Bayer aims for 100K farmers to use hybrids

RICE and corn seed producer Bayer Crop Science (BCS) is targeting by 2021 to reach 100,000 Filipino farmers to use highly profitable hybrid seeds that are resistant to diseases.

BCS claims farmers who will use its hybrid seeds can enjoy from 50- to 130-percent increase in yield and P200,000 in gross revenues from 1 hectare.

“Through partnerships with the Department of Agriculture (DA) in technical training of farmers and with others stakeholders (farmers’cooperatives, seed distributors and financiers), BCS believes the target is reasonable,” it said.

“The number is an increase from the 60,000 farmers it has so far helped to step up to using the high-yielding seeds since its first launch of its online agriculture training site Bayer Agricademy,” it added.

The hybrid business of BCS is also part of the company’s aim to contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals of zero hunger and reduction in poverty.

“In the Philippines, the average landholdings for farming is less than two hectares and it could barely support the needs of a family of five, which is also the national average,” BCS said.

Given the technology and financial aid farmers need to succeed in rice and corn farming, it is foreseen that mostly family-run farming businesses will contribute significantly to economic growth at the grassroots level from the countryside.

“Of the estimated 550 million smallholder farmers worldwide, it is estimated that 97-percent work on farms that are smaller than 10 hectares and produce more than 80 percent of the food in developing countries. These farms are often family-run businesses that have a long history in the communities where they live,” BCS said.

Hybrid seeds can substantially raise yield and income attributable to traits such as disease resistance from the Asiatic corn borer and the emerging fall army worm (FAW) in corn farms nationwide.

From the usual 3 to 5 metric tons per hectare (MT/ha), BCS’s FAW resistant corn variety Dekalb 8919S can attain an all-time record high harvest of 14.85 MT/ha,, which was attained in a yield competition co-administered by the DA in Compostela Valley.

Another Bayer superior corn variety, Dekalb 8899S, recorded 13.38 MT/ha in the same competition in Davao City.

For the Arize Bigante hybrid rice of Bayer, farmers have been experiencing 200-percent increase in yield from the average four MT/ha from inbreds to seven to eight MT/ ha from hybrids. It enables farmers to double their gross earnings from P100,000 to P200,000.