Farmers' Rights and the Mindanao Agriculture Development Agenda

 

FARMERS’ RIGHTS AND THE MINDANAO

AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE)

Statement on the 1st Mindanao Agriculture Forum 

November 21-23, 2007

 

 

It is not possible to conceive of an agenda for agricultural development without conceiving of an agenda for farmers and farmers' rights.

 

SEARICE has been working in Mindanao since 1992 when we started the Community Based Native Seeds Research Center (CONSERVE) in Pres. Roxas, Cotabato. CONSERVE itself was built from the local farmers' movement in Cotabato, which in turn had been nurtured mainly by the Church from the time of the anti-Marcos dictatorship struggles. We simply inherited and continued what had been started by local farmers as their struggle for a better life and for a fuller realization of their rights, politically, economically, culturally and socially.

 

Even then, when we started CONSERVE, we did not come with a full agenda for local agricultural development nor did we aspire to achieve one. We still don't claim to have one now. We came in with quite a simple idea: seeds. Yet even from that seemingly simple idea of seeds our years of work with farmers have taught us and eventually led us to a better appreciation of something broader than what we started out, and that is, farmers' rights. And this appreciation come through years of lessons, wisdom and struggles imparted to us by farmers themselves. Yet, we are not claiming expertise on the subject of farmers' rights. We do know enough however that there could not be an agenda for agriculture without farmers' and farmers' rights being central to the discussions.

 

What now appears to be obvious at this point in the 1^st Mindanao Agriculture Forum: that it suffers from a gaping hole in its heart, the heart of farmers' rights! We are not merely saying that Farmers' Rights is the missing element here because that is the terrain of advocacy that we happen to be working in. We are saying so because this terrain has become global in significance, which we especially Mindanawans may ignore only at our own loss.

 

Recently, the second meeting of the Governing Body of the International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), of which the Philippines is a signatory, took place in Rome early this month. The Treaty, which took effect in 2004 is the foremost international instrument governing discussions and negotiations among Parties with regard to policies about Plant Genetic Resources in Food and Agriculture. At the heart of the Treaty is Farmers' Rights, enshrined in Article 9.

 

It is an imperfect Treaty no doubt and the section on Farmers' Rights among its many imperfections. Farmers' movements themselves have criticized Farmers' Rights provision in the Treaty for, among others, the narrowness of its scope and to its being made subject to national legislation. Nevertheless, the Treaty remains the only one that explicitly recognizes Farmers’ Rights and calls upon countries to implement it. It is a historic Treaty and under ideal circumstances, is a work in progress.

 

For us at SEARICE, we came into the Rome meeting having conducted a series of consultations among farmers in Mindanao, Visayas and at the national level about Farmers' Rights. The objective of those consultations was to try to form a consensus among farmers about what they understand Farmers' Rights to be and the key issues that affect them.

 

What those consultations basically showed is that farmers consider Farmers' Rights as mainly a bundle of rights, or a collection of rights ranging from the economic to the political, from the social to the cultural. They are interlocking rights that define what a farmer is or what he or she ought to be in the eyes of society. Farmers regard their rights to land as a very basic right, hence the struggle for land reform, including in Mindanao, remains very much alive. The farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon who are marching right now towards Malacanang are living proof of this struggle. But also important for farmers are their rights to seeds, i.e., unimpeded access to use, sell, share and market seeds. So too are rights to participation in government, to appropriate and safe technologies, to access to health care, to safe and nutritious food, to fair market access, among others. Indeed, what those consultations showed is that farmers do hold a holistic view of their rights and consequently of their role in society as a whole and in agriculture as a sector.

 

Farmers from South-Central Mindanao during the consultations particularly articulated the core issues that impede them from realizing and asserting their basic socio-economic,cultural rights.  According to them, the so-called ‘development projects’ such as mining explorations and  the expansion of  agricultural plantations, in fact deduced farmers into mere tenants and/or daily laborers,  has not only contaminated their lands and water system but also showered their communities  with toxic sprays  and in the process, disregarded their efforts  to practice a more environment-friendly sustainable agriculture.  Underlying issues behind this are the absence of comprehensive information dissemination for farmers to have informed decision and the lack of  farmers’,  local communities’ and women’s voices in decision-making processes at all levels. 

 Farmers during the consultation also lamented the seemingly lack of recognition for their efforts in conservation and sustainable management of the agroecosystem from the formal sector.  On seeds/ plant genetic resources for example, farmer-partners of SEARICE in North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat during the span of 1994-2006 have developed and bred some 110 rice varieties from local and traditional varieties that are adaptable and suited to their specific local conditions. In second cropping in 2006, about 42.6 tons from these seeds have spread to some 328 hectares in 21 farming communities in North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Bukidnon, in the process increasing the varietal diversity in lowland rice farming communities.  The Government thru the Department of Agriculture, however is bent on subsidizing and promoting only 5 varieties of hybrid seeds, further subjecting lowland agroecosystems more prone to disease and pest epidemics and also in promoting genetically modified crops whose long-term impacts to human and animal health and to the environment remains unknown. Moreover, these bias promotion of one-size fits all technologies undermines farmers’ conservation efforts and accordingly, further marginalizes their sector to become dependent and ‘tenants’ to what technology, inputs, seeds the scientists, government, traders, and seed companies prescribe and promote.

