A Filipino grower is fighting for the right to keep planting biotech crops in her country.
Rosalie Ellasus describes herself as a career woman turned farmer and biotech advocate. She saw the positive attributes of biotech corn and started planting it in 2003. “I get better yields. I even reduce my cost(s) in my farming. I had also a higher profit.”
The other benefits she counts are the need for less spraying and soil quality improvements from Bt corn – and she estimates 90 percent of Filipino farmers grow it. Meanwhile, Greenpeace and other anti-GMO groups filed a lawsuit to stop BT Eggplant field trials in the Philippines and won. The case went all the way to the Filipino Supreme court.
Ellasus says farmers can still plant BT corn but because Greenpeace doesn’t understand the importance of biotech, she said all such crops are at risk.
“What’s the reason? Do they know exactly what’s going on in the farm? It’s very disappointing, actually, to us.”
Ellasus says they want Greenpeace members to come to farms and learn the benefits of biotech but worries that they might not send actual farmers.
Source: brownfieldagnews.com