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On August 27th we blogged about a report from Asia Times revealing how a hybrid rice programme in Burma is leaving farmers with debt and failed crops, while enriching the pockets of Burma's military junta and Chinese businessmen. We have now learned that one of the Chinese corporations involved in the programme is Sichuan Nongda High-Tech Agriculture, the private arm of Sichuan Agricultural University's Rice Research Institute.

(Photo: Sichuan Nongda executives posing with Burma's junta in fields of hybrid rice in Burma)

Nongda is the exclusive holder of the rights to the hybrid rice and maize varieties developed by Sichuan Agriculture University, one of the leading developers of hybrid rice in China, as well as the biotech R&D from the Sichuan Agricultural Biotechnology Engineering Research Center.

The company's activities in Burma date back to 1991 when it started trials of hybrid rice varieties with the governmnet in the northern Shan State-- the location of the current Burmese hybrid rice programme reported on by the Asian Times. In 2003, they expanded into the states of Mandalay, Yangon and Michela. The company says its Gangyou ("Kangyou") varieties "are very popular there". Quite a contrast to what was reported about them by the Asia Times, which claimed that "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. On other occasions land is simply confiscated by militia groups or local business people working in cahoots with the SPDC to create large commercial farms."

Exaggerations are nothing new to China's hybrid rice seed industry. When we visited farmers in Nongda's hometown province of Sichuan in 2006, we saw no signs of China's supposed hybrid rice miracle. The farmers had plenty to say, however, about their meagre incomes and relentless battles with pests and diseases. Now Nogda's exporting this "miracle" outside of China. It launched field tests in Vietnam in 1999 and says it now exports over 1000 tonnes of hybrid rice seed to the country every year. Its Gangyou 527 variety was exported to Guinea in June 2006 and Nognda has ongoing collaborations in Ethiopia, Australia, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

Burma: The China hybrid rice connection