Rice is not a water plant - Part 4

The push by Chinese hybrid seed companies, often in association with western companies such as, for example, Bayer which has already forged a relationship with Burma's Ministry of Agriculture, into other Asian rice-producing countries is because the Chinese seed companies are aware that in terms of rice productivity per hectare, the 'Great Yield' has failed.

Most of the farmers who opted for hybrid rice depend on farming for their livelihoods and accepted the new variety because they were told, time and again, that it would bring them a higher income. Yet almost three decades of growing and improving hybrid rice have brought few benefits. The cost of farming is increasing, while real incomes remain stagnant. Most rice farmers remain poor and are becoming ever more dependent on chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

The only improvements* experienced by the farmers we spoke to came from the money that their children, working in the cities, had sent to supplement the family income. But they also said that their kids missed the countryside and would rather be back home, if only the poverty were not so desperate.

*The abolition of the agricultural tax, first enacted in 1958 during Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” and finally abolished by Parliament in January 2006 has encouraged farmers to return to the land.

However, although it is not a significant success at home, hybrid rice is increasingly part of China’s empire-building strategy.

China has been wooing African countries, where it wants access to energy and mineral resources, through a number of hybrid rice technology transfer projects, most recently in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mozambique.

In Asia, it has signed similar technical cooperation agreements with East Timor and Indonesia in which it committed itself to providing assistance in the production of hybrid rice with similar projects under way in Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

And in Burma, where Sichuan Nongda High-Tech Agriculture is selling directly to the military rulers, as they readily admit. However, even the rulers, whilst giving prominence to the Chinese vision, remain skeptical about the efficacy of the programme, quoting a farmer thus: "As we cannot re-sow (the imported hybrid rice), it has proved to be very expensive for us to grow. It cost us K5000 per-acre more in growing than our conventional species.”

In August this year, the Asia Times Online reported that the military-driven Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution program in the northern part of Burma's Shan state has resulted in four consecutive years of poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming altogether.

Yet the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), Chinese business people and ethnic ceasefire and militia group leaders are all making large profits on the controversial project through the buying and selling of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and the rice itself.

As farmers get into debt, their land is bought by the Chinese seed companies, who 'donate' swathes to the military. These lands become industrialised rice farms which sell their crops back to the Chinese merchants.

Is this the looming scenario in Indonesia?

Traditionally, farmers in all countries would choose from a huge variety of traditional rice, suited to their local ecology and social cultures. They would select and save seeds for the following cropping season, and lend them to, or exchange them with, other farmers in the village.

Growing rice from hybrid seeds destroys these cultures as the seeds cannot be saved; they lose their vigour or specially bred to be sterile, so the farmers have to buy new seeds from the seed dealers every year.The hybrids also fit poorly into the local ecology. Instead of switching to a different traditional variety to deal with new pests and diseases, as they would have done in the past, farmers begin using chemical pesticides, along with chemical fertilisers.

The social structure of farming communities is also broken as farmers are now caught within a dependency created by the hybrid seed companies such as Bayer, a dependency it admits.

Bayer CropScience has many field staffs which are spread in many province like East Java, Central Java, West Java, Lampung, South Sumatera, Bengkulu, Jambi, West Sumatera, Riau, South Kalimantan, North Sumatera, North Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi and South Sulawesi. These field staffs promote all Bayer CS product in the daily activities.

Yet - as elsewhere - here in Indonesia, farmers see few benefits in growing hybrid rice.

Recent data compiled by Indonesian researchers shows that hybrid rice still yields no more than conventional varieties under optimal conditions and that it suffers from poor eating quality and susceptibility to important pests and diseases like brown plant hopper and leaf blight, not to mention the problem of its high price for seeds. No wonder farmers are continuously rejecting it. In some parts of West Java, farmers also complain about the poor selling price of hybrid rice, particularly the Intani variety, compared to inbred varieties like IR77.

Is there a glimmer of hope for those farmers who want to retain a semblance of independence?

Don't hold your breath.