Albeit the lack of support, this did not hamper farmers from crafting their own development as forms of assertions of their rights – by organizing themselves into groups, networks and movements that freely exchange and share not only seeds and related knowledge, technologies and increasingly by engaging local government units and thru participation in special bodies at the community and local levels to protect and support their initiatives, among others. Farmers are showing the way, it is about time we let them lead the way to agricultural development.

Henceforth, we believe that Mindanao Agriculture Agenda should be defined by the farmers of Mindanao with active and diverse participation of different stakeholders particularly small farmers, indigenous peoples, rural youth and rural women.  It is our call and our challenge to develop a   Farmers’ Rights- based agenda for agricultural development  in Mindanao - with  Mindanawan farmers as central to the process of defining the agenda.

- End-

SEARICE Mindanao

Bautista Farms, Tacurong City

Sultan Kudarat 

Telefax:  +6364 477 0045; +632 922 6710

Email: searice@searice.org.ph, searice_mindanao@searice.org.ph  

Ocean Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming

Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron
or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large

algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible 

solution to global warming because the growing
algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Brett Hillyard)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/1 1/0711291
32753.htm

Web address:
http ://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/
071129 132753.htm

Ocean Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming
Discredited By New Research
ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) — Scientists have revealed an
important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of
plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected
$100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities
suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of
reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to
global warming. Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron or
other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been
proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the
growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a
lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to
deeper waters. This process, which scientists call the "Biological
Pump", has been thought to be dependent on the abundance of
algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom,
the more carbon is transported, or "pumped", from the
atmosphere to the deep ocean.

To test this theory, researchers compared the abundance of algae in the surface waters of the world's oceans with
the amount of carbon actually sinking to deep water. They found clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance
and carbon sinking rates. However, the relationship between the two was surprising: less carbon was transported to
deep water during a summertime bloom than during the rest of the year. This analysis has never been done before
and required designing specialized mathematical algorithms.

"By jumping a mathematical hurdle we found a new globally synchronous signal," said Dr. Lutz.
"This discovery is very surprising", said lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel
School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep
water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks.

More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this
ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss", said Lutz. "Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an
artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they
ignore the natural processes revealed by this research."

This study closely follows a September Ocean Iron Fertilization symposium at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (WHOI) attended by leading scientists, international lawyers, policy makers, and concerned
representatives from government, business, academia and environmental organizations.

Topics discussed included potential environmental dangers, economic implications, and the uncertain effectiveness
of ocean fertilization. To date none of the major ocean fertilization experiments have verified that a significant
amount of deep ocean carbon sequestration occurs. Some scientists have suggested that verification may require
more massive and more permanent experiments. Together with commercial operators they plan to go ahead with
large-scale and more permanent ocean fertilization experiments and note that potential negative environmental
consequences must be balanced against the harm expected due to ignoring climate change.

During the Ocean Iron Fertilization meeting Dr. Hauke Kite-Powell, of the Marine Policy Center at WHOI,
estimated the possible future value of ocean fertilization at $100 billion of the emerging international carbon trading
market, which has the goal of mitigating global warming. However, according to Professor Rosemary Rayfuse, an
expert in International Law and the Law of the Sea at the University of New South Wales, Australia, who also
attended the Woods Hole meeting, ocean fertilization projects are not currently approved under any carbon credit
regulatory scheme and the sale of offsets or credits from ocean fertilization on the unregulated voluntary markets is
basically nothing short of fraudulent.

'There are too many scientific uncertainties relating both to the efficacy of ocean fertilization and its possible
environmental side effects that need to be resolved before even larger experiments should be considered, let alone
the process commercialized,' Rayfuse says. 'All States have an obligation to protect and preserve the marine
environment and to ensure that all activities carried out under their jurisdiction and control, including marine
scientific research and commercial ocean fertilization activities do not cause pollution.
Ocean fertilization is 'dumping' which is essentially prohibited under the law of the sea. There is no point trying to
ameliorate the effects of climate change by destroying the oceans -- the very cradle of life on earth. Simply doing
more and bigger of that which has already been demonstrated to be ineffective and potentially more harmful than
good is counter-intuitive at best.'

Indeed, the global study of Dr. Lutz and colleagues suggests that greatly enhanced carbon sequestration should not
be expected no matter the location or duration of proposed large-scale ocean fertilization experiments.
According to Dr Lutz "The limited duration of previous ocean fertilization experiments may not be why carbon
sequestration wasn't found during those artificial blooms. This apparent puzzle could actually reflect how marine
ecosystems naturally handle blooms and agrees with our findings. A bloom is like ringing the marine ecosystem
dinner bell. The microbial and food web dinner guests appear and consume most of the fresh algal food."
"Our study highlights the need to understand natural ecosystem processes, especially in a world where change is
occurring so rapidly," concluded Dr. Lutz.
The findings of Dr. Lutz and colleagues coincide with and affirm this month's decision of the London Convention
(the International Maritime Organization body that oversees the dumping of wastes and other matter at sea) to
regulate controversial commercial ocean fertilization schemes. This gathering of international maritime parties
advised that such schemes are currently not scientifically justified.

Strategies to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, including the enhancement of biological sinks through
processes such as ocean fertilization, will be considered by international governmental representatives during the
thirteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali next month.

This research was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Mi ami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.
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University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science (2007, November 30). Ocean
Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming Discredited By New Research. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 30, 2007,
from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/1 1/071129132753 .htm