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    Marcos' Green Revolution: Rachel A.G. Reyes, TMT

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    cleofe jane
    1) In the 1960s, the Philippines pioneered high-yielding rice varieties through research at the International Rice Research Institute, doubling rice yields between 1962-1985. 2) However, despite economic growth under Marcos, poverty increased as the rich benefited more than the poor. The green revolution failed to improve conditions for the poor, who could not afford rice even when prices fell. 3) Studies found that by 1982, two-thirds of families consumed less than the minimum daily calories. Infant and child deaths from preventable illnesses like malnutrition rose due to undernourishment.

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    Marcos' Green Revolution: Rachel A.G. Reyes, TMT

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    cleofe jane
    425 views2 pages
    1) In the 1960s, the Philippines pioneered high-yielding rice varieties through research at the International Rice Research Institute, doubling rice yields between 1962-1985. 2) However, despite economic growth under Marcos, poverty increased as the rich benefited more than the poor. The green revolution failed to improve conditions for the poor, who could not afford rice even when prices fell. 3) Studies found that by 1982, two-thirds of families consumed less than the minimum daily calories. Infant and child deaths from preventable illnesses like malnutrition rose due to undernourishment.

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    Ferdinand Marcos

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    Marcos

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    1) In the 1960s, the Philippines pioneered high-yielding rice varieties through research at the International Rice Research Institute, doubling rice yields between 1962-1985. 2) However, despite economic growth under Marcos, poverty increased as the rich benefited more than the poor. The green revolution failed to improve conditions for the poor, who could not afford rice even when prices fell. 3) Studies found that by 1982, two-thirds of families consumed less than the minimum daily calories. Infant and child deaths from preventable illnesses like malnutrition rose due to undernourishment.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    425 views2 pages

    Marcos' Green Revolution: Rachel A.G. Reyes, TMT

    Uploaded by

    cleofe jane
    1) In the 1960s, the Philippines pioneered high-yielding rice varieties through research at the International Rice Research Institute, doubling rice yields between 1962-1985. 2) However, despite economic growth under Marcos, poverty increased as the rich benefited more than the poor. The green revolution failed to improve conditions for the poor, who could not afford rice even when prices fell. 3) Studies found that by 1982, two-thirds of families consumed less than the minimum daily calories. Infant and child deaths from preventable illnesses like malnutrition rose due to undernourishment.

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    of 2

    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.

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