EVERY TIME pests attack her backyard vegetable garden, Tranquilina Alibango takes it as a sign that the great forces of nature are at play?something that must be left to nature itself to remedy.

Human intervention, the 52-year-old farmer says, must play little in this bizarre give-and-take relationship so as not to disrupt nature?s way. Otherwise, bigger problems could arise and badly affect her source of livelihood.

?Something has to be sacrificed to keep the balance of things. Somehow, we have to allow and we give back because we get something from it, anyway. What is wrong with that? What is the problem with that?? Alibango says.

She and the other farmers of Wangan, a small barangay in Davao City?s Calinan district? those who practice organic farming?do not have problems in dealing with pests.

Their approach is simple and has been proven to be beneficial to the environment. Their backyard farms are a merry mixture of a lot of things?never devoted to a single crop.

?Friendly? insects

For Alibango and those whose main produce is eggplant, their gardens have other vegetables and plants, including sunflowers, that attract ?friendly? insects (that eliminate destructive ones). ?The best thing is to make sure that the eggplants are healthy and that can only be assured by organic fertilizers,? Alibango says.

Organic farming uses concoctions made from juices of certain plants that are known to fight pests and insects, particularly fruit and shoot borers (FSBs)?the main worry of eggplant farmers.

This is why Alibango is baffled by the government?s insistence to introduce a genetically modified variety of eggplants, whose field testing site is just right at the nearby University of the Philippines-Mindanao in Mintal district.

?I do not understand it. They say that this variety will fight fruit and shoot borer, but we do not have problems with it. We have been planting eggplants all these years and the production is OK,? she says.

Although there are damages, she says, ?we consider these as part of the natural scheme of things.?

Alibango and other organic farmers in Davao were recently caught at the center of a battle between proponents of a Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) project and groups against genetically modified crops.

In January, the city government ordered the destruction of the Bt testing field for violation of standards set by the Bureau of Plant Industry. This has further heated up debate on whether or not testing should be allowed.

Waste of money

During a hearing called by the city council?s committee on agriculture on Feb. 3, experts from both parties tried to convince officials to adopt their respective positions on Bt eggplants.

According to UP-Mindanao chancellor Hilda Rivero, the destruction of the Bt field testing site was a waste of public money as the project was funded by the Department of Agriculture. The city?s decision, she said, was too much, considering that ?we only committed administrative lapses.?

The city government?s order was prompted by the university?s failure to conduct public consultations on the project and to post public notices about the field testing. Local officials were not convinced that the field testing was done in a controlled environment but at a site only ?protected? by barbed wires.

(For organic farmers, the testing exposed outside crops to contamination, especially that the eggplants were already mature and bearing flowers and fruits.)

Dr. Randy Hautea, global coordinator of the nonprofit International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) and director of the agency?s Southeast Asia center since 1998, said the debates had denied farmers their freedom to choose which farming practices were best for them.

The ISAAA is being supported by biotech companies, including Novartis, Agrevo, Pioneer and Monsanto, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other groups.

Hautea said Bt eggplants would not only end the problem of farmers over fruit and shoot borers but also end their dependence to chemicals ?Their yield and earning will apparently shoot up,? he said.

For Dr. Romeo Quijano, one of the country?s leading toxicologists, the decision of the city government on Bt eggplants must not be based only on opinions of field ?experts.?

?Bt toxins are embedded in Bt eggplants. What is clear, and this one does not need an expert opinion, that Bt eggplants are dangerous as they are toxins ? toxins, by definition, are deadly,? Quijano said.

?It is difficult to trace toxins, especially if they are introduced right into the genes of the plants like what they are doing with eggplants. This project, as in other Bt crops, has a lot of toxicologic red flags that are too alarming, and potentially deadly if ignored,? he added.

Policies on such controversial matters as Bt crops, Quijano said, must be guided by the precautionary principle: Greater considerations must be given to the perceived risks that a certain undertaking might impact on people and the environment.

Effective

The Go Organic Davao (GoDC), a coalition of practitioners and advocates of organic agriculture described the Bt eggplant as ?totally unnecessary.?

?Organic farming and integrated pest management have proven effective methods in controlling pest problems in eggplant. This is the reason why eggplant remains to be one of the most affordable vegetables in the market today,? the group said.

It noted that even UP?s Institute of Plant Breeding in Los Baños had researches on the resistance of hundreds of eggplant genotypes and wild relatives against pests. These varieties include the Mistisa and Mara.

?This just proves that alternatives do exist in controlling FSB. Creating Bt eggplant is not the only option,? the GoDC said.

The group raised fears that the Bt eggplant field testing and production ?will open the way for multinational companies to gain a foothold on the country?s seed-banking tradition.?

Background

The Bt eggplant is a technology developed by Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Co. (Mahyco), a subsidiary company of Monsanto, ?the very company that developed synthetic pesticides and is into seed business,? it said.

Dr. Desiree Hautea, coordinator for Southeast Asia of the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II and wife of the ISAAA official, denied that Monsanto was involved in the project. She said her project was under the auspices of Cornell University and is supported by the USAID.

But she acknowledged that the technology came from Mahyco.

?Monsanto has nothing to do with us. We have sourced the technology from Mahyco. It is the gene of the Mahyco-made eggplant, which we bred. Still, the variety is local,? she said.

In its website, Monsanto stated that its entity, Monsanto Holdings Private Ltd., had a 26-percent stake in Mahyco in India. Mahyco is the first company in that country to genetically engineer eggplants.

Mahyco, Desiree Hautea said, agreed that UPLB access the technology ?without pay.? Because of this deal, she said, the company had become a partner of the university on the Bt eggplant project.

?The only reason we went to them for this technology is because seeds are costly for farmers ? we hoped that this (variety) will be commercialized,? she said, adding:

?The project is for farmers. We negotiated for this technology. Things like these are only for research and they are not for sale, but when we approached Mahyco, we were clear that this is for sale (to the farmers).?

Reacting to the project coordinator?s statements, the GoDC said ?the technology was developed from the research of transnational companies, not public science. It is not an original idea of Filipinos or UPLB but by transnational companies.?

?This technology was borrowed by Filipino scientists at the UP Institute of Plant Breeding,? it said.