12 May 2008

The food crisis and the hybrid rice surge

Feedback on this post  | No comments posted

A few years ago, hybrid rice looked like just another pipe dream. Despite the fanfare about through-the-roof yields, three decades of subsidies and research had failed miserably to bring hybrid rice into mass production outside of China. But the potential profits from the technology are huge. Hybrid rice seeds cannot be saved from the harvest, so farmers have to buy new seed every year. In this sense, hybrid rice is the key to building a corporate-controlled rice market, something that hardly exists in comparison with a crop like maize. Interest in the development of hybrid rice has thus never subsided and, in reality it has always been silently moving forward. Now, with the world in a major rice crisis, hybrid rice is being presented as the logical solution to boost national production the world over. The consequences of such a sudden and largescale shift from conventional rice to corporate-friendly hybrids would be devastating for small farmers -- and the future of world rice production.

Last week the Philippines Department of Agriculture signed an agreement with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that is supposed to boost rice productivity and achieve rice self-sufficiency in the country by 2010. A cornerstone of this programme is a $216 million project for the production and distribution of subsidised hybrid and certified seeds (which comes out of the budget of the government's larger FIELDS initiative). The target is to triple the number of hectares under hybrid rice cultivation to 900,000 hectares by the 2009-2010 season.

“We find this difficult to understand given the poor performance of the hybrid rice program and the many issues that have been raised against it over the years,” said Centro Saka executive director Omi Royandoyan and National Rice Farmers Council president Jimmy Tadeo. "The package is no different from those that have turned us into the world’s biggest rice importer. By subsidizing hybrid rice, we are subsidizing big seed companies like SL-Agritech, Bayer and Monsanto, when we should be using that money to support our own rice farmers. FIELDS will actually make us dependent on private companies that are not accountable to the public," they added.

The main beneficiary of the various hybrid rice schemes that the Philippines has pursued over the past decade is SL Agritech, owned by Filipino-Chinese businessman Henry Lim (see side photo).  In 2006, SL Agritech accounted for 65% of the hybrid rice seeds supplied under the country's hybrid rice programme-- earning the company over $4 million, according to some farmers' organisations. Lim argues that farmers can become millionaires by converting to hybrid rice.  “Better earnings will allow rice farmers to expand their areas and also become millionaires,” he told the Manila Times.

The few studies that have been done on the experience of hybrid rice in the Philippines paint a very different picture. Official statistics from 2003 for one town in Isabela Province, northwest of the country, show that for every hectare of hybrid rice that yielded above the national average for conventional inbred varieties, currently pegged at 4.2 mt/ha, seven hectares of the same variety yielded miserably below it. More recently, in 2007, the World Bank concluded that the Philippines' hybrid rice programmes have not produced "much net social benefit," noting a farmer drop-out rate from the programme of 50 to 99 percent. The Bank said that the conventional varieties were more "socially profitable" than the hybrids.

With the current rice crisis, the stakes are now much higher for the government's rice policy. Choosing to plow forward with IRRI on a hybrid rice programme that has so far failed is a huge gamble. But it is one that other governments are also being persuaded to take.

Indonesia, for instance, says it will spend $651 million this year to provide farmers with rice seeds, including high-yielding hybrid varieties, to boost production. Last year the government launched a programme to distribute 2,000 tons of free hybrid rice seed to farmers to be planted on over 135,000 ha of prime rice land, even though local studies did not find that hybrid rice improved production and an initial pilot programme produced disastrous results for participating farmers. (CNN recently produced a video report on hybrid rice in Indonesia, here).

This renewed drive for hybrid rice is in many ways fueled by China. On the one hand, China is focusing on hybrid rice as a way to develop its own multinational seed corporations. Much of the hybrid rice seed sold in Asia is imported from Chinese companies. The Indonesian government admits that over half of its seed needs for its hybrid rice programme will be imported from China. Bangladesh and Pakistan import the majority of their hybrid rice seeds from China, as does Burma. Vietnam has invested heavily in developing a national hybrid rice seed industry, but it too imports most of its hybrid rice seeds from China.

