DAVAO CITY – The Go Organic – Davao City (Go DC), a citywide network of small organic farmers and their support groups called on City Councilors to support the City Mayor’s decision to terminate the genetically modified Bt talong field testing at the UP Mindanao even as the project proponents are hell-bent on pursuing the project.
Councilor Conrado Baluran is convening a City Council Committee of Agriculture hearing at the Sangguniang Panlungsod today in response to a letter from a certain Conrado Santos, a plant breeder, which reportedly questioned the termination of the Bt talong field testing.
GoDC members are wary of the objectives of today’s hearing especially now that there are reports from Bago Oshiro that the University of the Philippines Mindanao has again plowed the field testing site in their campus in preparation for another round of Bt talong field testing.
“We hope that this committee hearing will not be used as a reason for the City Council to backslide on their resolution supporting the stand of the City Mayor against Bt talong field testing”, said Dagohoy Magaway, GO-DC member.
Last October 2010, the City Council Committee on Agriculture, under Con. Conrad Baluran’s leadership, passed a resolution supporting the stand of the City Mayor against Bt talong field testing. The village councils of Bago Oshiro and Mintal, where UP Mindanao is located, have also passed resolutions rejecting the Bt talong field testing.
Copies of the list of invitees obtained by GoDC have revealed that a majority of the resource persons are coming from the pro-GMO side. Dr. Desiree Hautea and her husband, Dr. Randy Hautea, figure prominently on the list. Desiree Hautea is the Project Leader for the Bt talong project, and also the Southeast Asia Coordinator for the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II of the USAID, under which the BT technology was brought to the Philippines. Her husband , meanwhile, is the Global Coordinator for the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAA), a non-profit which is being supported by agri-corporations like Monsanto to promote biotechnology among developing countries.
Pro-GMO advocates say that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and organic crops can co-exist but Magaway and his fellow organic farmers say otherwise.
Atty. Lee Aruelo, Third World Network Associate, said that OA and GMOs are two contradictory philosophies that cannot exist side by side. “OA promotes a holistic approach to agriculture, seeking to enhance biodiversity, whereas GMO tries to reduce complex problems into single issues and then tries to find a technical solution.”, she said. “The real world doesn’t work that way; all major problems of the environment and agriculture are multi-factoral.”, she added.
The Go-DC will be bringing Dr. Romeo Quijano, a medical toxicologist and professor at the College of Medicine at the University of the Philippines-Manila, to speak at the hearing but whether Baluran will allow him to present his medical opinion on the Bt talong remains to be seen.
“In the interests of fairness, Con. Baluran should also give equal time to hear the side of the organic farmers, because after all, it is the interests of the small farmers that his committee should be upholding, not that of big agricultural corporations”, said Lia Esquillo, Executive Director of Interface Development Interventions, Inc. and Go DC member.
One of the reasons why GoDC is critical of the Bt talong field testing is that this will open the way for multinational companies to gain a foothold on the country’s seedbanking tradition. The Bt eggplant technology was developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company or Mahyco, which is a subsidiary company of Monsanto, the very company that developed synthetic pesticides and is into the seed business. (PR)