Agriculture experts defend GMA hybrid rice

ZARAGOZA, Nueva Ecija, Philippines  – The hybrid rice scare that swept Nueva Ecija over the past two weeks has finally died down as agriculture experts declared there was no cause for alarm.

Serafin Santos, provincial agriculturist, told reporters here that only a very small percentage of the 32,000 hectares planted to the SL-8H variety was affected by the abnormal growth and that it “was within a tolerable level and should not be cause for alarm.”

“The overall production of Nueva Ecija will not be affected by this,” he said, adding that the province is targeting to plant rice in 152,000 hectares this dry season, of which 47,000 hectares are hybrid.

He said farmers lost an average of between P10,000 to P15,000 for plowing under their farms when the hybrid rice scare broke out.

Gemma Tomas, chairman of the Pagkakaisa Nueva Ecija Primary Multi-Purpose Cooperative, said the hybrid scare had caused chaos among local farmers, particularly among the inexperienced ones.

She said the 25-member Federation of Patriotic Farmers Cooperative of Nueva Ecija (FPFCNE) – of which her coop is a member – decided to come out to assure farmers that the occurrence of early bolters was within the tolerable level of one to two percent and that they have nothing to worry about.

Tomas said their federation distributed 15,000 bags of SL-8H varieties this cropping season, indicating their full trust and confidence in this particular hybrid variety.

“We have decided to come out to put a period on this issue of the abnormal growth of hybrid seed varieties,” she said.

Dr. Frisco Malabanan, director of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) Rice Program of the Department of Agriculture (DA), said the affected farmers can still attain higher yield if they would follow the recommended farming practices for hybrid rice.

Bountiful harvest

Malabanan said the areas planted to both hybrid and certified inbred seeds (CS) have reached 1,157,404 hectares as of mid-February, or some 386,775 hectares more than the area planted to CS last year during the same comparable period. 

“All these factors plus good weather will contribute to a good harvest this dry crop,” he said in his report to Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, adding that harvesting would start late March and will peak in April.

The dry season harvest would add to the stock inventory of the National Food Authority (NFA).

The NFA’s current inventory stands at 16.2 million bags of 50 kg each or 813,484 metric tons, which is 194 percent higher than the NFA’s total 276,100 MT stocks in the same period last year.

Massive palay procurement last year enabled the NFA to accumulate a record volume of 685,000 metric tons in 2008 – the highest in almost 30 years and 1,975 percent higher compared to 2007’s stock inventory of 33,000 MT.

Blown out of proportion

Meanwhile, SL-Agritech, the supplier of the hybrid seed SL-8H, decried allegations that there were problems with their seeds and that their company is being given preferential status in the DA’s program.

Company representatives explained that farmers were given the right to choose which variety of seeds they wanted to buy, and that the policy of “farmer’s choice” has been consistently followed.

“We are not the preferred supplier as what others are branding us. It just so happened that we are the market leader. We enjoy market leadership as SL-8H is the farmers’ preferred variety due to its high-yielding performance,” said Cathy Galura, senior vice president for SL-Agritech Corp., in an interview with The STAR.

She said the complaint about the stunted growth of SL-8H plant had already been investigated by an independent body formed by the DA Regional Field Unit 3 for Nueva Ecija, and the result revealed that the cause was not the seed but the extraordinary cold weather experienced in December 2008 to mid-January 2009.

“The report came in rather late. Maybe during the early months the growth was delayed but if interested parties will visit the rice fields today, they will notice the remarkable crop stand of those that have been reported to have such problem,” she explained.

Galura also decried insinuations by some sectors that their product is the only hybrid seed that the government is subsidizing.

She also explained that collecting subsidy from the government is not an easy task since there are stringent rules to follow and processes to go through. It is for this reason, according to her, that they do not support the continuation of the subsidy program because they are not benefited by it.                – With Marianne Go