The Chinese seed companies not only have access to the varieties developed over decades by China's public breeding programmes, but China also provides the right climatic conditions and a cheap labour force necessary for making hybrid rice seed production economical. The giant multinational seed companies, like Syngenta and Bayer, are thus ramping up their investments in the Chinese seed industry, even though, under Chinese law they are restricted to a 49% stake. In 2007, the world's fourth largest seed company, Vilmorin/Limagrain of France, took a 46.5% stake in China's largest hybrid rice seed company, Yuan Longping Hi-tech Agriculture.

But for China, the hybrid rice gambit is not just about seeds. The Chinese government is interested in expanding its overall control of rice production beyond its borders, both to secure national rice supplies and to feed its growing teams of Chinese labourers working for national companies on mining, oil and infrastructure projects around the world. Beijing is currently considering a proposal drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture that would make supporting offshore land acquisition by Chinese agribusiness a central government policy.

Burma is one country that has been a focus for the outsourcing of hybrid rice production by Chinese business, with the support of the military junta. In an August 2007 exposé of the hybrid rice programme in Northern Burma, near the Chinese border, freelance journalist Clifford McCoy describes how four consecutive years of poor harvests with Chinese hybrid rice varieties have driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming. "After successive bad harvests and lacking the funds to service their debts, many farmers have been forced to sell their land, in many instances to the same Chinese business people who sold them the seeds, fertilizers and pesticides," says Clifford. "Farmers who cannot afford to pay off their debts incurred from the now higher costs of growing [hybrid] rice often end up selling their land to the same Chinese companies that sell the farming inputs. The companies then frequently turn the land into commercial rice farms." 

Télécharger ici (WMV)

Similar scenarios are playing out much further from China's borders. On April 30, 2008, France's TF1 television news reported on a Chinese effort to outsource rice production to Africa (see video above). The news report investigated a 10,000 hectare project in Cameroon, managed by a Chinese company, which, through an agreement with the Cameroonian government, is producing rice for export to China. During the 2006 Africa-China Summit, China agreed to establish 10 agricultural centres on the African continent and delegations of Chinese rice experts and businessmen have already been in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique to begin projects for the production of Chinese hybrid rice varieties.

This year China's Chongqing Seed Corp announced that it had selected 300 hectares of land for production of its hybrid rice in Tanzania, beginning next year. The company says it will be contracting out production to local farmers and exporting the harvest to China. Chongqing began similar projects in Nigeria and Laos a couple years ago, but already it says it will be shelving the Laos project. 

"The system there doesn't have any leverage over farmers, so labour is not very efficient. But we can't send Chinese workers to plant there [Laos]," the company's deputy general manager Huang Zhonglun told Reuters. "They charge a lot for land rent, and there's no irrigation infrastructure so we have to rely on the rainy season."

Other foreign hybrid rice ventures by Chinese companies include Suntime International's 5,000 hectare project in Cuba and a 1,050 hectare project in Mexico. The China Daily reports that a company from Heilongjiang has a 42,000 hectare hybrid rice project in the Far East of Russia.

Some Chinese officials do question the wisdom of this outsourcing policy. "It is not realistic to grow grains overseas, particularly in Africa or South America," says Xie Guoli, deputy director of the agricultural trade promotion center at the Ministry of Agriculture. "There are so many people starving in Africa, can you ship the grains back to China?"

China, however, is not alone in its outsourcing ambitions. On May 11, the Financial Times reports that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government and other private entities have bought as much as 800,000 hectares of land in Pakistan, primarily for the production of wheat and rice to be exported to the UAE. Vietnam is beginning to look to Africa for the outsourcing of rice production too-- to make up for the 500,000 hectares in rice lands it has lost since 2001 to urbanisation and industrial development. A team of Vietnamese scientists led by Professor Vo Tong Xuan, rector of An Giang University, has been in Sierra Leone since at least 2007 to test the productivity of 50 Vietnamese varieties. Later this year, 20 Vietnamese farmers from the Mekong Delta will go to Sierra Leone to train local farmers on Vietnamese rice farming techniques. According to the website of the Government of Sierra Leone, 300,000 to 1 million hectares of land have been reserved for this "co-operation" project with Vietnam.

