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A new report by the World Bank slams the hybrid rice programmes of the Government of the Philippines as expensive wastes of resources that have done nothing to improve the lives of small farmers. The harsh critique of the hybrid rice programmes, both the Hybrid Rice Seed Program dating back to 2001 and the GMA program launched in 2002, is contained within an otherwise bland review of the government's public agricultural expenditures, full of World Bank rhetoric supporting priovatisation.

It's worth quoting the report at length becuse it pulls together some scarcely known details about the hybrid rice programmes, especialy when it comes to the millions of dollars in expenditures. From the report:

"The largest slice of Major Final Output expenditures (MFO 1) (about 85 percent) was allocated to the GMA rice program, in particular for the Hybrid Seed Commercialization Program. In 2003-2005, the allocations for seed procurement and distribution as well as the distribution of other rice seeds and fertilizers/ pesticides accounted for 54.2 percent of total MFO 1 and 70.3 percent of the GMA rice program (Table 14)." (p.21)

(Note: 1 USD = 47 PhP)

.... Despite the sizeable amount of money and public human resources spent, the Hybrid Seed Commercialization Program did not produce much net social benefit. The program was implemented by PhilRice, the state-owned agency tasked to monitor the performances of seed growers, distribute seeds and other inputs (Table 15), collect repayments for supplied seeds from farmers, and provide technical assistance to seed users.29 The adoption of hybrid seeds by farmers has been slow, reaching peak coverage of 11 percent of total rice area in 2005. The size of the target area was bigger than the actual area planted with hybrids because of seed deterioration and geographic/time mismatch between demand and supply. While the rate of hybrid seed adoption increased from 5 percent in 2004 to 11 percent in 2005, the drop-out rate revealingly ranged from 50 to 99 percent (Table 17)....." (p.21)

"....The structure of incentives distorted the farmers’ choice of hybrids and between hybrids and inbreds. The distortion led farmers to grow less socially profitable hybrids over the more socially profitable inbreds. Moreover, the hybrid seed subsidy hampered agricultural diversification by diverting some farmers from producing alternative agricultural products." (p. 23)

"....The program resulted not only in the inefficient and over-use of under-priced seeds and other inputs but also in the misallocation of limited public resources, including the time of public servants. The program substantially diverted the time of Deparment of Agriculture staff managing the program at the national level; and local government unit (LGU) staff responsible for selling the seeds, providing training, monitoring the program progress and collecting debts from participating farmers. LGU staff, for example, was given an additional PhP200 salary per month for selling hybrid seeds and distributing other inputs to farmers (as shown in Table 15). This incentive has diverted LGU staff away from more relevant local projects and the more pressing problems of agriculture and the rural areas." (p.23)

Ironically, World Bank support for hybrid rice in the Philippines and elswhere continues to flow through its support to the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institue and the national research stations involved in its development and promotion.

Philippines: World Bank condemns hybrid rice programme