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In the recent Gallup International Voice of the People survey, the
Philippines ranked fifth with 40 percent of poor Filipinos going
hungry in the last 12 months. One solution being suggested is to use
genetically engineered (GE) crops to increase food production. The
leading proponents are the leading agrochemical transnational
corporations (TNC) that have reinvented themselves as “life
sciences” companies. They peddle the Malthusian line that the
world is hungry because of lack of food to sustain the ever-growing
population and that genetically engineered crops can provide world
food security and sufficiency.
The last part of the 20th century is heralded by
large multinationals as the era of the second green revolution or
the genetic revolution. In the many applications of genetic
engineering, its use in agriculture has been the most controversial
to date. The commercial release of genetically engineered crops has
generated a stir both in the scientific community and in the
business sectors in the US and Europe. The business sector and
competing large trans-national companies had qualms over patent
rights and market acceptance.
Despite the yet unresolved scientific debates,
genetically engineered crops are already in the market. Concerned
environmentalists, scientists, along with the farmers, have shown
then and again that the adverse effects of genetically engineered
crops such as allergies, genetic contamination and monopoly control
surpass its supposed benefits. The agrochemical transnational
corporations with the help of our government has then and again
promised that a technological intervention such as genetically
engineered crops will provide solution to our farmers’ problems.
This promise of better yields and better socio-economic state for
the farmers has been already given decades ago both by the same
agrochemical transnational corporations and the government in the
green revolution of the 1970s.
Where lies the problem? In the Philippines,
small farmers not only depend on the landed elite for land but also
pay a high land rent from their already meager harvest. They are at
the mercy of usurers who charge exorbitant interest rates for loans
and merchants who under price products they buy from farmers but
overprice agricultural inputs they sell to them. The available
agricultural technology remains backward. More importantly, land is
concentrated into the hands of a few landlord families while most
farmers are landless or lack enough land to sustain their families.
With little or no land to till, and with land owned by landlords,
who will benefit from any technological intervention?
These are the main cause of food insecurity in
our country and a thoroughgoing land reform is the answer to this
problem. Only then, can any kind of agricultural modernization
program will succeed in alleviating the poverty rife in our country
and put us in a genuine state of food security and self-sufficiency.
Technologies such as genetically engineered crops used in the
present context will only magnify the hardships of the farmers
instead of actually delivering any benefit. Farmers will be tied to
buying their seeds and inputs from a single corporation that
dictates what to plant, when to plant and how much will they pay for
their seeds and additional costly inputs.
Government policies only worsen the situation.
The proposed privatization of the National Food Authority and the
present liberalization of agriculture and trade under globalization
only serve to destroy the already weak agricultural sector and
strengthen dependence on huge agrochemical transnational
corporations.
In the present agricultural system in the
Philippines, landlords and agrochemical transnational corporations
will only benefit with genetically engineered because of the
lion’s share they will surely get if the promise of a better yield
with these crops materialize. On the other hand, the farmers will be
more susceptible to debts because of the higher price of seeds,
fertilizers and other inputs, which may not be reduced despite the
promises of genetically engineered crops. Terminator technologies
and other patents inherent in the commercialized genetically
engineered materials used in agriculture will only ensure higher
profit for the biotech/agrochemical companies.
Genetically engineered crops will not solve the
problem of food sufficiency and security at the present because the
root causes of those problems are the lack of land and purchasing
power. These technologies will not benefit the farmers and the
people so long as they have no control of the means of production
which is the land they till. It will not answer the needs of the
people and will only worsen the stronghold of agrochem transnational
corporations on the people’s lives. Only when the farmers have
control of their lands can they have true power to choose from among
the products of science and technology, only then can the people
realize the power to choose according to their needs.
Miss Finesa Cosico is an agriculturist of AGHAM
and is trained as an entomologist during her bachelor’s degree and
also has a master’s degree in Environmental Management from the
University of the Philippines.
prom.bound@gmail.com
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