By Diego Morra
Yes, that’s what agricultural biotechnology products are up against, and the fact that big corporations champion these products along with countries that dominate the food export business are the very basis of what is now slowly transforming into universal revulsion against genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), genetic engineering (GE) and even the applications of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing developed by Jacqueline Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who both won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
On August 19, 2025, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, Inc. (ISAAA) sponsored a workshop for journalists in Manila along with the Department of Agriculture Biotech Program Office, the College of Development Communication of the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) and the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) and Bayer precisely to analyze trends in agri-biotech and how the Filipino people, as well as the entire human population of 8.2 billion people, perceive the technology, and why acceptance pf biotech has been a rollercoaster ride.
For sure, agri-biotech has not been received as manna from heaven, with Greenpeace and various Philippine organizations opposing the development and propagation of biotech crops, from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn, Bt eggplant, Golden Rice and others, on environmental, scientific and economic grounds, arguing that big agribusiness corporations are the ones promoting Bt crops to line their own pockets, surely not an altruistic motive, and deny farmers the chance to do their own plant breeding, or continue cultivating traditional varieties preferred by the domestic market. The debate between biotech advocates and those who resist Bt crops has continued for more than 20 years and the battle has reached the Supreme Court (SC.)
Nevertheless, Bt corn apparently gained acceptance since 2003, when it was approved for commercialization in the Philippines, with government statistics showing that 415, 000 farmers cultivate the crop in 831,000 hectares, for an average of just 2 hectares. Interestingly, the big producers are in South Cotabato, particularly in areas inhabited by the T’boli and B’laan farmers. The key reasons for Bt corn adaptation were higher yields that lead to more profit, reduced pesticide use and bigger demand for yellow corn as livestock feed. The DA claimed that higher Bt corn production benefited the livestock industry. Without Bt corn output, the Philippines would not have been No. 12 in the list of top GMO producers worldwide.
Surely the homo economicus in the Filipino farmer knows how to maximize utility as a consumer and exact higher profit as a food producer but through time, there has been an ebb and flow in earnings, indicating that the income growth is not assured when big traders control the market. This is the same reason why the Rice Liberalization Law, also known as Republic Act No. 11203, has been savaged by farmers for emphasizing rice imports rather than promoting domestic rice production. Will intensifying Golden Rice production lead to skyrocketing palay bumper harvests and eliminate blindness among the young? If this were the case, Filipino farmers would opt for it hands down. However, if the product is not consistent with the promise, the opposition will continue.
Leafing through the workshop materials, it appears both ISAAA and Bayer are concerned more about public perceptions about agri-biotech products but did not tackle how green biotech, red biotech or medical and health applications, and white biotech for industrial and consumer use perform worldwide. Following the advice of Socrates, everything must be examined to find out their value and their necessity in living, producing and reproducing society. It is not enough that biotech is getting a bad rap because it is novel or threatens the natural order of things; it must prove itself to be superior to older scientific processes and promotes the commonweal.
What is fundamentally strange in public perceptions on biotech applications worldwide is that far more developed and wealthy countries are retreating from their previous acceptance of such applications, which is akin to the Scandinavian and Nordic countries chucking computers and tablets and reverting to pencil and paper for their pre-school and kindergarten pupils. A study in Iran in 2007 showed those with higher education tended to favor biotech food products and only 8% on non-students accept them. The same year, another study found that only 40% of North Americans knew that tomatoes have genes, a third of Europeans said they have ko genes and another third simply do not know. In 2009, more academics surveyed in Ghana didn’t want biotech crops while farmers said it would make them dependent on foreign seed companies. In 1998, biotech was accepted in the US, Canada and Japan but in Germany and Austria, respondents were bothered by the social, political and environmental impacts of biotech. Six years later, the situation changed, with the Japanese shying away from biotech. As early as 1994, the Spaniards also opposed biotech food products.
What all these data show is that biotech still has a world to win and harping on the lack of knowledge about biotech by the very market it seeks to dominate is like putting the cart before the horse. John Wesley was right: What a generation tolerates, the next generation embraces. The problem is that the previous generations were generally reticent in tolerating biotech and it will take generations before biotech will be embraced by a world conscious of its being a necessity to remedy nourish and heal a world skidding toward environmental collapse, not because 38% of Americans are functionally illiterate but because biotech still cannot convince the planet that it is one solution to the mess the Earth is in.
