Judicial grind at the SC

There is no question that the 15 justices of the Supreme Court (SC) have only the best interests of the Filipino people when they declared the use of biotechnology under Department of Agriculture’s Administrative Order No. 8 null and void in December last year. In the same ruling, the High Court ordered all concerned parties to draft a new set of implementing rules and guidelines that would govern the country’s use and importation of biotechnology in local farms.

The directives were specifically issued to the lead agencies of government, namely, the Department of Agriculture (DA); the Department of Science and Technology (DOST); the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

This brings to mind the beguiling question as to why does the country need biotechnology in farms in the first place? If we already have the farming techniques that we have been using all these years, why do we still have to apply biotechnology? Has biotechnology really made a big difference in the lives of Filipino farmers in the last 10 years or so?

The Philippine agriculture sector had been way past its glory during the 1980s and 1990s with local farmers struggling to fight disruptive, if not destructive climate. Not to mention an unsignificant increase in lands to till and unstable supply of potent seedlings for higher production of both rice and corn.

Currently, the country faces the long period of dry spell called El Niño phenomenon that would make it more difficult for crops to grow and survive in farmlands that are not irrigated.

At the turn of the century, science may have provided the answer to the Philippine agriculture conundrum. There was the biotechnology corn to improve corn harvests with pest-resistant seedlings brought by foreign companies.

This can be gleaned from data gathered by the DA and the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and in a research study conducted by Dr. Emil Q. Javier, former University of the Philippines president and current president of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST).

According to the PSA, the use of high breed rice varieties, which increased yields in the last 10-year period, has contributed 37 percent to the total value of Philippine agricultural production amounting to P378 billion in 2014.

The biotech varieties for corn production, on the other hand, contributed 12 percent valued at P100.6 billion to the Philippine gross domestic product (GDP) as of 2014.

Dr. Javier had been monitoring the country’s agriculture production since the 1970s. His recent study pointed out that the use of biotech corn seeds allowed the country to reverse the stagnant decades during the same period in the 1980s to 1990s. The use of biotech seeds achieved 99 percent corn self-sufficiency starting 2008.

He noted that this visible increase in the local yellow corn production had considerably slashed costly imports of yellow corn and feed wheat – primary ingredients for the feeds that sustain livestock and poultry industries – thus helping control spiral of consumer prices for chicken and pork.

These factual data validated the use of biotechnology has contributed to the country’s food security and growing economy in the last decade or so.

An important aspect that has constantly been overlooked in the debates whether to stop or continue the planting of biotech seeds in the country is the ordinary and usually impoverished Filipino farmer in far-flung rural areas.

The promise of continuing better yields and higher farmer’s income is now a big question mark for biotech corn farmers.

With AO 8 governing the country’s biotechnology industry set aside by the High Court and a new one still in the works, these farmers have to discontinue planting the biotech-corn seeds in their farms indefinitely. This is not to mention the biotech eggplant, or Bt talong at the UP Los Baños in Laguna.

The DA conducted three public consultations in the last three weeks. Yet the non-government organizations (NGOs) Greenpeace and Masipag, whose members were apprehensive and bitter, begrudgingly dismissed the consultation as a move to support the biotech companies.

How about the mere fact of abiding by the SC’s orders to take up a public consultation to come up with the rules and regulations and uplifting the lives of local farmers? Are these not valid reasons to pursue public consultations to form the implementing rules and regulations for the Philippine biotechnology sector?

Now they are again ranting that these consultations were being done in haste and they were not given time to prepare. If they truly know the issue by heart and with the right mind, they should have the data at hand. That same data, I presume, were presented during the judicial process that this Bt talong case went through at the SC.

Speaking of our judicial process, Senate president Franklin Drilon exhorted the SC to resolve immediately the disqualification case against Sen. Grace Poe’s presidential candidacy. Drilon made an urgent public appeal to the SC during our breakfast forum at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay at Cafe Adriatico last Wednesday.

Given the still unfinished oral arguments on the Poe case, Drilon lamented the high court seemed to have no sense of urgency for the earliest resolution of the case. Even as the official campaign period for the national election already started last Tuesday, Drilon noted with concern, the SC is still conducting oral arguments of Poe’s case in open and freely aired in public through media.

The same concern was echoed by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. Uncannily, both Drilon and Belmonte belong to P-Noy’s Liberal Party (LP) whose presidential candidate is former interior secretary Mar Roxas II, who is running against Poe.

The SC, headed by Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, as expected, paid no attention to the political appeals of the two leaders of the 16th Congress. The SC adjourned the fourth oral argument and is set it to resume on Tuesday, Feb. 16.

It took the SC close to two years to resolve the biotech case. Other than Poe’s case, less celebrated cases are also in the same bind of the judicial grind at the SC.