PH Hybrid Rice Companies Need The DA To Work Their Magic!
Earlier today, Monday, 28 December 2020, I blogged the essay “BigHAni – With Hybrid Vigor, Hybrid Rice Can Light Up The Whole Philippines[1]!” (Brave New World PH). The Christmas tree glowing in red & yellow (see image above, bottom left) was my metaphor for poverty emancipation of farming families – that emblazoned tree just happened to be shaped like my beloved Philippine archipelago seen from above. My BigHAni is acronym for Big Harvests Always Advancing to Appropriate Nets Indisputable. It’s hybrid rice.
“How can hybrid rice liberate farmers from poverty?” As both a journalist and an agriculturist, that is my question today even as I look at the above main image[2], which is the logo of the “International Day for the Eradication of Poverty” celebrated this year on 17 October with the leadership of the United Nations (UN.org). The 2020 theme is “Acting Together To Achieve Social And Environmental Justice For All.” The global campaign has the hashtag “#EndPoverty.”
In my hometown Asingan in Pangasinan, in March 2019, during the 8thNational Rice Technology Forum, I myself saw the many hybrid rice varieties growing in the boundary with Urdaneta City in a techno-demo field of almost 38 hectares participated in by 85 farmer cooperators. So, we saw with our own eyes which hybrid variety/ies grew best in our fields.
Much higher productivity is the promise of hybrid rice over and above that of inbred rice and, all things being equal, therefore higher net income. According to a DA press release:
Based on the 2017 PhilRice’s policy brief, planting hybrid rice is one way to improve farmers’ competitiveness. This could increase yield and reduce production cost per kilogram of palay.
So, does that mean that hybrid rice can liberate a rice farmer from poverty but not inbred rice? Not so. Not so fast!
To liberate that farmer from poverty, you must enable him to continually grow rice with affordable financial help and help him sell his produce very profitably – and continue to do so season after season.
The liberation of the farmer from poverty does not necessarily follow from increased yield of either inbred rice or hybrid rice! It is not automatic. Not even reduced production cost per kilogram.
One little act that will prove significant in the overall attempt to liberate the farmers from poverty is to insulate them from 2 bad influencers: (1) usurers and (2) middlemen.
In real life, the usurer is quite often the middleman himself. With continuous increases in crop yields along with continuous usurious loans, it is not the farmer who becomes continuously wealthy but the ones who continue to be usurers and middlemen!
To insulate them from both usurers and middlemen simultaneously, farmers must become members of a multi-purpose cooperative. The coop can then provide them affordable loans, and can arrange for purchase of produce even before harvest time.
I believe only multi-purpose coops can produce farmers who are forever liberated from poverty. And they need help from the DA!@517
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