In the recent Gallup International Voice of the People survey, the Philippines ranked fifth with fourty percent of poor Filipinos going hungry in the last 12 months. One solution being suggested is to use genetically engineered (GE) crops to increase food production. The leading proponents are the leading agrochemical transnational corporations (TNC) that have reinvented themselves as “life sciences” companies. They peddle the Malthusian line that the world is hungry because of lack of food to sustain the ever-growing population and that GE crops can provide world food security and sufficiency.
 
The last part of the 20th century is heralded by large multinationals as the era of the second green revolution or the genetic revolution. In the many applications of genetic engineering, its use in agriculture has been the most controversial to date. The commercial release of GE crops has generated a stir both in the scientific community and in the business sectors in the U.S. and Europe. The business sector and competing large transnational companies had qualms over patent rights and market acceptance.
 
Despite the yet unresolved scientific debates, GE crops are already in the market. Concerned environmentalists, scientists, along with the farmers has shown then and again that the adverse effects of GE crops such as allergies, genetic contamination and monopoly control surpass its supposed benefits. The agrochemical TNCs with the help of our government has then and again promised that a technological intervention such as GE crops will provide solution to our farmers’ problems. This promise of better yields and better socio-economic state for the farmers has been already given decades ago both by the same agrochemical TNCs and the government in the green revolution of the 1970s.
 
Where lies the problem? In the Philippines, small farmers not only depend on the landed elite for land but also pay a high land rent from their already meager harvest. They are at the mercy of usurers who charge exorbitant interest rates for loans and merchants who under price products they buy from farmers but overprice agricultural inputs they sell to them. The available agricultural technology remains backward. More importantly, land is concentrated into the hands of a few landlord families while most farmers are landless or lack enough land to sustain their families. With little or no land to till, and with land owned by landlords, who will benefit from any technological intervention?
 
These are the main causes of food insecurity in our country and a thoroughgoing land reform is the answer to this problem. Only then, can any kind of agricultural modernization program will succeed in alleviating the poverty rife in our country and put us in a genuine state of food security and self-sufficiency. Technologies such as genetically engineered crops used in the present context will only magnify the hardships of the farmers instead of actually delivering any benefit. Farmers will be tied to buying their seeds and inputs from a single corporation that dictates what to plant, when to plant and how much will they pay for their seeds and additional costly inputs.
 
Government policies only worsen the situation. The proposed privatization of the National Food Authority and the present liberalization of agriculture and trade under globalization only serve to destroy the already weak agricultural sector and strengthen dependence on huge agrochemical MNCs.
 
In the present agricultural system in the Philippines, landlords and agrochemical TNCs will only benefit with GE because of the lion’s share they will surely get if the promise of a better yield with these crops materialize. On the other hand, the farmers will be more susceptible to debts because of the higher price of seeds, fertilizers and other inputs which may not be reduced despite the promises of GE crops. Terminator technologies and other patents inherent in the commercialized GE materials used in agriculture will only ensure higher profit for the biotech/agrochemical companies.
 
Genetically engineered crops will not solve the problem of food sufficiency and security at the present because the root causes of those problems are the lack of land and purchasing power. These technologies will not benefit the farmers and the people so long as they have no control of the means of production which is the land they till. It will not answer the needs of the people and will only worsen the stronghold of agrochem TNCs on the people’s lives. Only when the farmers have control of their lands can they have true power to choose from among the products of science and technology, only then can the people realize the power to choose according to their needs.