[X] "Agrobiodiversity and Monoculture Homogenization in Agri/Culture" (UP Forum, 2011). [X] "The Fight for Education as Dress Rehearsal" (UP Forum, 2011). [--] "Community Sterilization and the Cataclysm" (UP Forum, 2012). [X] "Pamana at Pagkalinga ng mga Inang Makabayan" (UP Forum, 2012). [X] "Beyond the Bark: Reexamining our Roots" (UP Forum, 2012). [--] "Enabling Law Disabling 'Small Dictatorships'" (UP Forum, 2013). [--] "Power Switch: Reconsidering Renewable Energy" (UP Forum, 2013). "Fortun, Forensics and the Yolanda Aftermath: Recovery, Storage, System Restore, Repeat" (UP Forum, 2014). "General Education at Globalisasyon: Isip, Salita at Gawa Para Kanino?" (UP Forum, 2014)
magbabago ang listahan sa bawat post. simulan na natin.
Agrobiodiversity
and Monoculture Homogenization in Agri/Culture
Propagated
by media conglomerates, mainstream news on beauty pageants, boxing congressmen,
pregnant actresses, and the Malacañang occupant’s love life push
agricultural issues such as agrobiodiversity to the background. If
agrobiodiversity concerns are at all raised via media, data and analyses are more
often than not presented without depth and watered down to mere sloganeering.
Unlike Kalikasan People’s Network for
the Environment’s call to turn “lights off on new coal-fired power plants,” the
World Wildlife Fund’s popular earth hour campaign, for instance, trivializes
the issue and claims to involve citizens by turning off their lights to fight
climate change (one of the causes of agrobiodiversity loss). There is no
mention of corporate greed, no particular culprits. Quite similar is the
academe’s participation in the preservation of agrobiodiversity. Despite the clamor
against genetic modification and chemical farming, corporate funding gets researches going with corporate interests as
primary consideration..
Among and despite the required general
education (GE) courses on particular sciences, one may graduate from UP—or any university
in this predominantly agricultural country—without having studied even the essential concepts of agriculture.
Look no further for a culprit, as it could have been quick to evade your
scrutiny: we may credit culture,
reflecting the interests of those who control the economic base, for such a
circus of spectacles that deviates from subject matters more relevant than the
president’s new lover. Overlooked are matters that matter-- i.e. agricultural
concerns or peasant issues like land reform, trade policies, and the plummeting
state of agrobiodiversity.
Threatened
State of Agrobiodiversity
According
to the UPLB-College of Agriculture (UPLBCA) represented by Prof. Teresita
Borromeo, agrobiodiversity is the “variety and variability of animals, plants
and micro-organisms that are used directly or indirectly for food and
agriculture, including crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries.” Being a
subset of biodiversity, it “comprises the genetic resources of plants (crop
varieties, landraces, wild relatives of crops); animal genetic resources
(native and new breeds/strains of livestock and poultry) and microorganisms
important to food and agriculture,”
“Agrobiodiversity, being the
foundation of sustainable agricultural development and vital resources for food
security provides economic, environmental and socio-cultural benefits,” UPLBCA
said. Simply put, agrobiodiversity, as defined by the Magsasaka at Siyentista Tungo sa Pag-unlad ng Agrikultura (MASIPAG),
is “the diversity of the biological resources we have domesticated” for our
basic human needs. MASIPAG further said that agrobiodiversity is necessary for
offering a multitude of resources, improving our chances of survival and
providing more components for farm integration.
UPLBCA added, “A total of 39,100
species of flora and fauna have been identified in the country, of which a high
67% are endemic. There are approximately
15,000 plant species so far identified within its borders. Of the 8,120 species
of flowering plants 40% are endemic to the country.” However, these numbers may
dwindle or fluctuate and eventually plummet, if measures are not taken.
Besides displacement of the
landraces and traditional varieties being the primary problem, “acculturation,
globalization of the food systems and marketing, deforestation, population
pressure, land conversion, urbanization, pests and diseases, overgrazing, civil
strife and natural calamities, and climate change,” also contribute to
agrobiodiversity erosion, according to UPLBCA. MASIPAG is more particular,
enumerating (1.) conversion of highly diversified farms into haciendas being
the beginning of monoculture of export crops; (2) over-exploitation of natural
resources;(3) environment poisoning due to chemical farming and use of
synthetic pesticides and fertilizers;(4) marketing of commercial varieties; and
(5) implementation of government policies and monoculture.
Among the victims of
agrobiodiversity erosion are species that may not have potential value at the
moment, genetic diversity mainly among rice varieties, and even indigenous culture (MASIPAG 2003). According to these pronouncements, the crises facing
agrobiodiversity are quite similar with those of cultural diversity—losses in
agriculture due to the introduction of modern chemical farming coupled with
genetic modification results in the disintegration of indigenous culture and knowledge.
