DuPont Bracing to Enchain Asia, Partners with Indonesian Rice Center

After announcing its partnership with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) located in the Philippines , DuPont is now in agreement with the Indonesian Center for Rice Research (ICRR), giving the former the latter access to test and commercialize ICRR inbreds and hybrids. The Asian Peasant Coalition (APC), the Asia-wide alliance of peasant groups criticized this aggressive move of DuPont as it targets rice agriculture of Asian countries.

“They say this is in light of boosting productivity in rice farms to cope up with the increasing demand brought about by the growing population,” opened Danilo Ramos, Secretary-General of APC and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Peasant Movement of the Philippines ).

“The very concrete proof that commercial varieties designed by monopoly capitalists such as DuPont are only for profit and not for the people’s benefit is the nearing 50 useless years of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. For decades they have introduced countless commercial varieties that kept the peasants on the mud of poverty as these varieties require massive use of expensive chemical inputs. While the peasants are indebted because of these costly agricultural inputs, foreign monopoly corporations rake profits as they have already contained the country’s agriculture being dependent on their products,” explained Ramos.

“With what DuPont is doing, an Asia-wide man-made catastrophe is on the looming if they are successful to penetrate Asian countries’ rice agriculture and wiping off indigenous varieties in favor of their commercial varieties,” said Ramos.

“Commercial rice such as the hybrid rice is not guaranteed to bring out good harvest as it require loads of chemical inputs which the peasants could not afford or be compelled to loan in order to acquire them. The Philippine rice granary province Nueva Ecija was victimized by the hybrid rice. Those lands used to output 150 cavans were only able to output 49 cavans when hybrid was used, or a 66% drop in production. Then, farmers shared that those who use 8 bags of fertilizer before were forced to use 12 bags for a hectare. Then it became more labor intensive as the stem of the hybrid rice is fragile, thus, harvesting is more time-consuming. The peasants in San Jose City in Nueva Ecija are very mad at the Department of Agriculture as they are who introduced the variety, as their costs of production almost doubled,” Ramos shared.

DuPont, IRRI and ICRR would offer the same thing as long they design rice varieties for profit. APC calls on Asian peasants to ban the use of hybrid as it would definitely lead them to poverty and indebtedness, which would consequently lead to landlessness. Asian countries should learn from the miserable experience of Philippine rice agriculture where the IRRI based in the country for almost 50 years, destroyed its food security, as a rice net exporter then, transformed to being a rice importer. DuPont and other monopoly-capitalist agro-corporations are only out to get Asian agriculture on their knees and be dependent of their products, raking up profits in sacrifice of the Asian rice peasants.#