The Philippines
July 24, 2009

By Jenny A. Panopio, SEARCA BIC

The Asian Farmer’s Network-Philippines (ASFARNET-Philippines) made a resounding statement supporting the employment of biotechnology tools for food, feed and fiber security. Members and officers of the network signed a declaration during their organizational meeting and biotechnological workshop held last July 22-23 at Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines. The declaration states that biotechnology offers solutions in alleviating agricultural production, and biotech crops and products have undergone extensive food, feed and environmental safety assessment prior to commercialization, thus are considered to be safe for consumption and cultivation.

Farmer representatives from the three major islands of the country, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, shared their first-hand experiences in planting biotech corn in their own farms. All of them concurred on the positive impact that technology has provided and would like to share the benefits of the technology to the their co-farmers.

ASFARNET-Philippines commits to continue and widen its involvement in agri-biotechnology advocacy and educational campaign to reduce the misconceptions and to enhance the adoption and utilization of biotech crops and products in the country. The group also urged the government and the public and private sectors to strengthen their efforts in building biotechnology awareness and provide science-based information in order to uphold “farmers’ choice” in the adoption of new farming technology.

Conceived in 2003, ASFARNET-Philippines is composed of farmer-leaders and key stakeholders coming from 15 regions of the country. Most of the members of ASFARNET Philippines are adoptors of biotech corn since its first planting in 2003 and are actively involved in advocating the use of the technology. About100,000 small-scale Filipino farmers planted biotech corn in more than 350,000 hectares in 2008.

To view the declaration, click on this link: http://www.bic.searca.org/docs/ASFARNET_Declaration.pdf

For more information on the updates of agri-biotechnology in the Philippines, visit http://www.bic.searca.org or email bic@agri.searca.org

Website: http://www.bic.searca.org

Published: August 3, 2009