Asian Farmers, Scientists Hit Agrochemical TNCs’ Control on Rice

Landlessness experienced by millions of farmers in Asia is worsened by liberalization dictated by the WTO and the monopoly of agrochemical TNCs over rice production.

BY ABNER BOLOS
Gitnang Luzon News Service
Posted by Bulatlat

MUÑOZ, NUEVA ECIJA – Feliciano Gazpar, 50, a farmer in Barangay Bibiclat, Aliaga, Nueva Ecija, owns a one-hectare rice land but because he has no money to buy enough commercial farm inputs, he cultivates only about a quarter of his plot this year.

“Gusto ko mang tamnan ng palay ang lupa namin wala akong magagawa, wala naman akong mailalagay na pataba at gamot. Malulubog lang lalo kami sa utang.” (I cannot plant rice to all of my land even if I wanted to. I can’t afford to buy fertilizers and pesticides. We will only be more indebted), Gazpar said.

High farm inputs have burdened rice farmers in Central Luzon, the country’s biggest rice-producing region, since 1960 when the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was established.

IRRI has been criticized by concerned farmers and scientists worldwide for introducing high yielding rice varieties (HYVs) that require expensive farm inputs produced by giant agrochemical corporations.

WORA 2007 

Last April 3, Gazpar along with about 100 members of the Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon (AMGL, Central Luzon Peasant Alliance) held a picket in front of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) office in Munoz, Nueva Ecija to protest the government and agrochemical firms’ “collusion” to propagate genetically-engineered (GE) rice and denounce the disappearance of traditional rice varieties.

PhilRice is IRRI’s research and marketing arm based in Central Luzon. The protest was part of a week-long activity by farmers in Asia called “Week of Rice Action 2007” (WORA 2007) to “protect rice culture and resist agrochemical transnational corporations.”

Gazpar said he had to borrow money to buy three bags of Urea fertilizer costing P950 ($19.83, based on an exchange rate of P47.905 per US dollar) each and a one-liter bottle of pesticide costing almost P1,000 ($20.87) for the 2,500-square meter parcel where he planted rice. He planted vegetables in the rest of his farm.

After paying his debts at an interest rate of one cavan (50 kg. sack worth about P500 or $10.44) of palay [unhusked rice] per P1,000 ($20.87) borrowed and deducting other expenses, he estimates that he will be left with about a month’s supply of rice for food as his net income.

“Dagdagan ko man ang itatanim ko pareho rin ang mangyayari. Wala ring matitira sa amin. Yan ang ginawa ng mga ahensyang iyan” (Even if I planted more, the same thing will happen. Nothing will be left for my family. That is what these agencies did to us). Gazpar said.

Debunking government’s claim that HYVs improved the lot of farmers, AMGL Chair Joseph Canlas explained that while it is true that the average palay yield per hectare has grown, the cost of fertilizer, pesticides and other farm inputs has risen from 30 percent to 40 percent of the total production cost per hectare.

Shrinking land

Gazpar is a recipient of a certificate of land ownership award (CLOA) under the government’s land reform program. But he has been unable to pay amortization fees and is in danger of losing his land.

He laments that the government originally valued his land at P9,000 ($187.87). However, after a re-evaluation, he is now being asked to pay amortization fees worth P100,000 ($2,087.46) which he cannot earn from farming given the high cost of production. The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) also requires him to pay P1,700 ($35.49) yearly in irrigation fees.   

Many farmers in his village have lost their farms to money lenders and big landowners or their CLOAs and emancipation patents have been either revoked or cancelled because of prohibitive production costs, he said. AMGL records show that farms in Central Luzon which measure 1.5 hectares tend to shrink to 0.5 hectares and even less.

“Due to unabated land use conversion and ejectment of farmers from the land they till the total hectarage planted to rice in the region has shrunk to only 449,941 hectares from 678,532 hectares in 1985. In the process, traditional rice varieties that do not need expensive farm inputs have also been virtually wiped out,” Canlas said.

IRRI

Since IRRI was established in Los Baños, Laguna on April 4, 1960, governments in the Asian region have been encouraging their farmers to use HYVs produced from IRRI research. With funding from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, IRRI initiated the Green Revolution in 1966 to “boost rice productivity and modernize Asian agriculture.”

Through the use of HYVs, rice production in Asia doubled from 270 million tons in 1966 to 600 million tons in 2000, but poverty and landlessness also worsened during the period, according to a fact sheet from the Pesticide Action Network-Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP).

