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 |
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