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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."

Bangladesh: Profiting from tragedy