There's more in a grain of rice

Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network, Manila

The opening line of a marvelous award-winning novel (The Stones Cry Out by Hiraku Okuizumi) goes: "Even the smallest stone in a riverbed has the entire history of the universe written on it." But how more present and more alive this history is, in a seed, in a grain of rice, in an ear of corn. In a new born babe. We are star dust and more.

This is what swirled in my mind following news on the tempest that arose over the meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that was held here last week. This was the first time in its 30-year history that the CGIAR held its annual meeting outside the confines of the World Bank headquarters in the United States.

The CGIAR is the largest public sector agricultural research effort and is mandated to serve the world's hungry. The CGIAR has 16 centers across the world, one of which is the renowned International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, the Philippines. IRRI, incidentally, holds the world's best collection of rice varieties, that is, over half a million varieties from 110 countries. Mind-boggling.

Now this collection is threatened by profit. A group of scientists and farmers would like to make this known.

So during the CGIAR meeting, farmers and scientists from here and abroad also converged nearby to protest and magnify issues. But the voices were drowned out by the noise of bomb blasts, bomb threats and other terrorist-related scares during that weekend.

In 1994, IRRI and other CGIAR research centers entered into an agreement with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to protect the seeds they hold in trust for humanity. This agreement is now supposed to be reviewed.

Many NGOs, among them Masipag (Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Development) and Searice, that are immersed in the issue of food security and agriculture, say that the agreement needs a complete overhaul because it contains no provisions for its enforcement. It does not protect the farmers' rights, it does not recognize the farmers' contribution in originally breeding the seeds that are not kept in the bank.

Take Jasmine Rice of Thailand. Despite farmers' protest, Jasmine Rice was patented -- for profit -- in the United States. The Thais lost part of their heritage.

Masipag and other like-minded groups believe that plants, animals, micro-organisms and their parts, at all taxonomic levels, as well as biological processes for their production are not patentable.

Masipag works to give back to farmers control over genetic and biologic resources. Masipag farmers preserve endangered rice varieties by growing them in their farms thus preventing their extinction and control by private profit-oriented entities.

Within the CGIAR there is a "NGO Committee", that could give voice to civil society groups and farmers. But in the past year, more than half of those in this committee resigned and those remaining intend to "freeze" their participation next year. Why?

One of the things that triggered this was the CGIAR's failure to act, since the discovery about a year ago, that genetically modified (GM) corn had contaminated corn's center of diversity in Mexico.

The Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) -- IRRI's counterpart on corn and is part of the CGIAR network -- failed to respond to civil society's persistent request to look into the genetic contamination and despite the Mexican government recognition of this genetic invasion.

Just as alarming to scientists and farmers is the perceived increasing influence and membership of the "gene giants." Syngenta Foundation for Agriculture (of Syngenta, the world's largest agrochemical company) became the CGIAR's newest member this year, getting a seat in the CIMMYT board.

The NGO Committee within the CGIAR summarizes CGIAR's failure thus: It has failed to support an immediate moratorium on the release of GM crops into their centers despite the Mexico happening.

In the face of increased control of private entities, it has failed to uphold the FAO-CGIAR trust agreement that requires germplasm, and its genetic parts and components currently in the CGIAR gene banks, to be kept in a public domain.

The CGIAR has been actively promoting genetic engineering technology and products incompatible with farmer-led agro- ecological research, further marginalizing farming communities.

Masipag says the NGO Committee's abdication is a resounding no-confidence vote from civil society.

Like a pebble on a river bed, a grain of rice also holds the history of life in this universe. The cycles and seasons it goes through and how it dies and becomes part of our bodies and becomes earth again, resurrecting as new life forms in an amazing web of life.

There is more to a grain for rice than the issue of patenting and feeding the hungry of this world. We are what we eat.