Allow Golden Rice Now so is the name of the organisation which explicitly wants Greenpeace to stop their protests against GM rice.
'Campaign spokesman Dr. Patrick Moore is a Phd ecologist, award-winning scientist, author and educator. He believes the opponents of Golden Rice have no evidence to justify a ban on researching and developing it, as it is a food that could end untold human suffering and the death of millions of people'.
Hmm,
but it is not a Trojan horse, opening the rice seed sector to
privatised GM companies? If Golden Rice is so good why has it not
already persuaded opponents? And is everyone waiting for GM rice that
hardly contributes to the solution? Why not add vit-A to f.i. beer and
ask everybody to drink more beer? I stand by the argument that Golden
Rice hardly results in a solution, but in the meantime will rob a great
deal of rice growing communities worldwide the ability to take their own
decisions on what (and what not) to plant and the acceptance will result inless desirous business practices to expand worldwide.
One practice from yesteryears is assisting poor communties with strings attached help. The Philippine Star reports (Jan. 22) that Bayer CropScience are helping cyclone victims. By giving farmers hybrid rice seeds.
'This is our way of helping out our farmers in Leyte and Samar to get
back up on their feet after the devastation to their lives and
livelihood.”
"We believe that the faster they can start planting rice, the better for them as it will help take their minds away from the disaster and start rebuilding their lives," explained Bayer CropScience Managing Director Hans-Joachim Wegfarht'.
Take care
If we had any hopes of the Thai situation taking a upswing, we'll have to make a rethink.
As for news on the rice pledging, this is also degenerating. With possible elections forthcoming is the current government able to authorise budget expenditures on rice-pledging? The Nation (Jan. 8) reports on the doubts. Can the government pay farmers who have already pledged. Can the government sell pledged rice? No one knows, so nothing will happen ...
But no, so the Bangkok Post reports (Jan. 22):
'The caretaker government has decided to proceed with plans to borrow 130 billion baht to fund its controversial rice-pledging scheme. The Election Commission (EC) has resolved it lacks the authority to approve the loan'.
The Nation reports similar.
With the government weakened the national Anti-Corruption Committee feels safe enough to start a probe into the PM's role in the rice pledge scheme (Jan. 17, Bangkok Post). Basically they are accusing the PM in her role as overseer of the rice pledge programme of negligence, which just shows how politicized the committee is. Surely there is enough corruption to keep the committee busy without seeking out negligence as an excuse to charge a weakened PM.
From the other side there is mounting pressure from farmers (Nation, Jan. 18), especially those who have yet to see their money returned. I suppose they can assume that they won't get their money ...
A day later the same newspaper is still milking the same story. Then a few days later (Jan. 22) the Nation notes that the disastified will join all the protesters on the streets of Bangkok ...
The Cambodian Daily (Jan. 3) reports on strong export figures from Cambodia:
'Rice exports increased from 205,717 tons in 2012 to 378,856 tons in 2013 as a result of high demand from the European Union as well as countries in Asia, according to figures released Thursday by the Ministry of Agriculture'.
Oryzae.com notes that Cambodiia still believes the 1 million export is still attainable by 2015.
A Korean company hopes to import Cambodian rice, a possible break through in this part of the world (Phnom Penh Post, Jan. 22).
Furthermore one should notice that now the ANZ bank is under fire for supporting alocal sugar company. Exporting rice is in this regard is a lot 'cleaner'.
Wonder
The Business Insider reports (Dec. 3) on a wonder-gene which could boost rice production by as much as 30%. Again the age-old saying seeing is believing. And we would need to know the economics behind this and the potentail availability. If indeed available with conventional breeding techniques, our hybrid rice companies will loose another argument to promote their offspring ...