Similarly, powerful corporations that
introduce, or rather impose, modern or high- yielding varieties (HYVs) displace
local varieties, forcing farmers to purchase commercial seeds that are patented
and out of farmers’ control. Modern varieties then, besides threatening the
environment and food security, among others, serve as agents of monoculture and
monopoly in agriculture. Similarly, the Internet, cable television (TV) and World
Trade Organization-General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (WTO-GATT) provisions
contribute to homogenization of culture in the guise of globalization.
Despite the Philippines’ ranking
“seventh in the world in terms of species diversity and endemism,” (UPLBCA
2011) the reasization of promises of a better future for a country with rich
agrobiodiversity seems unlikely as amid global calls for biodiversity
preservation, “the spread of modern seeds and agricultural technologies
controlled and operated by agribusiness corporations have led to the erosion of
biodiversity.” (MASIPAG 2010).
The UPLBCA has taken measures to
preserve agrobiodiversity. It continues to offer courses on agrobiodiversity
conservation and management. It also houses at its Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB)
the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory (NPGRL), the national
repository of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA), despite
having “no comprehensive national PGR program and no stable funding to support
initiatives especially in the maintenance of national collection at the NPGRL.”
MASIPAG’s scientists on the other hand directly trained and involved farmers in
rice breeding, identifying research areas, and devising technologies.
Cogs
of a Familiar Machine
In
an interview with the UP Forum, Dean
Rolando Tolentino of the UP College of Mass Communication (CMC) said that
diversity in culture is necessary as different people of varying experiences
are resilient to different crises. Children in war-torn Mindanao may easily
overcome trauma than kids exclusively schooled in the metro. In the same way,
different plant varieties are resistant to different climates—so it all boils
down to diversity being essential to survival of people, their crops, their
culture, and their community. Pests may plague a farm but with diverse
varieties, food may remain secure. Pit diversity in culture and in agriculture,
against monoculture and you get the exact opposite: apocalypses of people,
their crops, their culture and their community.
Worldwide homogenization in
different aspects aggravates the crisis of human monoculture. Agricultural
erosion and cultural assimilation are just two of the offshoots of neocolonialism
via imperialist war machines of aggression, which may be explicit or implicit.
That is, borrowing Althusserian terms, forms of foreign, intrusive control may
be through Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA) or Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA). The former functions by
violence that may not necessarily be physical (the police, the military, etc.);
the latter by willing compliance (the church, the university, etc.) or interpellation,
i.e. an ideological control that compels the subject to willingly comply.
Such compliance is the foundation of
hegemony—the tacitly agreed upon status quo values and practices that are not
simply impositions from above, but from below as well, according to Tolentino.
“Hegemony is also a means of containing radical subversion.” With the analogy
to agriculture, monoculture homogenization, through imposition of commercial
HYVs, deems “centuries of rice production and development” backward and
inefficient (MASIPAG 2010). Likewise, indigenous cultures deemed pagan and
barbaric are benevolently assimilated, justifying enculturation. RSAs and ISAs
are then employed to agriculturally and culturally homogenize, with the former
ranging from legislation to military harassment and the latter primarily through
education.
Compare UPLBCA’s and MASIPAG’s
analysis of the reasons behind agrobiodiversity erosion, and notice that the
former (a formal institution) did not explicitly mention corporate interests
while the latter (an informal institution) blatantly criticizes agribusinesses
imposing monoculture through commercial control, criminalization of farmers by
restricting research, among others, at the expense of species that serves as
stationary food of the farmers, genetic diversity and indigenous culture.
As Dean Michael Tan of the UP
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) said in an interview with the UP Forum, “The definitions of ‘culture’
are in fact very agricultural in nature, in the sense of nurturing and
cultivation.” The nurturing then of a child, and the nurturing of the seed
shall be diversified and based on the community, indigenous or otherwise, he
was born into. Tan added, “Variation in nature is important for survival.” In
contrast, the practice of monocropping threatens survival since “with its
narrow genetic stock, pest and disease outbreaks are more frequent and crops
are less resilient to climate pressures.” (MASIPAG 2010).
However, some institutions calling
for preservation of biodiversity may be another liberal strain to those calling
for multiculturalism, i.e. the pluralist acceptance of cultural diversity in
society (Tolentino 2011), that E. San Juan Jr pertains to as he quotes Slavoj
Zizek in his paper The Paradox of
Multiculturalism: “With the intensifying commodification of ethnic
particularisms, the multicultural spectacle now operates as the authentic
‘cultural logic of multinational or global capitalism.’”