It added that aside from high production cost that negated the high yields, HYVs also brought serious problems such as soil degradation, curtailment of farmers’ rights to use and re-use seeds and toxic traits in some genetically engineered rice varieties, among others.

PAN AP, along with the Kilusang Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (KMP, Philippine Peasant Alliance), Resistance and Solidarity Against Agrochemical Transnational Corporations (RESIST) and the Asian Peasant Coalition declared March 29 to April 4 this year,  a Week of Rice Action 2007.  

WORA 2007 activities were held in India and in the Philippines where the IRRI was founded 47 years ago.

Rice bowl

Asia is the rice bowl of the world. Rice is the region’s staple food and is planted in some 134.5 million hectares in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Myanmar and the Philippines. More than 2.5 billion people in Asia consume about 97 percent of rice produced in the region.

The livelihood of 70 percent of the people in Asia depends on rice production. The staple has been part of the rich culture and tradition of Asia as early as when it was first cultivated some 7,000 years ago.

Local and traditional rice varieties numbering about 140,000 have sustained Asian rice farmers and consumers for centuries. But the number dwindled drastically in the last four decades when HYVs were introduced by IRRI.

Critics of IRRI said that the latter has destroyed indigenous rice production and brought millions of farmers into bankruptcy while bringing gargantuan profits to giant agrochemical firms like Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta.

Fields of agony 

Ujjian Halim, in a monograph titled “Rice Lands: Fields of Agony and Fields of Hope,” said that the liberalization of the rice industry started with the founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, which along with the Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) resulted in opening up of rice markets that led, in turn, to the disempowerment of rice farmers.

Asia became the biggest dumping ground of cheaply-produced rice, mainly from the US. Asian rice imports rose 300 percent (i.e., 4.8 million tons to 15.4 million tons) from 1990 to 1998 when the WTO  Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) gained headway.

From being a major rice exporter, the Philippines became dependent on rice importation, reaching a peak in 1998 when 2.2 million tons was imported. Today, the country is Asia’s top rice importer with imports averaging 600,000 million tons each year.

In Taiwan, WTO agreements resulted in a shift towards production of “guaranteed price crops” that reduced the acreage of rice production from 364,000 acres in 1997 to 272,000 acres in 2003.

In southern India, hundreds of farmers who were forced to shift from rice to cotton farming became highly-indebted to agri-business companies and committed suicide after bad harvests of cotton.

Indonesian farmers have lost about 60,000 hectares of rice lands each year while about 10,000 hectares of rice land in the Philippines was converted to other uses.

“The rate of degradation of rice lands (due to HYV farming) has gone up in Asia, making rice farming unprofitable and costly. Despite the growth in rice production, 800 million people go hungry in Asia,” Halim wrote.

Seed control

The evolution of HYV technology into the most modern genetically engineered rice varieties also tightened the grip of the agrochemical giants over seeds, the key element in rice production. The founding of the WTO in 1995 also resulted in the signing by member-countries of the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of International Property Rights (TRIPS) in the same year.

TRIPS violates the rights of farmers and indigenous peoples to save, conserve, exchange and develop genetic resources and preserve traditional rice knowledge, AnakPawis (Toiling Masses) Rep. Rafael Mariano said in a paper read in a farmers’ conference in October 2005 in Quezon City.

TRIPS gives corporations the right to own rice varieties and genes through patents.

Dr. Angelina Briones, board member of the Magsasaka at Siyentipiko para sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura (Farmers and Scientists for the Development of Agriculture), said that more than 900 rice genes have already been patented by giant agrochemical corporations.

Fifty-six percent of 609 rice genes compiled in 2000 were owned by companies like Dupont and Mitsui of Japan, while Syngenta is claiming to have invented 30,000 gene sequences of rice, Briones said in a paper read during the conference. “The patent system is clearly a misappropriation of nature’s regeneration processes and the innovations of farmers over centuries. This is robbery in broad daylight of our common genetic wealth.”

Land Ownership as Major Issue

Farmers in Asia said that land ownership remains a major issue for them.

Canlas said that while foreign agribusiness contributes to the displacement of farmers, resolving solely the problem of seed monopoly by agrochemical firms will not completely solve the misery of farmers. “Landlessness experienced by millions of farmers in Asia is worsened by liberalization dictated by the WTO and the monopoly of agrochemical TNCs over rice production. We should fight the multinationals but we can do this more realistically by fighting to own the land we till. Only through genuine agrarian reform can we hope to achieve sustainable agriculture.” GLNS/Posted by Bulatlat 

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