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2 Seedlings of evil growing in
Myanmar By Clifford McCoy
CHIANG MAI, Thailand - A military-driven
Chinese hybrid rice-for-opium crop-substitution
program in the northern part of Myanmar's Shan
state has resulted in four consecutive years of
poor harvests and driven many ethnic-minority
farmers into heavy debt or out of rice farming
altogether.
Yet the ruling State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC), Chinese business
people and ethnic ceasefire and militia group
leaders are all making large profits on the
controversial project
through the buying and
selling of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and the
rice itself.
The off-kilter economics of
the trade are paving the way for Chinese traders
to acquire huge swaths of previously
ethnic-minority-owned land and simultaneously
stoking anti-Chinese sentiment in Myanmar's
far-flung northern regions. Chinese hybrid rice,
commonly known as sinn shweli, was
introduced into northern Shan state in 2002 by
Major-General Myint Hlaing, who was then commander
of the SPDC's Northeast Command and military
governor of the area.
The rice is the
centerpiece of the SPDC's so-called "New Destiny"
project, part of its 15-year anti-narcotics
campaign launched in April 2002 and overseen by
the ruling junta's Central Committee for Drug
Abuse Control in Shan, Kachin, Kayah and Chin
states. Although other substitution crops such as
maize, sunflower, oranges, tea and sugarcane are
also a part of the project, rice is by far the
largest component.
Official Agriculture
Ministry statistics from this March show that
sinn shweli rice accounts for 80,940 of the
197,800 hectares of rice currently under
cultivation in northern Shan state. Sinn
shweli is currently grown in Hsipaw, Kyaukme,
Lashio, Hsenwi, Kokang and Muse townships, as well
as in United Wa State Army (UWSA) Special Region
No 2 along the Chinese border.
According
to Hkun Seng, an independent researcher from
northern Shan state, the initial deal for the
hybrid rice seeds was brokered by Pueng Kya Shin
and Yang Moolian, leaders of the Kokang Chinese
Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. The
MNDAA, which controls territory along the Chinese
border in northern Shan state, agreed to a
ceasefire with the Myanmar junta in 1989 and
declared a ban on opium cultivation in its areas
in 2003. The UWSA, the other major ceasefire group
in the area, banned opium cultivation in 2005.
Sinn shweli is the generic name
given to hybrid rice seeds imported mainly from
China's Yunnan and Sichuan provinces and covers a
variety of strains, including Kangyou-827, -26,
-151, -881, -803, -361, II-you-718, -838 and
Dieyou-527. According to the Food and Agriculture
Organization, hybrid rice has an increased yield
of 15-20% over traditional paddy varieties.
To achieve higher yields, however, hybrid
rice, heavily reliant on fertilizers and
pesticides, needs more water and often requires
mechanized farming equipment, all of which are
either in short supply or beyond the financial
reach of most Shan farmers, whose traditional
rice-growing methods entailed few if any imported
goods or equipment.
According to
researcher Hkun Seng, there have been no
government programs to train the farmers how to
grow the new rice or how to use the fertilizers
and pesticides. The Lashio Township government put
out a pamphlet on how to grow the rice - but only
in English. To make matters worse, the
instructions for the fertilizers and pesticides
are all in Chinese, unreadable to most in Shan
state.
The lack of information has made it
nearly impossible for farmers to know the proper
concentrations to use or what precautions to take
when handling the pesticides and fertilizers. All
most farmers are told is that they have to spray
six kinds of pesticides at least six times within
120 days. Farmers have reportedly become ill, and
a few reportedly have died, after improperly using
the pesticides.
Forced cultivation
The SPDC claims that seeds are freely and
readily available to all farms. But according to
Hkun Seng, farmers are frequently forced to pay
for the seeds. He notes that although Myanmar's
Agriculture Bank provides 17,300 kyat (US$2,640 at
the official exchange rate) per hectare per year
to farmers to grow sinn shweli, the real
cost is between 543,000 and 736,000 kyat,
including the cost of fertilizer, pesticides and
diesel for tractors. Unlike traditional rice
seeds, the Chinese hybrid variety must be bought
anew each year.
The high costs involved in
growing the hybrid rice, especially when forced by
officials to grow two crops a year or face the
confiscation of their land, has pushed many local
farmers into heavy debt. After successive bad
harvests and lacking the funds to service their
debts, many farmers have been forced to sell their
land, in many instances to the same Chinese
business people who sold them the seeds,
fertilizers and pesticides. On other occasions
land is simply confiscated by militia groups or
local business people working in cahoots with the
SPDC to create large commercial farms.
In
a recent report by Hkun Seng, the researcher
quoted an SPDC official from the Agriculture
Ministry in northern Shan state saying, "Sinn
shweli seeds need a lot of water and
fertilizers, otherwise a low quantity of rice is
produced. Shan state has little flat land and
there is often not enough water to grow sinn
shweli rice. In the view of agriculture
officers, sinn shweli rice is not suitable
for northern Shan state, but we have to pursue the
policy and follow the orders of our superiors."
This, of course, raises questions of a
possible conspiracy. As a crop-substitution
program, all indications so far are that sinn
shweli rice has been a dismal failure. Even
when the first crop of sinn shweli rice was
a failure, the government announced that 40,000
hectares of the rice would be planted in 2003. The
crop again failed in 2004, as has each successive
crop.
The United Nations-sponsored World
Food Program has been distributing rice to farmers
in the area since 2004 because they are unable to
make enough money from substitute crops to buy
rice and other foodstuffs for themselves.
According to Hkun Seng, "The SPDC says it is poppy
substitution and for self-sufficiency, but the
local people's lives are not improving and many
survive day by day."
However, where the
program has been successful is in enriching SPDC
military officers and officials, ceasefire and
militia leaders, and Chinese business people. The
SPDC's foray into hybrid rice
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