In early April, even before the food crisis came to a boil, the Philippine government unveiled its self-sufficiency plan at the National Food Summit. The 84-page document which agriculture secretary Arthur Yap calls “the product of the country's best minds in rice agriculture” puts to work President Arroyo's vision of rice self-sufficiency through FIELDS. The moniker, which implies “more rice fields” stands for Fertiliser, Irrigation, Education and training of farmers, Loans, Dryers and other post-harvest facilities and Seeds of high-yielding hybrid varieties. Some PHP 43 billion (roughly US$ 1 billion) is earmarked for this programme which aims to increase total paddy production to 19.8 million tons by 2010, from the 16.2 million tons in 2007. The breakdown of allocation can be found here where rural credit (US$ 339 million) and subsidies (US$ 208 million) for hybrid seeds take a good chunk of the budget.
For all the hype on FIELDS, however, it is essentially a continuation of past programmes on hybrid rice. It rests on the same philosophy that “self-sufficiency” is having enough supply for the population. By inference, this supports the view that the food crisis is a simple case of shortage, and therefore a mere question of productivity. But alas, nearly everyone now understands that it was a crisis in many respects – of governance, trade policies, fiscal priorities, corporate control and even the “twisted future” promoted by the futures markets – and not just a matter of rice crops failing to convert as much sunlight into starch in the form of rice grains.
Seed subsidy: giving new life to dead seeds?
The more contentious issue with FIELDS is the focus on hybrid seeds, and the subsidy that goes with it. No other than the World Bank and the government's own think-thank, Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) view the seed subsidy as unsustainable. But, with FIELDS, it continues in a major way.
What FIELDS in essence does is integrate and lend more support to the programmes of local governments in the forty-nine provinces that are supposed to contribute 92 percent of the total production target, such as Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan, Tarlac, Leyte, Camarines Sur, Iloilo, Cagayan, North Cotabato and Maguindanao. Under FIELDS, governors are delegated as “provincial champions” and tasked to get the programme rolling. But, while it is nice to see the central government finally recognising that “rice self-sufficiency emanates from the provinces”, it sidesteps concrete changes that could have offered immediate impacts at the local level, such as increasing the National Food Authority's (NFA) provincial procurement – a policy change that many farmers say is key to achieving “real” self-sufficiency.
And there are real concerns as to how this dynamic between the central and local governments will play out when it comes to FIELDS' seed agenda. Apart from the seed subsidy that the national government will provide, under FIELDS' provincial governments can further top off these subsidies with their own allocations. In Bohol, the provincial government has come up with its own Rice Accelerated Enhancement Response (RACER) as a FIELDS counterpart. Through RACER, the province is appropriating much of its PHP 13.786 million FIELDS allocation to subsidise farmers with seeds of hybrid rice. The provincial government plans to shoulder the remaining PHP 1,400 (US$ 31) farmers’ equity on top of the Department of Agriculture’s PHP 1,500 (US$ 33) subsidy for for every 20-kg bag of hybrid rice seeds per hectare. This essentially makes hybrid seeds free! All the farmers need to do is plant them! Even some people at PHILRICE, DA's lead institution in implementing FIELDS, admit that this may happen, but that they have no control over it. In fact, the national government seems to have no control at all as to how hybrid seeds will be distributed and promoted in the provinces.
Under the FIELDS programme, the seeds to be promoted are a combination of publicly developed hybrids such as M1, M3, M7 developed by PHILRICE, as well as privately developed hybrids like Bigante (Bayer), SL-8 (SL Agritech), Rizalina 28 (HyRice) and Bioseed 401 (Bioseed). The seed companies who will be supplying these seeds must now be jumping with glee, especially SL Agritech who has already cornered much of the hybrid rice seed market through the previous subsidy programmes.
“We are alarmed over this development” says Wilhelmina Pelegrina of SEARICE, a non-government organization working on conservation and development of local seeds with Bohol’s farming communities. “Providing input subsidies for hybrid rice is not a sustainable solution to achieve rice self-sufficiency and address the rice crisis” she said. Since 2005, SEARICE has criticized the government subsidy on hybrid rice citing its failure to convince farmers to adopt the technology despite the massive subsidies and promotion of hybrid rice. In 2004-2005 alone, SEARICE found that 50-99 percent of the government's farmer adoptors stopped using hybrid rice.
SEARICE is not alone with its misgivings. Both the National Rice Farmers Council and Centro Saka, a farmer-based policy research NGO, allege that the FIELDS programme will “merely perpetuate the misguided strategies that have turned the Philippines into the world’s biggest rice importer” citing the poor performance of the government's current hybrid rice program and the corruption issues that haunt it.
The quality of these subsidised seeds is also a central issue. Although there's the National Seed Certification and Quality Services (NSQCS) agency that is responsible for ensuring the quality of hybrid seeds being sold to farmers, in reality there is little quality assurance for farmers. A SEARICE study found that the same varieties being promoted under FIELDS have already produced big failures in farmers' fields because of their poor quality. Another study by Kristina David of PIDS found that hybrid seeds were distributed without meeting the standards set by the National Seed Industry Council (NSIC). Yet another report, this time by the government's Commission on Audit (COA) in 2005 , listed the poor quality of seeds among a range of factors hampering the governmment's hybrid rice programme.
