Genetic engineers are aiming to capture huge markets in Asia, where farmers still save seed from their rice harvest for planting the next season. Use science to stop the reproductive capacity of rice or use law to patent the plant, so no one can commercially exploit it without your permission. The real impact to expect from genetically engineered rice is not how it might feed Asia, but how it will expand the wealth of transnationals poised to enter the rice market in Asia. Until recently, patenting of food crops was mainly restricted to industrialised countries, where highly subsidised farmers manage to pay royalties to access new strains that are tailored for factory farming conditions. Now it is spreading to the poor countries of the South, as a requirement under the World Trade Organisation.
Rice is on the front line.
And rice research in the public interest will be severely affected. IRRI was responsible for the Green Revolution, which, despite the hype about feeding the world, has actually left many people poorer and hungrier than in the past. In its media work to draw attention to its celebration, IRRI is rightly raising the spectre of rice patenting. However, the Institute is alarmingly misleading the public about what is going on. Farmers groups and non government organisations have been shouting this for decades.