I’ve eaten golden rice and I hope to eat it again—even though a group of judges here in the Philippines just banned its cultivation.
The bad news came on April 17, when a court of appeals revoked a biosafety permit that had allowed the commercial cultivation of this amazing crop. This decision will hurt farmers, block access to this scientific innovation and condemn children to blindness and possibly death.
I’ve grown Bt corn on my farm in the Philippines for years because it makes economic and environmental sense, allowing me to grow healthy food in a sustainable way—more food on less land and with fewer pesticides.
I’ve also called many times for the permission to grow golden rice, a GM crop that holds the potential to alleviate enormous human suffering by defeating the menace of vitamin-A deficiency. As many as half a million children go blind each year because they don’t have enough vitamin A in their diets, according to the World Health Organisation. What’s more, about half of the children who lose their sight also lose their lives: vitamin-A deficiency drives them to death.
Golden rice has the potential to solve this problem of malnutrition. It’s fortified with beta carotene—and if it enters the food supply, it will meet the needs of vulnerable people, especially here in the Philippines, where the problem of vitamin-A deficiency is severe.
Simply put, golden rice is a golden opportunity.
My country’s approval of golden rice came in 2021, when the Philippines joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States in declaring golden rice safe for human consumption. Farmers celebrated the decision because we wanted to participate in this important project.
We also knew it would take time to move from successful field trials to complete commercialisation. The early harvests grew only about 100 tons of rice—a tiny fraction of the 20 million tons that the Philippines often produces. The idea is not for golden rice to replace every other kind of rice, but rather to become one of many varieties and to direct it toward the people who need it most.
During this period, I had a chance to eat it. I received five kilograms from the International Rice Research Institute, a humanitarian group that aims to abolish poverty and hunger with improved rice production. It helped develop golden rice and is a longtime advocate for the crop.
Golden rice earned its name because of its yellow colour and it looks a lot like the Java rice that is already popular in the Philippines. I cooked my portion to share with my coworkers and enjoyed its sweet taste. I’d love to grow it on my farm—and I was looking forward to the time when the seeds became plentiful enough for me to obtain them for use in the field.
But now these plans are on hold, due to the court ruling. That’s too bad for me, but I’ll be fine. I’ll remain busy with the corn and rice that I already grow. The real victims are the children who are dealing with the critical nutritional gap of Vitamin A and blocked from the good benefit of beta carotene because a few judges accepted the false claim of ideological groups such as Greenpeace that golden rice is hazardous.
A compounded problem
Farmers around the world have grown billions of acres of GM crops safely. They are the ingredients in food that people have eaten every day for decades. They are an utterly conventional food and the evidence shows that they are safe to eat. If they weren’t safe, I wouldn’t grow them on my farm or eat them myself.
In 2016, 167 Nobel laureates signed an open letter that labeled Greenpeace’s crusade against golden rice a “crime against humanity.” So is this court decision, which is the equivalent of a death sentence for thousands of kids.
The problem will compound, too, because this legal ruling is a declaration of war on agricultural research and development. The people who devote their lives to the new crops and technologies that can address problems of malnutrition, hunger and climate change will worry that a single court ruling could threaten everything.
This is what’s happening in the Philippines—but now the future of innovation is under threat elsewhere as other developing countries could choose to follow the lead of the Philippines.
There’s still hope for golden rice. The government could appeal the decision, creating an opportunity for our legal system to fix its mistake. The supreme court also could step in, though that process could take years.
The longer we wait, the more children will die—not because of a natural disaster that nobody can control, but because a few judges have condemned them to this unnecessary fate.
This piece was initially published on Global Farmer Network and has been revised to suit Farming First’s editorial guidelines.
Cover Image from Global Farmer Network.