Bt corn farmers fear crop sabotage

Several large farmers’ organizations which said they are planting the high-yielding chemical-free Bt corn variety recently asked Agriculture Secretary Cito Lorenzo to protect them from groups that have threatened to destroy their crops.

Farmer-leader Edwin Paraluman, chairman of the Agricultural and Fisheries Council of General Santos City and the Provincial Farmers Action Council of South Cotabato, said corn farmers are concerned over threats aired by various non-governmental organizations that the said groups will uproot Bt corn crops planted in their farms.

Paraluman said "these groups have done it in the past, they will do it again." He told Lorenzo that several NGOs had torched or destroyed Bt corn trial farms in Isabela and Mindanao last year during field trials for the biotech corn variety. Some of the groups were backed by priests and nuns.

The NGOs have reportedly vehemently opposed the planting of Bt corn which they claim could be harmful to a beneficial species of butterflies. Greenpeace, which has backed the local NGOs in the fight against Bt corn, also claims that planting the variety could result in "millions of dead bodies and sick children, cancer clusters and deformities".

Filipino scientists led by researchers from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños (UPLB), however, have branded the allegations as "mere black propaganda against biotechnology."

According to Paraluman, the members of large corn farmer organizations are set to plant Bt corn during the wet season. He said the farmers are optimistic about prospects of bigger harvests due to the results of the dry season planting where farmers reportedly generated up to 40 percent more harvest yield with the use of Bt corn.

He said these farmers realized the yield even as they generated greater savings since Bt corn did not require the usual application of toxic and expensive chemical insecticide to control the deadly Asiatic corn borer.

Paraluman appealed to anti-Bt corn NGOs "to desist from using violent means to block the propagation of this variety".

He asked them to "allow corn farmers the freedom of choice as to what variety they wish to plant". He also said the quantity and the quality of the harvest of Bt corn "must be the ultimate evidence upon which corn farmers will base their decision."

Paraluman said the threat of crop destruction "is unfair since free choice had always been the principle used in seed variety selection."

Earlier, Isabela Governor Isabela Faustino Dy Jr. warned against the threatened sabotage of farms planted with Bt corn. Dy said he will take drastic action against farm saboteurs even as he urged non-governmental organizations opposed to biotechnology to wait for the results of the farm harvests.