Xuan, who is also the senior advisor to one of Vietnam's leading rice companies, Minh Cat Tan Company Ltd., says that, under the project, a stock company will be set up that will also look to replicate the model in other countries. He says that Vietnam is expected to become Sierra Leone’s main supplier of rice seeds in the future.

Who supplies what seed is the big question in all the current talk about getting "quality" seed to farmers to increase production to fend off the growing food crisis. How much of this seed is going to be imported? Will they be GMOs? Traditional materials? Hybrids? The glaring difference between hybrid and conventional rice is that hybrid rice seeds are supplied almost exclusively by private seed companies. The whole logic of hybrids is none other than to make the business profitable for corporations. As if proof were needed of this, the door to a public hybrid rice seed supply was slammed shut last month when IRRI, which runs the only significant public hybrid rice breeding programme outside of China, announced the formation of its Hybrid Rice Research and Development Consortium. The Consortium will bring together private seed companies to bid on the exclusive rights to IRRI's hybrid lines. The stage is thus set for a small number of multinational seed companies to take control of the global hybrid rice seed supply, just as they have with most of the world's other major crops.

With the food crisis and this renewed push for hybrid rice, the world is moving to an entirely new situation where large parts of its rice land will be planted with seeds sold by private seed companies and, in many cases, imported from zones of cheap hybrid rice seed production, notably China and India. And this shift to hybrid rice seeds is facilitating a shift to corporate farming, with companies either pursuing vertically-integrated contract production or taking direct control over land and farming, with the collusion of governments.

One lesson that should be learned from this rice crisis is that dependence breeds disaster. Those countries suffering most from the current rice crisis are those that abandoned local rice production and became dependent on imports. Today, four billion people are struggling to get enough food to eat because they cannot pay the price for rice, along with other basic staples, that the global market imposes on them. Meanwhile the corporations that have inserted themselves into a position of control in the global food system are reaping record profits. With the food crisis providing a red carpet to push hybrid rice, dependency will be created at an even more fundamental level: the seed, the most basic element of food production. It is a recipe for another food crisis: not one based on access to food, but access to the means to produce food.

22 April 2008

Philippines and beyond: rice crisis – reaping the 'fruit' of market capitalism

Feedback on this post  | No comments posted

The recent price hike in rice has caused many people, from Asia to Africa, to panic. Expectedly, perhaps, as more than half of the world's population depend on rice for food, most of them the poorest of the poor. In the Philippines alone, the 'shortage' triggered daily long queues of low-income people in different parts of Metro Manila desperate to buy a few kilos of subsidised imported rice, rationed by the government's National Food Authority. The price of commercial rice was high enough to affect even the middle class. The purported reason: short supply in the market.

However, the situation comes perfectly incongruent with the FAO prediction 20 days ago of global production increases, further harbouring suspicion among people whether the short supply is real or simply imagined. According to FAO, global rice production is expected to increase by an additional 12 million tonnes this year in all the major Asian rice-producing countries. Grain production in 2007 was a hefty 2.3 billion tons.

Some point to inflation as the real cause of the crisis, emphasising the role of a plummeting dollar in an ever-fluid free market. Indeed the devaluing dollar, still the world's reserve currency, is partly causing the price, not only of rice but practically everything, to skyrocket. The oil price is constantly rising, making all petroleum dependent production and distribution of goods and services expensive. A ton of rice sold at US$ 500 in January now fetches around US$ 1,200.

But all of this is just a sign of an inherent crisis – that of market capitalism and trade liberalisation policies that many developing countries reliant on foreign debt are forced to accept. The Philippines is a good example of a country that was pushed to ignore its own food production and liberalise its industries, including rice, in order to comply with its many commitments, such as the IMF-WB's structural adjustment programmes, the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, and FTAs with several countries. An inevitable consequence of liberalising the rice industry is its vulnerability to currency fluctuation and supply-demand manipulation. To be continuously dependent on rice imports especially while the dollar performs badly, is a perfect recipe for crisis.

