The Philippines can secure a niche in the global chicken export market if it can reduce feed prices by producing more high-yielding Bt corn, according to experts

Saying their right to their livelihood is being threatened, a group of 11 farmers from Bukidnon and Pangasinan on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to reverse a Court of Appeals ruling that stopped the field testing of genetically modified eggplants in the country.

Insisting on the potential threats of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to human health and the environment, environmental groups on Monday urged Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala to scrap the government’s plan to commercialize “golden rice.”

A study contends that 96 per cent of Filipino farmers are willing to shift to a genetically modified eggplant and are willing to pay double the seed price if it means a substantial cut in spending on pesticide.

A BIOTECHNOLOGY agency has asked the Supreme Court to reverse a decision that stopped field trials for a genetically modified, pest-resistant eggplant.

Proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as safe-to-eat gained the upper-hand as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a statement on Friday it will not require labeling of GM products.

The first genetically modified (GM) rice to be commercially available could be approved for production in the Philippines in two to three years, researchers said on Tuesday, despite strong opposition from environmental groups.

The first genetically-modified rice to be commercially available could be approved for production in the Philippines in two to three years, researchers said Tuesday, despite strong opposition from environmental groups.

It’s Farmers’ Week, and it’s the appropriate occasion to call attention to the dangers posed by genetically engineered crops in the Philippines. Genetic engineering (GE) is a very new technology, its commercialization having begun only in the 1990s. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are living things that have been conferred qualities or traits that they do not naturally have, and this is achieved through the random insertion of one or a few genes from another organism into the host organism’s genetic make-up in a way that can never happen in nature.

“A vicious cycle of poverty” may sound clichéd, but in the case of Filipino farmers planting genetically modified corn, no statement is more apt and true. Small-holder farmers who were lured by promises of good yields and sure markets pay as much as 20-40% interest per cropping season to financers and traders who also buy the produce at a much cheaper price.