From Green to Gene Revolution

The increasing number of world’s population, especially in developing countries, must be followed by the increasing amount of food. Referring to Thomas Robert Malthus, he stated that we should beware of the natural resources’ limited potency to produce food. Thereby, it must be developed to improve food production.

Green Revolution was an action to improve the technology of agriculture. It transformed a traditional farming to an advanced technological one. Ford and Rockefeller Foundation, pioneers in this field, evolved wheat in Mexico in 1950 and rice in the Philippines in 1960. Green Revolution accentuated in cereal crops, such as paddy, corn, wheat, etc. In 1970’s Indonesia’s government implemented Green Revolution by undertaking Farming Extensification and Intensification. Widening farm-land was the first farming about. The restriction of land induced the government to appoint mostly the second one.

A Farming Intensification was conducted through The Five Farm Enterprises which consisted of the use of superior seeds, land cultivation techniques, irrigation system or water management, fertilization, and pests and diseases control. Their main objective focused primarily on high external inputs of agriculture. The program was dominated by the consumption of chemicals, and the use of superior hybrid seeds and high-technological tools as the inputs.

Not only The Five Farm Enterprises have delivered positive impacts, but it also has bore negative collisions. As the preceding ones were the rise of rice and wheat production, the food fulfillment increased significantly as well. For example, Indonesia could alter its position from rice importer to a rice self-sufficiency country. The following ones were the decrease of protein production, the reduction of biodiversity, the dependence of chemicals, the emergence of new strains of resistant pests, the decline of land fertility, and eventually the imbalance of ecology.

The developing of The Five Farm Enterprises stimulated the excitements to engineer superior varieties, establish fertilizer factories, bear soil cultivation tools, create harvest processing tools, and formulate various formulas of pesticides. The role of Research Centers and Universities became predominant to reserve new technological inventions and improved old cultivation techniques. The purposes of those developments in technology were to generate and save not only food production but also the human’s life sustainability, and open a life opportunity for the next generation to free from fear of cannot-eat. The Five Farm Enterprises continued to be evolved. Direct or indirect institutions related to agriculture were involved to The Mass Guidance.

Later on, a social engineering called The Seven Farm Enterprises was arisen. It consisted of several tips used by farmers for planting paddy to produce qualified yield. At the time, the government frequently decided to import rice because of less qualified production by local farmers. The policy made the local farmers’ rice lose in competition with imported rice. Consequently, to gain a high quality product farmers conducted The Seven Farm Enterprises which consisted of The Five of Farm Enterprises that was added with post-harvest processing and marketing.

In Indonesia was Gene Revolution, better known as genetic engineering, scattered in the 1990s. It continued the implementation of The Five Farm Enterprises that more focused on engineered seeds development. Superior seeds as one element of Farm Enterprises have to be made by cross breeding two or more varieties. The plant breeding knowledge was dedicated to impose high yield of cereal crops as staple food. The way to get that was using genetically modified seeds created by moving genes from one organism to another. Sophisticated technology made it possible to happen in almost all living organisms. Thus, biotechnology is the most important tools of gene revolution.

The development of new seed varieties by genetic engineering was designed to facilitate the use of new technologies like synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and mechanized machinery manufactured by transnational companies. Here comes the problem! There was an alternation in the gene revolution’s previous objective which should bring wealthy to farmers as food producers. In fact, what have been done by farmers for years then was replaced by scientists and researchers. That’s still in the use of technology aspect. From the production facet, farmers’ role was substituted by big international manufactures. The seeds that use to be crossed pollinating usually was hybrid seeds while farmers get used with local seeds. Eventually, farmers got nothing from this model of development.

In the progress, it can be defined that gene revolution differs significantly from the older one which is the green revolution. It is owned by the public under government’s control, while the other one was a private business. There are intellectual property rights that can make a possibility for private companies to control and get profits. The profits that should be felt by all people go fairly to agrochemical companies. They have a great technology to get as high as possible profits not only from engineered seeds but also the package of them such as fertilizers and pesticides. Both the seeds and their package are all patented by some particular companies that make them more expensive. The companies claim farmers’ seeds and the varieties that have been spread out in rural communities. This action can cause all farmers profits taken away and captured by companies.

Finally, playing gene has no difference with playing game. It will keep on developing since it is alive. A gene will grow in several crops continuously in the environment. It is really difficult to control the contamination of genetic engineering (GE) crops because it happens naturally by wind, water or flying animals. In the field, it can result local varieties to disappear and the environment to be destroyed. In a legal field, farmers can be brought to court because of illegally using patented gene in crops although they did not intend to do that.

Despite the propaganda of genetic engineering being the solution to feed the world, many GE crops are truly grown for industrial than food use. As a conclusion, the development from green to gene revolution does not help agriculture in most aspects. Going to agricultural modernization has not solely been identically about genetic engineering and high technology. It can be worked by developing the potency of local knowledge, biodiversity, farming cultures, traditionally on-farm breeding, etc. in the rural community. Indonesia is the richest country with all of its potency in the world.

Dian Pratiwi Pribadi