Marcos’ Green Revolution

ByRACHEL A.G. REYES, TMT

IN 1962, not long before Ferdinand Marcos was elected president, the Philippines
was at the forefront of pioneering scientific research on rice that introduced high-yielding
varieties to the country. Supported by several international agencies, including the
Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the main goal was to increase food production.
Working at the newly established International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), in Los
Baños, Laguna, scientists from all over the world developed a type of rice that produced
heavy heads of grain that grew on short, robust stalks able to bear the weight of the grain
without toppling over. This rice variety, called IR-8, required intensive irrigation, plenty
of fertilizer, and chemical pesticides, to flourish. Output doubled. Between 1962 to 1964
and 1983 to 1985, with steady increases in between, rice yields rose from 1.24 to 2.48
metric tons of palay per hectare.

The increase was spectacular and unprecedented. For the first time, the chance to
effect real equitable change in the lives of the poor was within the government’s grasp.
However, despite its promising start, the green revolution in the Philippines did not
deliver the gains it was supposed to. Not only did it fail to improve the conditions of the
poor but, ironically, the poor slid further into hardship. The opportunity was squandered.
What happened?

Under Marcos, per capita income rose, there was a rice surplus, and the price of
rice fell. But, to simplify a complicated story, the period from 1965 to 1986 was a paradox.
There was economic growth yet it caused massive impoverishment. The American
economist James K. Boyce calls this phenomenon “immiserizing growth,” when
economic growth, and political and social conditions are such that the rich get absolutely
richer and the poor become absolutely poorer.

After the declaration of Martial Law in 1972, there was a decline in the absolute
incomes of the poor. Millions were without access to basic needs, hunger was widespread,
with infants and children hardest hit. Impoverishment prevented the poor from buying
rice, even when rice prices were at their lowest. In a 1979 review of Philippine grain
production policy, the World Bank found that total rice consumption in the 1970s slowed,
growing at only 2.9%, barely in step with the rate of population increase. The poor were
not filling up on bread and cake. They were not eating.

Studies by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute found that by 1982, two
thirds of families consumed less than the recommended minimum daily calorie intake.
25% of the country’s pre-schoolers were stunted, 14% were wasted, and an appalling 69%
were underweight. Between 1970 and 1983, infant mortality was at 59 per 1,000 in rural
areas and 55 per 1,000 in urban areas – among the highest in East and Southeast Asia.
The cause of infant and child deaths could be directly traced to hunger and a lack of basic
health care services. While the Marcos government injected $229 million into private
hospitals specializing in single organ diseases (the Philippine Heart Center, National
Kidney Foundation, and the Lung Center of the Philippines), which catered to the rich,
primary health care fell by the wayside. A damning UNICEF report declared it a gross
misallocation of resources. Babies and children died from entirely preventable illnesses
— diarrhea, vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, and common respiratory infections due to
undernourishment.

Elsewhere in Asia, the green revolution pulled countries out from the abyss. It
helped China recover from Mao’s catastrophic Great Leap Forward and India to
overcome mass starvation. In the Philippine case, boosting rice production occurred in a
highly inequitable social setting where disparities in wealth and power at both the national
and barangay level determined who would be favored from the outset. Had the Marcos
government addressed land reform and redistribution of wealth, then more egalitarian and
sustained growth might have resulted.

Under Marcos, precisely the opposite occurred. The primary beneficiaries of the
green revolution in the Philippines were those who had access to financing and water —
the rural elites who came from the ranks of the old landlord classes and upwardly mobile
tenant farmers who, with larger farms, were awarded capital subsidies from the
government. Subsidies were especially necessary in purchasing the expensive fertilizers,
herbicides and pesticides, needed by the high yielding varieties. Use of chemical
pesticides led to an environmental disaster. Fish, another food staple of the poor, and
other aquatic life, became contaminated, compounding the hunger problem still further.

“One cannot explain the prevalence of malnutrition in a period of increasing food

and agricultural production as primarily a supply problem” Boyce observed. “Rather, it
is a case of the uneven distribution of the available food within the population…the
inequitable and worsening distribution of purchasing power.”

Under Marcos the green revolution became a privately profitable enterprise.

It is said that the best lies hold a grain of truth. Senator and Vice-Presidential
candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos recently asked: “Will I say sorry for the
agricultural policy that brought us to self sufficiency in rice?” Bongbong has consistently
taken a defiantly unrepentant stance toward his late father’s rule. Born in 1957, he was in
his twenties during the period of the green revolution. He did not go hungry himself and,
like his father, showed little empathy for the millions who did.