Interestingly, the COA report further touches on other problems with the hybrid rice programme: “In nine (9) out of fourteen (14) regions it was gathered that failure to provide adequate technical assistance on hybrid farming techniques, and to immediately attend to the problems of the farmers on the delay/inadequate supply of hybrid seeds, poor quality seeds, high cost of fertilizer, leaf disease and inadequate supply of Bacteria Leaf Blight (BLB) contributed to high production costs and lesser yields than expected, dissipating the objectives of the GMA Hybrid Rice Program. In this program, unaccounted hybrid seeds worth P8.80 million and fertilizer coupons / discounts denied by the farmers were noted in certain regions.”
According to the Farmers Council, the proposed allocation for seed subsidy “will simply amount to subsidising big seed companies like SL-Agritech, Bayer and Monsanto.” Early last year, the Council estimated that SL Agritech may have already pocketed some PHP 208 million (US$ 4.3 million) from the government's subsidy scheme. “The design of the FIELDS interventions will actually make the rice program dependent on private companies with no accountability to the public,” said the Council's leader Jaime Tadeo.
More of the private sector
From the very beginning, the government has its interventions in the rice seed market as a way to put seed companies more firmly in control. At the third national workshop on hybrid rice in June 2005, the government made it very clear that its goal was to have the private sector in charge of hybrid rice commercialization by 2010. “The private sector must play a greater role in the commercialisation of the technology while the government makes the policy environment conducive for the private sector to do its business,” according to said workshop report. It also states that “efforts at encouraging the participation of private seed companies should continue, not only in hybrid rice seed production and marketing, but also in R&D activities for the development of new hybrids.”
The same thinking is shared by the new Hybrid Rice Research and Development Consortium (HRDC) that IRRI is leading. It is no surprise that the Department of Agriculture signed a cooperation agreement with IRRI to beef up research and production of new generations of high yielding varieties of rice for the FIELDS programme. The two institutions will collaborate on long-term breeding by establishing a joint lRRI-PHILRICE breeding program for developing the next generation of high-yielding rice varieties and hybrids, and in accelerating the development and deployment of these rice seeds.
This calls back into question the hybrid rice consortium, which gives private companies not only privileged access to publicly held germplasm but also to commercialise publicly developed hybrid rice lines. It is a clear example of a free ride. Public money will be used to develop hybrid rice lines that would be commercialised later by private seed companies, which will be bought by the same government through the seed subsidy component of FIELDS. At the consortium's website, IRRI is calling on all interested parties to procure three of its new hybrid lines! Why would SL Agritech or Bayer need to spend on hybrid rice RnD if they can just purchase lines from IRRI or Philrice? Indeed, it would be interesting to know in the coming months how much of the US$ 1 billion FIELDS budget will roll down the corporate pockets of these lucky seed companies.
Beyond FIELDS, the private sector is definitely going to cash in on “solving” the food crisis. Already, San Miguel Corporation and Malaysia’s Kuok Group announced plans to bankroll (yet another) US$ 1 billion to develop a million hectares of public land to help boost production of rice in the Philippines. The initiative is considered the biggest private corporate response to food crisis in the Philippines.
Beating the population fall guy
The rice self-sufficiency issue has a long history in the Philippines. The Philippines has been importing rice since the 1960s, with the single exception of 1979. It is not because of lack of land or productivity. Even at the height of the country's green revolution programme, known as Masagana 99 – where Marcos had to borrow money from IMF-World Bank to finance the programme – much of the rice lands had to be converted for other uses, among them plantations for growing export crops. The Philippines abandoned its efforts to secure sufficient rice production (and rely on imports instead to fill up its buffer stock) so that it could shift to growing more lucrative export crops such as cut flowers, asparagus, etc. in order to repay its loans to the IMF-World Bank. It wasn't like the country was given a choice; the shift was a precondition of the loans. As a result, the Philippines remained a net importer of 5-10% of its rice requirements from countries like India and Vietnam.
The government has also failed miserably to live up to its longstanding promises for agrarian reform. Up to this moment, 60 percent of its farmers have no land of their own. Yet, just last month, it was negotiating with the government of Bahrain to invest in rice farmland in the Philippines in a move to boost Bahrain's own food security. Agriculture ministers of both countries are said to have already agreed on the idea and will soon reveal the official deal. "Bahrain needs food security, particularly rice, and the Philippines needs investment and both parties are keen to see this deal happening," said one Bahrain-based importer. While the government of the Philippines struggles to find suppliers of rice for its own people, at the same time they are negotiating away farmlands to produce rice for Bahrain!
What we've been hearing from farmers in the Philippines is loud and clear: to stop the food crisis you have to redistribute lands to their legitimate tillers and abolish any existing forms of serfdom, tenancy, or other feudal relationships that stand in the way of sovereign food production. The poverty and powerlessness of the majority of the country's food producers is at the root of this food crisis. It is social and political in nature, and requires social and political solutions. Anything less is injustice. FIELDS, in this light, will be just another policy failure.