In the past days, government agents were quick to barge into rice traders' warehouses – often stacked to the roof – and suspect them of hoarding. But there seems to be more logic in what some traders say, than with what the government suspects. “We are stocking rice so that people will have something to buy and eat during the lean months of July-August,” according to a rice trader in Cebu. The current government, as well as those of past administrations, regularly boast about cracking the rice cartel, but never with much impact. In any case, this suspected "hoarding" pales in comparison to what's happening at the international level. The Philippines couldn't fill its latest import tender for rice because the traders were asking for twice the already inflated prices of rice in March. "The prices are just too high," said Vic Jarina, the deputy director of the Philippines National Food Authority.

This is what happens when governments give up and liberalise, rather than tighten, control over the rice industry. The private hands are given more room to play and manipulate the game to their liking.

But it's not just the warehouse that's becoming privatised under liberalisation. Across the globe, the whole agricultural system is becoming privatised. The world's rice production, dependent on private seed and agrochemical companies, is one of the biggest industrial monocultures primarily traded by private companies in the world market. Currency fluctuation, fertilizer price spikes, oil price increases – all this makes rice, considered a political commodity, also a highly vulnerable traded good.

Just a week ago, a large contingent of farmers, joined in by 16 foreign participants from different farmers organisations and NGOs in several Asian countries, gathered in the streets of Jakarta for the culmination of a week of rice action. They had just wrapped-up activities celebrating the various initiatives of Asian farmers in securing more sustainable rice farming and production systems. They called on the government to pay attention to the importance of food sovereignty in the equitable distribution of goods. They emphasised the problems with liberalising the rice industry and the dangers of being dependent on rice imports. They criticised the inherent flaw of an agricultural production system that is reliant on seed and chemical inputs from transnational companies. In short, they were there exposing the root causes of the rice crisis, and offering solutions.

Their calls sadly fell on deaf ears. Moreover, the foreign participants, who were there in solidarity with the Indonesian farmers, were arrested and detained. In the Philippines, several farmer and peasant groups have been coming up with proposals too. The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, for example, points to several solutions: an increase by at least 25 percent in the NFA's local paddy procurement; scrapping of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act and WTO's agricultural liberalisation; stopping land use and crop conversions; implementation of genuine agrarian reform.

But so far the governments of the Philippines and Indonesia have not showed any signs that they are listening, preferring instead to turn to the very agents who led them into this mess and who continue to push the very same mantras of neo-liberalism and green revolution technologies.

26 February 2008

Bangladesh: Brac's hybrid seeds catch flack in international press

Feedback on this post  | No comments posted

In the February 20th issue of The Guardian (UK), Bangladesh's biggest NGO came under fire for its role in pushing hybrid rice and maize seeds in the country. The NGO in question, Brac, is no ordinary NGO. According to Guardian reporter Annie Kelly, Brac coordinates a whopping $300 million budget and a staff of 108,000 from a 19-story building in the heart of downtown Dhaka.

"Brac's swelling economic clout and increasing monopolisation of Bangladesh's development sector is causing concern in some ranks," writes Kelly. "There are accusations that Brac is acting like a parallel state, but one that is accountable to no one."

Kelly goes on to describe how Brac made a controversial move into hybrid seed production in the 1980s, working first with Chinese seed producers to provide poor farmers with hybrid rice and maize seeds. "Now teams of Brac scientists make their own in two Brac seed production plants. So far, it has cornered much of the hybrid seed market in Bangladesh."

From the article:

The Bangladesh government has also heavily promoted hybrid seed planting, and aims to boost hybrid seed production from 250,000 hectares in the last planting season to 1m hectares in 2008. Brac and the government are working hand-in-hand to promote the usage of drought-resistant and flood-resistant hybrid seeds developed by international multinationals.

In December, two groups - Nayakrishi Andolon, a movement of 100,000 farmers, and the Ubinig social policy research organisation - accused Brac and the government of being "unethical" and dishonest in their promotion of hybrid crops.

"A group of seed dealers and micro-credit based NGOs are active [in the introduction of hybrid seeds] and are taking advantage of the natural calamities and disadvantaged condition of the farmers. These activities are totally unethical," says Ubinig executive director Farida Akhter, who claims that Brac is complicit in deceiving farmers about true production costs of hybrid seeds and inflating predicted crop yields.

