Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the 1995 International Rice Research Conference of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)

[Delivered in Los Baños, Laguna, February 13, 1995]

A second Green
Revolution

THE PHILIPPINES has the distinct honor of having been the host of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for 35 years.

IRRI was founded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations in 1960 when the doomsayers were predicting an impending world famine in the 1970s. The world, they said, simply would not be able to feed its growing population.

All of you know very well that those predictions did not happen—mainly because the pessimists had underestimated the capacity of scientists to solve human problems.

Benefits for the Philippines

High-yielding, early-maturing and fertilizer-responsive rice varieties produced by IRRI, and superior varieties of wheat produced by Centro International de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo in Mexico, doubled and even tripled rice, corn and wheat yields.

Thus they ushered in the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The rest is history with which you are all familiar.

The Philippines has greatly benefited from the research results and modern technologies produced by IRRI. For instance:

• Modern rice varieties and associated technologies, complemented by the Government’s investments in irrigation systems and support services, increased rice production in the Philippines at an annual rate of 4.2 percent from 1970 to 1989.
• The Philippine population increased from 39.2 million in 1974 to 65 million in 1994, while riceland decreased from 3.6 million hectares to 3.3 million hectares, yet our country has been able to achieve self-sufficiency in rice almost every year. This was due to the availability of modern varieties and associated technologies.

In 1994, with favorable weather for rice production and a more focused Government rice production program in key production areas, we produced a record harvest of more than 10 million tons.

• Without modern rice varieties and associated technologies, the Philippines would have an annual rice deficit of at least 6 million tons of rough rice, or 4 million tons of milled rice.

Importing that amount of rice at the current price of US$280 a ton would cost the country about US$1.1 billion.

• IRRI’s collaboration with the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PHILRICE) and the Department of Agriculture in the promotion of nonchemical tactics for pest control (integrated pest management) has reduced pesticide sprayings from six times in 1987 to one to two times per rice crop today.

Declining donor support

This has saved the country about $15 million worth of pesticide importation every year, and has resulted in less pollution of the environment.

Other countries in Asia have also benefited from the Green Revolution. Indonesia, a traditional importer of rice in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, is now self-sufficient in rice in spite of its rapidly growing population.

Vietnam, using modern rice varieties from IRRI, is now exporting rice. India, with its ever-increasing population, is also able to meet increasing demands for rice almost every year. Bangladesh, except for years of extremely bad weather, is able to produce enough rice to meet its needs.

Yet, support from the donor community for IRRI—and 15 other international research centers around the world under the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research—has been decreasing annually since 1989.

Many donors have dropped food production and agriculture from their list of priorities, and are now putting more emphasis on environment protection and natural resource management as priority areas for support, as if food production and environment protection could be dissociated one from the other.

Obviously, there is a need to reverse the trend of declining donor support for research on rice and other food crops. You, as knowledgeable scientists who appreciate the challenges of the twenty-first century better than most, have a responsibility to enlighten the donors—and the taxpayers, too.

A sustainable second Green Revolution

It is about time that the developed and developing countries, particularly in Asia, which depend on rice as their principal source of calories, began supporting rice research at the national and international levels. As distinguished and well-informed scientists, you can convey to donors for agricultural research this message of support, which is essential to our survival in the future.

We should guard against complacency on food security issues. Our immediate problem is how to increase rice production every year to meet the demands of 50 million more mouths to feed every year. There is almost no leeway to increase the amount of arable land for rice production.

Our biggest challenge, therefore, is how to produce more rice on less land—and how to do this with less water, less rural labor and, especially, less of the pesticides that pollute our streams, rivers and lakes.

Obviously, we need another Green Revolution—a sustainable second Green Revolution that will meet the world’s ever-increasing food requirements, and which will protect our agricultural resource base and our environment.

Need for collaboration

The awesome, challenging task of producing more food with fewer resources cannot be accomplished without international cooperation.

We need to harmonize the efforts of international agricultural research centers such as IRRI and national research institutes and centers such as PHILRICE, along with adequate support from both donors and national governments.

Equally important are the role of universities in research and the training of personnel, and the role of the private sector in the use of modern technologies in the production, processing and marketing of food products and byproducts.

The National Government also has a key role to play in support services and appropriate policies.

I hope that you will include, in your dialogue, discussions on appropriate policies on:

• International and national support for research and development;
• Investments in rural infrastructure, such as irrigation systems, flood control, farm-to-market roads and post-harvest facilities;
• Investments in irrigated or favorable riceland versus investments in less favorable areas for rice production;
• Intellectual property rights and seed production;
• Commercial fertilizer and chemical pesticide issues;
• Pricing policy that balances the interest of rice producers and consumers;
• Achieving efficiency and effectiveness to be competitive under the GATT, without neglecting the needs of resource-poor farmers;
• Removal of policy biases against agriculture.

These are all important policy issues that need your full attention, and I urge you to discuss these comprehensively and come up with policy recommendations.

International recognition for IRRI

It is paradoxical that IRRI, although it has been operating in the Philippines for 35 years with privileges befitting those of an international organization granted by the Philippine Government, is not yet recognized as such in other countries.

I therefore look forward to that day in the near future when such broader international recognition will take place.

We support the move to grant IRRI international status and are working on the executive agreement embodying this.

In closing, I stress again the need for collaboration between international and national research centers, the need for continuing donor and National Government support for research on rice and other food crops, and the need for concerted efforts of scientists, Government policymakers and the private sector.

Without these, we cannot sustain a second Green Revolution for our food security in the next century.

At the same time, let us bear in mind that your deliberations here are only the beginning of a long process of new growth and production.

The rice you produce will still have to be cooked, as it were, and served to the people. As one of our favorite sayings suggests: “Ang bigas man, kahit na magaling, ay isinasaing pa rin, bago ipakain.” That is to say, “No matter how good the rice is, it still needs to be cooked to be eaten.”

Produce the rice, and we will do the rest.