ASFARNET - Philippines Declares Commitment to Support Agri-Biotechnology

The Asian Farmer's Network (ASFARNET) - Philippines made a resounding declaration supporting the utilization of biotechnology for food, feed and fiber security. Members and officers of the network signed the declaration during their organizational meeting and biotechnology workshop held last July 22-23 in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines. The declaration states that  biotechnology offers solutions in alleviating agricultural production problems 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. The network supports "farmers' choice" in the adoption of new technologies and products; involvement in biotechnology awareness building initiatives from different sectors; and continuous conduct of scientist-farmer discussions on agri-biotechnology.

Representative farmers from the three major islands 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 other farmers.

Conceived in 2003, ASFARNET-Philippines is composed of farmer-leaders and key stakeholders from 15 regions of the country. Most of the members of ASFARNET- Philippines are adoptors of biotech corn since 2003, and are actively involved in advocating the use of the technology. About 100,000 small-scale Filipino farmers planted biotech corn in more than 350,000 hectares in 2008.

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