The two groups say Bangladeshi farmers have enough of their own high-yielding varieties of aman and boro rice, which need to be protected and promoted.

"The total agricultural system is now under threat," says Akhter, who blames the promotion of hybrid crops for Bangladesh's increasing mono-crop rice culture. "Due to irrigation for boro rice cultivation through extraction of underground water, the water table has gone down. There are arsenic problems in drinking water, and desertification in the northern region of the country has been intensified."

More damningly, Nayakrishi Andolon and Ubinig also accuse Brac of linking access to micro-finance loans with the purchase of a particular hybrid rice seed, along with fertiliser and pesticide.

It is a claim Brac denies. "Our borrowers always have a choice," says Brac's executive director, Mahabub Hossain. "They can either use our seed or not, but the simple fact is you can get twice as much profit from a hybrid rice or maize seed than you can from traditional strains.

Also: Available in Mandarin

01 February 2008

Malaysia: Nestlé, Sime Darby lead corporate push into padi

Feedback on this post  | Read comments (1)

Last year we reported on a new hybrid rice initiative in Malaysia being led by RB Biotech-- a joint venture operation involving one of Malaysia's most influential construction tycoons. We then heard from a representative of Bernas, the privatised descendent of Malaysia's National Rice Board and Malaysia's biggest rice miller, who told us that it was now pursuing a joint hybrid rice project with RB Biotech. Bernas is the majority owner of Bernas Marditech Seeds, a seed company spun-off from the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) which Bernas has utilised to move into upstream activities. Already, the company claims to supply 20% of the national demand for rice seeds, representing a turnover of more than RM 12 million a year.

Moves are also afoot to bring hybrid rice beyond the peninsula, to the Malaysian state of Sarawak. In November 2007, Sarawak's Agricultural Department signed a memorandum of collaboration with a Hunan-based Chinese seed company called Aviva Brothers, for the development of hybrid rice in the state. Few details of the agreement were released and this is the first we've heard of Aviva, although Hunan is a centre of hybrid rice research in China and home to companies like Yuan Longping Hi-tech Agriculture and its newly acquired AVA Seeds.  Sarawak's Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan said only that Aviva would supply the investment capital and the technology; Sarawak would provide the seeds. ""We have hundreds of local varieties that can be crossed to become hybrid padi," he said.

Shortly before the Chinese agreement, Sarawak's Agricultural Department wrapped up another deal for its farmers' rice biodiversity with one of the world's largest food companies-- Nestlé. In October 2007, Nestle unveiled its plans for a traditional red rice contract farming project in the Sarawak-west Kalimantan border area that will supply its global production of infant cereals. Initially the joint project with the department of agriculture will contract 112 farmers on around 50 ha. Nestle says it will instruct farmers on "good agricultural practices" and ways to  "modernise traditional rice farming.' Not that farmers in Sarawak need any lessons on farming their traditional varieties.  According to the state's Agriculture Research Centre (ARC) senior research officer, Teo Gien Kheng, local farmers continue to cultivate more than 100 traditional rice verities of hill and wet paddy, accounting for some 85 percent of the state's annual output of rice. Nestle selected four such red rice varieties for its project, held at the ARC genebank (Udang Halus, Udang Besar, Katek Merah and Silah Merah).

The project proponents say that they'll eventually scale the project up to 300 ha, providing significant livelihood opportunities for Sarawak farmers. But government officials are already talking about the need to invest in larger-scale farming, and, besides, Nestlé will only be paying farmers RM1 ($0.31) per kg for the rice, while in local markets traditional rice sells for between RM2.80-RM9.50 ($0.87-2.94) per kg. Plus, Nestle is already making plans to take its red rice production elsewhere, to the "rice bowl" state of Kedah on the peninsula where there is more access to irrigation and mechanisation. Nestlé says it's currently working on the national release of a red rice variety with MARDI and, "once the seeds are released, we will work with Sime Darby Bhd and implement the project in Kedah." Nestle"s plan is to jump into the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) project that the Malaysian government has tasked Sime Darby to oversee.


