Embracing Hybrid Rice: Impacts and Future Directions

Rice continues to be the bread and butter of Philippine agriculture. It is the only single commodity, which contributes 21 percent of agriculture’s gross value added (NSCB [National Statistical Coordination Board] 2003). Rice is the staple food of 86 percent of 84 million Filipinos (Castillo 2006). The rice industry also employs more than two million farmers, thousands of traders and millers, and millions of landless agriculture workers. So vital in the lives of the Filipinos, rice becomes a political commodity and is continuously the center of national agriculture programs.