Rice is life: corporations are moving in to control Asia's most vital food crop. But, as Devlin Kuyek reports, their assault is not going unnoticed—or unresisted - Rice - Column

New Internationalist, Sept, 2002 by Devlin Kuyek

A COUPLE of years ago I spent time with two farming communities on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Although both were poor, one was much better off than the other. The first, in the province of Laguna, has successfully fought for control over their lands, farming their own plant and animal varieties. They have no irrigation or running water, no roads, no electricity. But their farms provide an abundance of food: local chickens and pigs, coffee, coconuts, bananas, ginger, herbs, medicinal plants, and a wide assortment of maize, rice and potato varieties.

Farmers in the other community, in the province of Isabella, rent lands from the local landlord for exorbitant prices and grow hybrid maize destined for animal feed. They have no choice because the miller, who happens to be the landlord, will only purchase the hybrid maize. It's not surprising: he also sells them the maize seeds and the chemical inputs that they depend on. Local sources f food are rare in the community and pop and biscuits are the only foods served during breaks. The children are malnourished and the people drowning in debt. 'I want to die,' one woman farmer told me.

The critical difference between these communities is control over land. But lack of control over seeds keeps the farmers of Isabella locked into a cycle of exploitation. Despite struggles for land and more control over their seed supply, the windows of opportunity are rapidly closing. Industrial farming has destroyed much of the agricultural biodiversity in the area and the chance of reinvigorating it is jeopardized by the emergence of patent regimes on life. These monopoly rights prevent the practice of saving and selecting seed from year to year that farmers have used for generations to develop crop varieties suited to local conditions. It's what keeps the community of Laguna well fed.

Seed companies argue that seed saving threatens their profits. But patents on life threaten the very survival of farming communities. Nowhere is this more true than with rice -- the mainstay of the world's most populous continent.

On the streets

In 1998 masses of angry Indian and Thai farmers rallied in the streets of their capitals to denounce US company RiceTec Inc's claim of monopoly rights over their basmati and jasmine varieties of rice. Jaya Jetlie of Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat, an agricultural labour organization at the protest in New Delhi, told reporters: 'If we lose our [rice] exports and lose whatever tradition and wealth we have, we will soon become, a country where every pebble and every stone is owned by somebody else.'

Farmers from the northeast of Thailand, where jasmine rice originates, led the rally in Bangkok. jasmine rice belongs .to Thai farmers, to Thai communities,' said organic farmer Lai Lerngram. 'Noone, but no-one, could claim ownership or monopoly rights in relation to jasmine rice.' Three years later, the farmers were back, protesting against yet another attempted 'theft' of jasmine rice -- this-time by a US rice breeder trying to develop a variety of jasmine rice for the US with samples that he had acquired by way of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute's (IRRI) large seed bank of Asian farmers' varieties. 'The US is complaining about bootleg music cassettes in Thailand while simultaneously robbing our farmers' knowledge and heritage,' said Witoon Lianchamroon of BioThai, one of the organizations participating in the protest Chris Deren, the breeder in question, suggested that the farmers were overreacting.

The multinational biotechnology industry has global rice production in its gunsights. It is maneuvering for control through intellectual property rights (IPRs), such as patents, and legislation is quickly being pushed into place in Asia and around the world to satisfy industry's demands. Yet farmer-led movements for sustainable agriculture are also in ascendancy. These farmers understand what is at stake with the push to patents on biodiversity and they are fighting back.

In Asia, rice is life. For the Filipino farmer-scientist network MASIPAG: 'Rice is more than just a food we find [on] our dining table. It is a cereal that has become the cornerstone of our food system, our language, our culture.' The region produces over 90 per cent of the world's rice supply. Rice accounts for up to half of Asia's farm incomes and makes up nearly SO per cent of people's daily calories. Rural society itself is shaped by the cycles and demands of rice farming. There are an estimated 140,000 different varieties of rice that small farmers in Asia have generated -- without the help of monopoly privileges or expensive laboratories.

Muscling in

In the 1950s, the US foreign policy establishment, dismayed by the rise of communism in Asia, put rice production at the centre of a strategy to address food insecurity and political unrest The resulting campaign, led by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and known as the Green Revolution, transformed rice production dramatically. Traditional farming systems and varieties were replaced by a package of credit, chemicals, and varieties of rice that needed high inputs (such as fertilizers). By the early 1990s, just five of these 'super varieties' accounted for 90 per cent of the rice-growing area of peninsular Malaysia and Pakistan, and nearly half the ricelands of Thailand and Burma.