Rice NGO hits hybrid rice subsidy in Philippines agri budget

Rice Watch and Action Network (R1) urges Congress to stop the hybrid rice subsidy in the 2008 budget of the Department of Agriculture following previous reports of misuse of funds and failing to support it claim of increase in production yield and farmers’ income.

The group of rice farmers and non-government organizations also proposes an increase of P158 million in the budget of Philrice to support organic agriculture in the light of increasing concern on agriculture’s contribution to global warming.

“Congress should stand by its position in last year’s budget hearing that this year would be the last for hybrid rice subsidy,” said Jessica Reyes-Cantos, R1 lead convenor.

Cantos cited the Senate committee hearing on the agriculture budget on November 9, 2006, wherein former Senator Franklin Drilon asked for the assurance of the DA that “this would be the last time the government is going to support HRCP”. Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) Rice Director Frisco Malabanan gave Congress the assurance based on the recommendation of the Technical Working Group headed by PhilRice.

However, in the recent sub-committee budget hearing on agriculture, Malabanan reported that the government’s subsidy for each bag of 20 kilos of hybrid seeds is P1,000 covering the production target for 2008 at 500,000 hectares.

“Assuming that a hectare of rice land will need 1 bag of hybrid rice seeds, the government will spend P500 million for hybrid rice subsidy covering 500,000 hectares or 12.5 percent only of the total rice lands,” said Cantos. The total area of rice-harvested land in the country is 4 million hectares.

Cantos cited the 2007 World Bank report on the public expenditures of the Department of Agriculture that criticized the largest slice of production support (about 85 percent) allocated to the GMA rice program, in particular for the HRCP. The same report found the sizeable amount of money and public human resources spent on HRCP did not produce much net social benefit.

The farmers’ adoption of hybrid seeds 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.

“We hope that the government will finally heed the glaring figures and opt to diversify its program to include sustainable agriculture as one of the options for the flagship programs and not limited only to hybrid rice and GMOs. This will lessen the risks in case the flagship programs fail as in the case of hybrid,” said Cantos.