For Anakpawis Representative and KMP Chairperson Rafael Mariano, IRRI is doing nothing good for Filipino farmers and the Philippine agriculture. “It continues to be the number one perpetrator of anti-farmer rice research in Asia.”
For Cosico, lasting solutions include the outright rejection of globalization policies, providing economic and political reforms to local agriculture through the genuine agrarian reform program, and re-energizing agricultural science and technology for national industrialization.
Cosico maintained that agriculture is the base for industrialization. It will provide the means of subsistence for the people and raw materials for industries. With the development of agriculture the rural population would become a vast market for industrial products and the main reservoir of the labor force for industry and other sectors of the economy.
Land reform
In a statement, AGHAM and RESIST (Resistance and Solidarity Against Agrochemical Transnational Corporations) expressed support for House Bill No. 3059 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) and for the House Bill No. 3958 or the Rice Industry Development Act (RIDA). Both bills are being sponsored by progressive partylist representatives from Anakpawis (Toiling Masses), Bayan Muna (People First) and Gabriela Women’s Party.
