One
of the scientific advances highlighted in this year’s celebration of the
International Year of the Rice is the development of hybrid rice technology and
its contribution to securing food for half of the world’s population.
To
a group of Filipino farmers and scientists, however, hybrid rice technology is a
pest that merits no hype. In its stead, the group wants farmers to go back to
the “time-tested” indigenous or traditional rice farming.
In
promoting the hybrid rice technology, the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations, which leads the celebration, says that hybrid rice
technology is a “new opportunity” for rice farmers as it offers a “yield
advantage of 15 to 20 percent, or more than a ton of paddy per hectare, over the
best bred varieties.”
Hybrid
Rice Is a Bane
Farmer-Scientist
Partnership for Development, Inc. (FSPDI), a group of Filipino farmers and
scientists, is staunchly opposed to the hybrid rice technology.
Georie
Pitong, FSPDI spokesperson, argues that indigenous or traditional rice farming
is not “a backward technology” as “indigenous rice farmers cultivate their
farms with rice varieties that are biologically and genetically diverse, and are
resistant to pests and diseases.”
She
emphasized, “Diversified and integrated farming using locally and ecologically
sound practices has maintained the needed major and trace soil nutrients that
staple crops such as rice and corn need.”
Pitong
explains that in indigenous farming, farms are naturally rich in soil nutrients,
and that farms “did not even recognize the need for external chemical inputs
such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The farmers do not see the
need to be tied to loan sharks or loans with government programs. The
farmers were satisfied with their farming system. The farmers are truly
industrious with doing agriculture. Farmers become good and strong stewards of
traditional seeds and germplasm.”
Birth
of Hybrid Rice
According
to FAO, it was in 1974 that Chinese scientists succeeded in transferring the
male sterility gene from wild rice to create the cytoplasmic genetic
male-sterile (CMS) line and hybrid combination.
“The
first generation of hybrid rice varieties are three-lines hybrids and produce
yields that are about 15 to 20 percent greater than those of improved or
high-yielding varieties of the same growth duration. Developments in hybrid rice
technology have resulted in two-lines hybrids with yield advantages of 5 to 10
percent over those of the equivalent three-lines hybrids,” FAO reported.
In
pitching the technology, FAO cites the case of China that was able to feed more
than one billion people through its hybrid rice program. The program resulted in
an increase in China’s national average yield of rice from 3.5 to 6.2 tons per
hectare. FAO says hybrid rice is the answer to the increasing demand for rice,
which is expected to exceed production in many countries in Asia, Africa and
Latin America.
FAO
further adds “the use of hybrid rice has revealed better heterosis (the marked
vigor or capacity for growth often exhibited by crossbred animals or plants) in
unfavorable soil and climatic conditions – such as saline soils and uplands
– than in favorable irrigated rice conditions. In Egypt, hybrid rice performed
well in saline conditions, where it yielded 35 percent more than inbred
varieties.”
And
“because of its yield advantages,” FAO emphasizes, “hybrid rice technology
is very important for the food security of rice-consuming countries where arable
land is becoming scarce, population is steadily increasing and labor is
cheap.”
Modern
Farming
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“Modern
rice farming has paved the way to more diseases and pest
infestation,” says Georie Pitong (FSPDI spokesperson)
|
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In
the Philippines, where rice is the staple food, the Green Revolution program of
the government in the 1960s introduced “modern agriculture” and changed the
agriculture landscape. “The farmers were made to believe that traditional or
indigenous farming cannot feed the world,” Pitong said.
“Instead
of helping these farmers improve what they already have, programs were
introduced to change agriculture into agribusiness, contrary to the ultimate
purpose of farming then which was to earn more money so they can buy food.”
In
“modern agriculture”, popularized successfully by the Philippine government,
farm inputs are manufactured and sold by big foreign agrochemical firms. Pitong
said while farmers produce higher yields using hybrid rice varieties, they also
have to buy synthetic and chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides from the
firms that engineered the seeds.
