IR-8 "Miracle" Rice

IR-8 "Miracle" Rice

The Planning of "Miracle Rice"
The public relations campaign for "Miracle Rice" began long before the rice was even developed. Indeed, the location and physical architecture of IRRI itself were all part of the rice's mystique and glamor. (See the article on the International Rice Research Institute for more information.

Making a Splash
"IRRI's scientists set out to "change the architecture of the rice plant" - to make it shorter, greener, with fewer leaves and more panicles - their mission dictated as much by a need for institutional distinction as much as by the requirements of Asian agriculture." As a number of institutions simultaneously worked to improve rice via breeding, IRRI felt they needed to distinguish themselves, to make a "splash," with the rice varieties they produced. Robert Chandler "elected to avoid incremental improvements in rice varieties and go for "the big jump." This is similar to the efforts of Norman Borlaug and others working with him on wheat breeding, particularly in India, during the same time period.

The Target
Under Chandler's direction, IRRI's team decided upon eight characteristics that would make up their "target" ideal rice plant: "The rice would be short to avoid wasting materials on the stalk; dark green, to absorb sunlight better; and rigid, to allow for machine harvesting. It should grow anywhere in tropical Asia, and have resistance to pests and disease." This approach was controversial:


 * "Dioscoro Umali, dean of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture, attended IRRI's Thursday seminars in 1963 and 1964. The target variety, he pointed out, would require expensive inputs: not just fertilizer but also herbicides to prevent shading by taller weeds. Shallow-rooted dwarf plants needed more precise hydraulic control than most peasant farmers could manage. Farmers would have to discard nearly all of their practices and adopt new techniques for planting, weeding, irrigation, harvesting, and threshing. New chemicals and equipment would require credit and distribution networks that the region did not have. If adopted, the target variety would radically disrupt the social environment in which rice was grown. His criticisms hit upon an unstated objective of the Big Jump strategy: to induce social change by displacing the culture and economy of rice cultivation."

Physical Appearance of IR-8 And It's Role in PR
Aside from any of IR-8's capabilities for pest and disease resistance or high yields was its appearance. Short and dark green, it could be seen by the naked eye as something new and different from all other traditional rice varieties. The mere appearance of IR-8 was seen as an important factor by elites around the world who had agendas to change Asian societies via "development" and "modernization." They believed that the appearance of this different-looking rice in fields of their neighbors who would adopt the new seeds and get rich as a result would "induce peasants, voters, and governments to see their situation differently, and to recalculate their interests and allegiances accordingly."


 * "What made "miracle rice" a success even before the first crops were harvested was its unique capacity to display the arrival of modernity. The new rice partitioned the landscape, drawing a boundary between traditional and modern agriculture clear enough to be seen through the chin bubbles of helicopter gunships. To diplomats, transnational scientists, and Southeast Asian technocrats, grain became a living symbol of abundance, an apparition capable of inducing mass conversions. In the development discourse, "technology transfer" denotes a moment when gifts of science change hands and economies are forever transfigured. IRRI's "modern varieties" plotted this moment spatially, marking the ground with a line separating the bullock cart from the jumbo jet. The dark green rice stopped where consumerism, allegiance, and order left off and subsistence, insurgency, and isolation began: at the edge of the free world."

"Throughout the Cold War, U.S. officials considered their ability to display the fruits of modernity to be a powerful weapon against communism." Without a means such as television to deliver a "showcase of democracy" to Asian peasants, they relied on IR-8 to do the job for them.

Modernizing Peasants With Improved Seeds
To the architects of Asia's "modernization" and "development," the IR-8 rice seeds were key. "IRRI's project proceeded from an assumption that peasants were not yet rational. Their awakening to modernity would begin with the decision to plant IRRI's seeds." This idea is an important one. It implies that by throwing out the economics of peasant farming (which relies on low input systems driving toward autonomy and independence from the market) and instead adopting an entrepreneurial farming system, the peasants would become rational. Farming in a low-risk way to achieve subsistence without trying higher-risk methods that might lead to getting rich but might also lead to financial and environmental ruin of the peasants' major assets (land, genetics, livestock) was seen as irrational.

Implications of IR-8's Need for Inputs
Despite promises of automatic high yields, IR-8 could not produce its promised yields without costly inputs. When USAID distributed IR-8 seeds, it distributed an entire package containing both seeds and agrochemicals. Meanwhile, the agrochemical company Caltex built a national distribution network in the Philippines.


 * "The foundations took criticism, then and since, for enabling U.S. multinationals to penetrate Third World agriculture, but this analysis actually understates the ambition of IR-8's modernizing project. [Marcos'] technocrats knew reliance on manufactured "inputs" afforded opportunities to impose a solution to the rice crisis by extending [Philippine] government supervision over millions of subsistence farmers living largely outside the cash economy."

Rafael Salas, head of the coordinating council set up by Marcos to control and direct prices and supply of the inputs needed for IR-8, said "Even if it wasn't such a spectacular producer, one would advocate pushing miracle rice culture if only to train the Filipino farmer into thinking in terms of techniques, machines, fertilizers, schedules, and experiments."

IRRI and the 1965 Indian Drought
In 1965, when India and Pakistan experienced droughts while the U.S. reaped bumper crops, the U.S. government, U.S. agribusiness (such as Dwayne Andreas of Archer Daniels Midland, and influential philanthropists such as David Rockefeller met and decided that, as a rescue of India seemed imminent, they ought to use "this momentary leverage" to "force India to increase her agricultural productivity." The message reached IRRI as an urgent need to produce a high-yielding rice variety ready for commercialization in order to avert catastrophic famines as the population of India overtook the land's ability to produce using existing agricultural methods and seeds.

1966: Ferdinand Marcos Needs Rice Now
By 1966, scientists at IRRI had narrowed the field to three promising rice varieties: IR-8, IR-9, and IR-5. IRRI's plant breeders felt each variety should be monitored for several more generations, but newly elected President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who won in 1965 on a campaign promising the people abundant rice, could not wait. Some of Marcos' "technocrats" sat on IRRI's board, where they could push the institute to speed up its process. Thus, in 1966, "before the scientists were ready, Chandler approved and USAID funded" multiplication and field trials of IR-8.

Philippine Release of "Miracle Rice"

 * "As the August harvest came in the Philippines was gripped by a modern tulipomania. IR-8 was sold in the lobbies of banks and fashionable department stores, and harvested grain was too costly to eat. Newspapers promised a tenfold increase in yield. "Miracle Rice -- Instant Increase," proclaimed the Philippine Free Press, assuring readers that spectacular yields were automatic, "lodged in the grain itself - a built in productivity."

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * International Rice Research Institute
 * Green Revolution
 * Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
 * Henry M. Beachell
 * Henry Heald
 * Forrest F. "Frosty" Hill
 * Robert Chandler