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AGRICULTURE Secretary Arthur Yap revealed on Thursday that part of
the P3-billion research fund of the Department of Science and
Technology can be used for the biotechnology projects of the
Agriculture department.
Yap made this disclosure during the Seminar on
Progress and Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops in
2007 at the Hotel InterContinental Manila in Makati City.
Yap explained that P600 million to P1 billion of
the P3-billion research fund of the Science department can be
mobilized by his department as ordered by President Gloria Arroyo
during the latest Cabinet meeting.
Yap also said he is studying how to increase
collaboration between the Agriculture and Science departments, and
the country’s universities in the field of biotechnology to help
raise the income of Filipino farmers.
Meanwhile, the International Service for the
Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) reported that area
planted to biotech corn significantly increased to 300,000 hectares
in 2007 from 200,000 hectares in 2006.
“The adoption of biotech maize in the country
[Philippines] has consistently increased every year since it was
first commercialized in 2002,” the report said.
Dr. Clive James, founder and chairman of the
ISAAA, reported that herbicide tolerant corn is now planted on
110,000 hectares, an area that is almost double that of last year,
and larger than the area planted to Bacillus thuringiensis, or
75,000 hectares.
James also said that in 2007, the worldwide
biotech crop area grew by 12 percent or 12.3 million hectares,
reaching 114.3 million hectares, the second highest area increase in
the past five years.
However, environmental group Greenpeace accused
ISAAA of spreading propaganda about benefits of genetically modified
organisms (GMO) on the behest of its transnational corporate
sponsors.
In Greenpeace’s recently released report
“Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2007,” the
group debunked ISAAA’s claim that GMO crops will help achieve the
United Nation’s Millennium Developing Goals of cutting hunger and
poverty in half by 2015.
-- Ira Karen Apanay
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