, and vice chair of Magsasaka at Siyentipiko Para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura (Masipag, Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development), does not believe the government's hybrid rice hype. His own experience points to the devastating effect of the Green Revolution promoted during the Marcos era through its Masagana 99 program.

Says Facunla: “Sabi nila ang Green Revolution ay makabubuti para sa magsasaka. Pero, tingnan mo ngayon kung ano yung epekto. Kung karamihan ng mga magsasaka ay mahihirap, mas matindi ang epekto sa kanila ng hybrid rice. Lalo nang maghihirap ang mga farmers (They said the Green Revolution would be beneficial to farmers. But look at the results. Most peasants are poor and hybrid rice will only make them poorer).”

The Green Revolution was spurred in 1966 when IRRI released its IR8 rice seed, dubbed the "miracle rice”. IR8 and other high-yielding varieties (HYVs) were first introduced into the post-WWII Third World by the US-based Rockefeller and Ford foundations through agricultural research institutions like IRRI.

Not long after the start of the Green Revolution, however, farmers and scientists were declaring it a catastrophe. HYVs required vast amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which dramatically increased the cost of production and severely damaged the environment. The push to monocropping of HYVs also led to the destruction of biodiversity and traditional crops. By the mid-1980s, just two HYVs occupied 98 percent of the entire rice-growing area of the Philippines.

Despite the damage wrought by the Green Revolution, its advocates through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) began to shift their agricultural research to genetic engineering (GE) and biotechnology in the early 1980s. This was reportedly to improve yields and end world hunger.

CGIAR, which endorsed IRRI in 1970, coordinates a global network of 16 International Agricultural Research Centers. The centers are funded through aid programs, financial institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank), agrochemical transnational corporations and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). CGIAR spends US$340 million on agricultural research and development every year.

According to a study written by Devlin Kuyek, entitled, “Hybrid Rice in Asia: An Unfolding Threat,” an international consortium is promoting the hybrid rice technology in Asia.

“Development and Use of Hybrid Rice Outside of China” is an international project that brings together IRRI, the FAO, and the Asia Pacific Seeds Association (APSA), a group of all the major seed companies operating in Asia, says Kuyek. The sole funder for the project is the ADB. From 1998-2000 the ADB provided a total of US$1.5 million for the project.

Manipulating nature for profit

A study by the Pesticide Action Network-Asia Pacific (PAN-AP), entitled "Laying the Molecular Foundations of GM Rice Across Asia", reveals that rice only later became a research priority since "the private sector had difficulty manipulating cereals for the development of viable and profitable hybrids”. Because rice is naturally self-pollinating, it is impossible to cross-pollinate two different varieties unless one is a sterile male plant.

Hybrid rice was developed in 1970 by Chinese research scientists who discovered a male sterile plant in a population of native wild rice. They cross-pollinated two genetically different plants to produce an offspring reportedly stronger and higher yielding than  its parents, a quality called "heterosis" or "hybrid vigor".  

But heterosis is only found in the first generation of seeds and its hybrid vigor disappears with each planting. With each cropping season, hybrid rice farmers must purchase new seeds (called by critics as "terminator seeds") to get the high-yield effect. Kuyek calls this the "myth" of heterosis and cites farmers who call hybridization "the scam of the century".

High costs

To promote the hybrid rice technology in the Philippines, the government has pledged to subsidize half the cost of hybrid seeds, which sell at P120 per kilogram. The actual price of hybrid seeds is 10 to 15 times higher than the price of ordinary seeds, yet fewer are required per hectare than inbred seeds. Because hybrid rice is also recommended to be transplanted, it also requires more labor.  However, this additional production cost, government officials say, will more than be made up for by the income derived from a higher yield.  

To prove how much higher farmers can expect their incomes to increase, a recent PhilRice newsletter features farmer's testimonies that claim a considerable rise in their incomes due to hybrid rice. One farmer is quoted as saying he can now send his children to college thanks to hybrid rice. Another even claims, "because of my earnings from hybrid rice, I had the chance to go to the US with my wife."

But critics of hybrid rice say the added cost of purchasing seeds is a huge obstacle to small farmers who are already caught within a cycle of feudal and semifeudal exploitation. Most do not even own the land they till and are burdened by costs of land rent and other forms of exploitation.

Kuyek’s study, the result of a recent collaborative work of NGOs in Asia, says, "The most glaring drawback with hybrid rice is that it is simply not intended for small farmers." PMC Reports 

(Conclusion: GMA’s Hybrid Rice Program is Not For Small Farmers)

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