Saturday, April 19, 2008 Talk back: Muted farmers’ voice By Jesus Sievert
(The letter is addressed to Sun.Star columnist Bong Wenceslao)
I read your April 10 column entitled “Start with the farmer” with much interest and concern as I found the topic relevant to the rice shortage being experienced by Filipinos today.
It is very ironic that we have the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquartered in our country and yet we are the first to suffer the inconvenience of queuing up for the most basic of staple in a Filipino family.
IRRI was established in our very own backyard with the mission, among other things, to help develop high yielding technologies so that farmers can produce enough rice for all Filipinos.
Perhaps its vision, among other things, is technology today and sustainable rice supply for tomorrow.
Sad to say that this institution, while it has helped make countries like Thailand and Vietnam successful rice granaries in Asia through their respective agricultural scholars and support of their respective governments, has been taken for granted by one administration after another in this country.
Almost five decades after IRRI was established by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations in cooperation with the Philippine government, we are now paying a very high price for our own folly.
But surely there is more to it than meets the eye.
IRRI’s objective is not only to reduce poverty and hunger but also to ensure environmental sustainability.
I know of someone who, for over a decade now, has been promoting organic fertilizer, organic growing and organic farming in the Philippines using 100 percent organic seaweed fertilizer.
He has been to Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao conducting successful studies in experimental rice farms but never has he gotten the help and support from the government.
Despite its low cost, minimal application, environmentally friendly and high yielding result in rice harvest, it was never given a second look by the so-called “agricultural experts” in government.
He has been invited to several forums to present his papers and talk about his product in front of government officials and other personalities with PhD titles but nothing much materialized from it.
His only consolation is that his product has been given an accreditation by a Japanese agricultural agency for meeting its required standard and he has been exporting it since then.
What we seem to have looked down upon, others are appreciating and benefiting from it.
Could it be that there is more money to be had in imported fertilizers? Your guess is just as good as mine.
The fact is, the farmer’s voice has always been and will always be muted by some unscrupulous people in government.
