Hunger Strike at the 10th UNFAO ABDC Conference (3)

Day 2 – Official Plenary Intervention of AFA

I am Isidore Ancog from AFA.

As I said at the start of this conference, I came here with three fears, and much as I like that this conference responds to my fears.

As in the past, modern technologies came and went in our small farmlands especially that of green revolution; some died early, some stayed longer, but just the same those did not sustain. Why because we don’t own those technologies. Those were imposed on us from the top. As usual technicians from either public or private sector, come to our farms and introduce new inventions, and when failed they just disappear, leaving us cleaning their mess – sometimes it will take years. We do not even know the scientists who invented those technologies to let them hold accountable.

Technicians can live without our farms, but we cannot. Farming is not only our means of living – but it is our way of life.

If you want your technologies to be accepted by small fishers, be transparent. Allow us to participate in the process and do not name it by yourself or your company. After all, if you insist for an IPR of your inventions, we can always insist not to use our farms as testing grounds. And that also applies to Seeds.

For us Seeds are nature’s gift for the use of everybody freely without restrictions. By any moral tradition, no one has the exclusive right to own them and deprived freedom of others to use them. For us any law that legalizes it is therefore immoral and malicious.

As this conference go, it seems to me that there is no holding back for genetic engineering technologies to be in our individual farmlands anytime soon. This time, I just hope that we will be approached by technicians who are transparent with their sources as well as their motives. I hope they knock our doors.

Pardon me for repeating what I have said yesterday, that “I am extremely threatened, not happy”. And I am saying that in the name of PAKISAMA in the Philippines and AFA in Asia.

I have high respect to all the people attending this conference. But yet, I am formally announcing that I am on a HUNFGER STRIKE beginning this lunchtime. This is to signify our protest against GMOs.

Finally, as a recognize participant in this conference, I invoke my right to ask that this statement and my statement yesterday be included in the document and proceedings thereafter; thank you very much.