Pluralism then passes itself as
democratic, yet, it often concludes and reaffirms hegemonic institutions. In
the same manner, justifying the status quo are the pretentions of New Criticism
in literature, objectivity in journalism and agrobiodiversity in agriculture with
the claim of science being value-free or unbiased. Tolentino said that
multiculturalism is devoid of class analysis. Likewise, San Juan’s reservation
of the said paradigm is its “occlusion of unequal power/property relations.” Tolentino
further said that the myth of the melting pot is too utopian as no matter how
the mixture of all cultures in the margins can never be the national culture,
the national culture remains in Manila, defined by the educated and the
moneyed.
Pulling legislative strings of RSAs
and ISAs, dominant institutions in both the agricultural and the cultural
industries force stakeholders into submission. The Plant Variety Protection Act
of 2002 (PVP), according to MASIPAG, grants ‘breeders’ (formal corporations and
institutions) privileges to their discovered or developed varieties while
farmers are deprived of their right to varieties they helped to develop.
Moreover, HYVs or commercial varieties, available from agribusinesses, require
chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce high yields. Notice that even
the IMF-World Bank requires policies that ‘encourage’ budget cuts on social
services, compelling educational institutions to rely on privatization and
commercialization. In effect, this transforms universities from institutions of
higher learning to corporate research facilities that shall then be driven by
the profit motive—consistent with the government’s commitment to debt
servicing.
Monopoly, monoculture and
monocropping economically, culturally and agriculturally intervene and displace
the locals, the indigenous and the tillers. Tan’s example that can be taken
literally or figuratively is right in the University’s backyard: “(in Palma
Hall) We recently discovered the Gmelina trees, planted as part of our
‘greening’ efforts, have been growing so quickly with its long roots that it is
now difficult for other plants to survive.
Our famous kalatsutsi are
becoming stunted. Carabao grass is
disappearing, because the Gmelina trees,
with its long and rapidly-growing roots, are taking up all the water. The roots are also moving into our sidewalks
causing cracks and uneven terrain. We
could have introduced more biodiversity using other plants that fit with each
other.”
The manufacture and/or imposition of
agricultural technologies and cultural paraphernalia increment casualties and
melt everything into homogenization in the guise of technological advancement. San
Juan said, “Clearly, the paradigm of modernization and developmentalism
predicated on the superiority of Western political and economic institutions
determined then, and continues to influence, the instrumentalizing technologies
and policy implications offered by those who claim to be authorities on the
cultural diversity of the Philippines.” In this instance, both in the
agricultural and cultural sense,
Homogenization, thanks to cultural
imperialism via globalization, drives people’s desire towards global middle
class products or services such as iPods and iMacs (Tolentino 2011), as farmers
are interpellated into accepting “modern” farming technologies, i.e. commercial
pesticide-/fertilizer-dependent chemical farming, rather than traditional
farming methods deemed to be doomed to antiquation—or in agricultural terms, ex situ (off-site) and in vitro (within glass) conservations,
rather than in situ (on site), with
the former utilized by formal institutions and the latter by informal
institutions.
Notice the semblance to the ivory
tower of the literary canon overlooking literatures from the margins, or,
“emergent literature,” as Elmer Ordenez puts it, may be more appropriate.
Similarly, the culture of Manila business process outsourcing, as Tolentino
illustrated, discriminates against call center applicants from the provinces
imposing that the non-Manileños lose their accent and implying that they shrug
off their cultural identity . According to Tolentino, such snobbery creates a
glass ceiling intimidating non-hegemonic ethnicities. In agriculture, this can
be seen in the imposition of HYVs. Tolentino added that for a multicultural
society to be healthy, there has to be unity in diversity, tolerance and
support. Tan values variety as well, saying “The same principle applies to
human communities, where a ‘monoculture’ means narrow views of the world, and
an insistence that there is only one way to look at and interpret the world.”
The agreement to disagreement can
never be achieved with monoculture homogenization shoving its dominance down
everybody’s throats. Thus, everybody is left with no choice but to
heterogeneously defy and vigilantly hold on to our identities and roles in
society. We can’t take such a challenge sitting down, as we cannot afford to
lose tillers due to the injustices legalized by the government and the
superiority of the formal or modern farming techniques instituted by the ruling
elite. The former, an RSA, functions through implementation of
agriculture-related policies such as the PVP; while the latter, an ISA,
functions with subtlety through society’s intimidating the farmers’ indigenous
knowledge and culture by considering their ways passé. Thus, people empowerment
through organized social movements is necessary in resisting monocropping,
monoculture and the other facades of monopoly capitalism.
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