Growing up his father's farm in Purok 18, Nursery Lagao, Gen. Santos City, Edwin Paraluman learned early the difficulty of corn farming.  The eldest among seven children, he helped his father cultivate the soil, take out weeds from the plants, apply fertilizer on them, and spray pesticides.  If a farmer means raising his yield, he knew all these had to be done.

Despite diligent farming practices, Paraluman, 46, relates how destructive the pest Asiatic corn borer (ACB) is that it could wipe out as much as 80 percent of the harvest, season after planting season for as far back as he could remember as a young farm helper.

"My father is a farmer.  He is a corn planter, and I was the right hand of my father, that's why I know how it is to grow a corn plant."

Since 2000, research firm Monsanto Philippines Inc. (MPI) began testing genetically modified corn with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which is a protein that makes corn resistant to the ruinous ACB.  Once the ACB eats the protein Bt, it dies at once.  But the Bt gene remains neither harmful to human being nor to beneficial insects as MPI claims. 

Paraluman has since been looking forward to planting Bt corn after seeing corn harvests almost 100 percent unharmed from pests even during the dry season when ACB hits corn fields the hardest.

Bt corn is now in the process of commercialization in the Philippines.  Currently in the hands of the Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP) tapped by the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) to examine MPI's application, commercialization may not be too far as the 90-day period for government to look through it must end on around December 3.

First, MPI has gone through rigorous testing of Bt corn initially in a contained greenhouse environment.

It subsequently tested the corn seed in a limited field trial in South Cotabato.  Then, it has completed two sets of multi-location field testing, one for the wet season and another for the dry, while another wet season testing is on-going and is up for harvest by November.

Tested early this year for the dry season on three sites in Isabela (Ilagan, Cauayan, and Echague), two in Bukidnon (Kibawe and Dangkagan), and Tigaon in Camarines Sur in Bicol, Bt corn proved a higher yield of some nine tons per hectare.  This is more than one ton higher than the 7.5 to 7.8 ton per hectare yield on the non-Bt hybrid corn and five to to seven ton higher than the traditional corn breeds.  During a field test, MPI plants both Bt and non-Bt corn in the same site to test the extent of ACB destruction on non-Bt plants.

Aside from the farmers, industry corn users have supported the commercialization of Bt corn as they hope to cut costs from corn imports which carry a landed cost of P8.50 per kilo from the United States.

For one, the Philippine Association of Feed Millers Inc. (PAFMI) whose members process feed for the livestock industry, depend highly on corn by around 50 percent for the protein nutrient in feed.

Ric Pinca, PAFMI vice president, said that with the country's importation of 800,000 to one million tons of corn yearly, the commercialization of Bt corn must be a welcome move to the livestock industry.  More so, the Philippines' import of Indian wheat which is a corn substitute for livestock feed is estimated to reach to one million tons this year.

The adoption of technology on genetically modified organisms (GMO) has earlier been warded off by the Arroyo Administration which issued in April 2001 a ban on all GMO field tests after serious prodding of non-government organizations and environmental groups such as Greenpeace International.

However, the ban could never seem to quell clamor for increased food production.  While consumers have remained silent on GMO for some time since MPI began testing Bt corn in 2000, a consumer survey just released showed that close to 70 percent of Filipino consumers now favor GMO propagation in the country.

Besides, scientists and government authorities argue that the Philippines in fact imports substantial corn volume from the United States which affirms that the country itself is already importing Bt corn as the US does not segregate its GM and non-GM corn production.  The US's GM corn takes up one-third of its corn production.

To some, it was ironic that the Philippines has been unconsciously importing finished GM goods for several years now.  And yet when it came to locally propagating GMOs, some sectors debated vehemently against it even if this would save the Philippines' substantial cost.