(Sarawak's Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr George Chan and executive director of production of Nestle Malaysia Dr Magdi Batato transplanting red rice)

Sime Darby is one of Malaysia's largest corporations. In early 2008 it will merge with a few other major Malaysian plantation companies to become the world's largest  publicly-listed oil palm company. But Sime Darby's interests extend well-beyond oil palm; it's a vertically-integrated agribusiness, involved in everything from cattle farming to fruit drinks. It also owns a 30% stake in Tesco's Malaysia subsidiary, which is fast becoming the biggest food retailer in the country. Last year, the Malaysian government tasked Sime Darby to draw-up the blueprint for the NCER, and the corporation has not surprisingly used the opportunity to convert the region into an oasis for corporate profiteering (see the detailed coverage on the NCER by Malaysian journalist Anil Netto).

Sime Darby's essentially using its control over the NCER process to drive forward and subsidise its own plans to develop fully-integrated chains of food production, based around contract production schemes to supply Tesco. As explained by Charles Santiago, coordinator of the Kuala Lumpur-based Monitoring Globalisation think tank: "What they are really doing (is) using a government-linked company and foreign multinational corporations with expertise in seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, and the entire project is underwritten by the government . . . This is a classic case of government subsidy for private capital."

The lynchpin of Sime Darby's plans is a 16 ha seed centre in the agricultural state of Perlis. It's not clear if the seed centre will be owned outright by Sime Darby or if it will operate as a quasi-public private outfit (much like Sime Darby itself). Sime Darby's reported to have put up $11 million of its own funds, while between $22-$31 million will come from the funds set aside by the government for the NCER. Either way, the R&D for the centre seems to have already been mapped out. Sime Darby says the centre will focus on developing high-yielding varieties for 10 cash crops, including rice, and, in line with this, it's already signed an R&D agreement with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) for the transfer of germplasm and their know-how with biotechnology. Sarojeni Rengam, executive director of the Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific, suspects that the centre intends to work with GM seeds. "There is a strong likelihood they might use genetically engineered seeds such as Bt corn or a herbicide tolerant corn - because they are talking about high technology," she told IPS.

According to Sime Darby's CEO, Datuk Ahmad Zubir Murshid: "These people [CAAS] have the mother. It is already patented. They are one of the top five in the world and we will JV [joint venture] with them in Perlis for certain seeds and in other areas, other seeds. They will also help us with our own seeds in palm oil."  (Note: CAAS isn't one of the top five seed companies in the world, but it does have a collaboration with Vilmorin, the world's 4th largest seed company, which recently purchased a 49% stake in the leading Chinese seed company Yuan Longping High-tech Agriculture)

CAAS says it too has reasons for venturing into Malaysia. "We spent a lot of time visiting rice and maize fields in Perlis and other states and we see huge potential...We have seen some very interesting things in Perlis. We are looking for common ground with Sime Darby so that we could begin research for the seed centre," said CAAS deputy director-general Gong Xifeng.

For Sime Darby, this is the beginning of a big future in seeds. "When I talk about agriculture, you have to have the full value chain. First, you have to have the seed in control," says Ahmad Zubir

One of the first orders of business for the new seed centre will be the commercialisation of hybrid rice seed, based on Chinese varieties. Maize is also a priority, specifically "sweet corn". In fact, Sime Darby has already launched what it calls the Amazing Kedah Sweet Corn Supply Chain Project, which involves contract farmers and plantation agriculture on a 320 ha piece of land in Bukit Tangga. Under the NCER, Sime Darby will expand this project to feed its processing factory
which will then distribute fresh, frozen or processed sweet corn through the new Tesco distribution centre in the State of Ipoh and into the Tesco network within Malaysia and abroad. The company, for example, is already targeting Tesco's China operations for exports.

While the project initially intends to contract with small-scale farmers, Sime Darby will scale things up as quickly as possible. "The land is too small to introduce mechanisation. This is where in our NCER, our major proposal is to introduce mini-estate cooperative scale farming." said Ahmad Zubir.