Pitong
says that because farmers lack the capital, they need to get loans. “In
the process, traditional seeds were lost in their farms. The rice farming under
the modern way (using modern and high external input dependent seeds and
technology) has resulted in loss of biodiversity in the farm, and has depleted
the rich and fertile soils. And since farming is vulnerable to natural
calamities, farmers become indebted and forced to sell their lands to pay off
their loans.”
Another
reason why hybrid rice farming is disadvantageous, Pitong points out, is that
“modern rice farming has paved the way to more diseases and pest infestations,
brought about by the chemical inputs they applied on their farms. Farm
soils and waters were contaminated and no more safe for humans, animals and the
environment.”
Higher
Yield
The
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the leading institution on rice
research in this part of the world based in Laguna province, Philippines, has
demonstrated yields that are 1 – 1.5 tons per hectare higher than modern
inbred varieties in farmers’ tropical rice fields in such countries as India,
the Philippines, Vietnam, and Bangladesh.
Due
to this, more farmers across Asia are going into hybrid rice farming. IRRI says
that in 2003, the area under rice hybrids increased to 280,000 hectares in
India, 100,000 in the Philippines, and 600,000 in Vietnam, increases of 40, 170,
and 25%, respectively. Bangladesh and Indonesia have started commercializing
this technology to cover about 10,000 and 5,000 hectares, respectively.
Questionable
Technology
“Indigenous
rice farmers cultivate their farms with rice varieties that are biologically and
genetically diverse, and are resistant to pests and diseases.”
Georie Pitong
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But
it is not only Pitong’s group that thumbs down hybrid rice. In a paper titled
“Hybrid
Rice in Asia: An Unfolding Threat,” organizations like Biothai (Thailand),
GRAIN, KMP (Philippines), PAN Indonesia, Philippine Greens and UBINIG
(Bangladesh), along with Drs. Romeo Quijano (UP Manila, College of Medicine,
Philippines) and Oscar B. Zamora (UP Los Baños, College of Agriculture,
Philippines), shrugged down the “stubborn equation of linking hybrid rice with
progress.”
The
group said in the paper the technology “must be questioned” because it
“has demonstrated minimal impact to improve yields. Significant increases in
yield are rare, if not site specific; there are no cost-effective methods for
seed production; and studies show that hybrids require more pesticides because
they are more susceptible to disease and pests.”
Pitong,
meanwhile, said that the use of hybrid technology and even genetic engineering
will further compromise the farmers’ ability to produce food and fulfill their
obligations as stewards of genetic resources.
She
said, “The farmers in the process lost from their hands the control over
seeds, because they will have to buy new seeds every planting season. They
become dependent on external inputs, for without using the chemical inputs for
the hybrid seeds they use won’t give the desired yield.”
She
added, “The modernization of agriculture, as exemplified by the high-yielding
varieties of the Green Revolution and now the hybrid rice, and in the near
future, the genetically engineered Bacterial Blight (BB) rice and golden rice,
point to the direction of an industrial agriculture, patterned after the high
input, corporate agriculture practiced in developed countries.
“Dependent
on imported, petroleum-based inputs, and relying heavily on government subsidies
to motivate farmers, these technologies have proven their ineffectiveness in
solving the problem of food insecurity and hunger.”
Rice
Year
IYR
organizers say that this year’s celebration “will raise awareness of the
importance of benchmark rice-based systems, and will carry out activities to
safeguard such systems and redress their erosion” and its fundamental aim
“is to promote and guide the sustainable development of rice and rice-based
production systems, now and in the future.”
To
Pitong and those who do not see a bright future with hybrid rice, farmers should
go back to the “time-tested” indigenous rice farming.
*
Rexcel John B. Sorza is a journalist from the Philippines
and a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Communication and Management. He was
recently the runner up in the Water Media Network Journalists’ Competition and
received his award at the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan. Your emails
will be forwarded to him by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