Zubir explains that under the NCER landowners will not be asked to sell their land but instead will be encouraged to appoint a professional company to manage their land in return for a fixed monthly salary and profit-sharing from the produce. "We are looking at the commercial agriculture, that is, getting big companies involved in the downstream and also participating in the upstream, that is, in large scale farming, " said Zubir. Precisely where big corporations like Nestlé come in.

Also: Available in Mandarin

11 December 2007

Bangladesh: Profiting from tragedy

Feedback on this post  | No comments posted

 
Last week, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the organisation UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) and Nayakrishi Andolon, a movement of over 100,000 farmers, organised a press conference to denounce the government and seed companies for taking advantage of recent crop losses caused by natural disasters to promote hybrid rice.

Bangladesh has been hit hard by floods and cyclones this year. Farmers saw their freshly transplanted rice crops washed away during floods in July and August, while others had their rice crops destroyed by a cyclone just before harvest. All-in-all, national news reports say around 2.2 million tons of rice were lost and the country's had to import more grains to make-up for the shortfall. Understandably, the government now wants to increase food production. But, as UBINIG and Nayakrishi Andolon point out, the problem is that the government's plan focuses on expanding the production of hybrid rice.

The organisers of the press conference said that the government is planning to boost hybrid rice production this season to 1.0 million hectares compared to only 0.25 million hectares in the last year's late season. To move the programme along, they say that, throughout Bangladesh, hybrid rice varieties are being heavily adverstised with attractive songs and dances about bumper harvests and they say that the government is handing-out inputs, like fertilizer and pesticides, to farmers who take the seeds.
 
"Why are farmers again being compelled to go for cultivation dependent on fertilizer-pesticide-irrigation?" UBINIG and Nayakrishi Andolon ask in a statement released at the conference. "The fact is that the government is going to offer subsidy on fertilizer, pesticide, electricity and pump machine, etc. to introduce hybrid seeds in the interest of the company. It is known to every one that the farmers will not be able to save and use hybrid seeds for next year. They will be again bound to buy seeds from the market with higher price. This sort of decision is a sheer neglect of the real needs of the farmers. Bangladeshi farmers have enough of their own high yielding varieties of aman and boro rice, which needs to be protected and promoted." 

UBINIG and Nayakrishi Andolon maintain that if the hybrid seeds were really good, the companies would have not to wait for such vulnerable situation. They point out that the hybrid rice Alok- 6201 (developed by Hybrid Rice International Ltd.) was introduced on large scale in 1998 after a flood by the ACI seed company. The company claimed that yields would increase by 20-25% but was silent about the high costs of production and the fact that farmers would not be able to save seeds for the next season. According to UBINIG and Nayakrishi Andolon the price of hybrid rice Alok- 6201 seed was 20 times higher than the seed of local varieties and they say it was only purchased by farmers because the NGO BRAC compelled the farmers to take these seeds along with fertilizer and pesticide to access micro-credit loans. (This earlier promotion of hybrid rice is covered in here)

The organisers of the press conference also decried the promotion of rice at the expense of other key food crops. "This monoculture calculation is wrong, because it is leading to less production of other essential food including other cereal crops, fish, livestock, poultry birds and other uncultivated sources of food. The total agricultural system is now under threat. Due to irrigation for (late season) boro rice cultivation through extraction of under ground water the water table has gone down. There are arsenic problems in drinking water. Desertification in the northern region of the country has been intensified. Arsenic has entered in the food chain. That means this system has not only destroyed our food sector but also has exposed us to take poisons like arsenic with food. The civil society must stand against this policy, otherwise some NGOs and companies will cause total damage to all of us."

The organisers pointed out that of the 44 hybrid rice varieties registered for comercialisation in Bangladesh there is only one hybrid, BRRI-1, that was developed in the country. One variety was imported from India, but all  the rest are imported from China. On the other hand, they said that there are as many as 62 varieties of local rice available with the farmers for the use in the late season that can be grown without any chemical fertilizers and pesticides. But, "since monopoly seed business can not be established with the local varieties of rice, so the efforts are there to destroy the local seed system in order to create market for seed from the companies."

Hybrid rice blog archive >>