Here Comes SL Agritech! Advanced In Hybrid Rice, But A Laggard In The Digital World

Now I know why SL-8H, the favorite hybrid rice of mother SL Agritech Corp, is not selling much – because the mother actually stopped openly selling the offspring 7 years ago! Maybe the mother simply forgot about her child?

It’s Christmas Day as I write this; isn’t this child a gift to the world?

Above image: In the Philippines, SL Agritech Corp wasselling the virtues of Super Hybrid Rice on the 11th of April – and then it stopped after that single news item titled “Gov’t Welcomes Super Hybrid Rice[1].” Year missing. You know what? I googled and found that that was 7 years ago yet! 2013. What happened?

Wake up, SL Agritech! Already in 2013, you had good products: SL-12H, SL-8H, and SL-18H. Why did you discontinue your website SL Agritech Corporation at
http://sl-agritech.com/
or simply abandon it?

Me, I believe in inbred rice and hybrid rice. I guess SL Agritech abandoned its digital campaign for hybrid rice because nobody was buying online. I think that is because it did not understand the farmers’ problems with hybrid rice.

It is true, as claimed, that hybrid rice gives higher yields than other rices, especially the varieties planted by farmers. So, why then do farmers not plant hybrid rice?

The usual explanation is that hybrid rice seeds are expensive. Which is correct – but that is beside the point!

The reality with our rice farmers is that they are not entrepreneurial. So? So, if SL Agritech or any other hybrid rice company wants to guarantee strong sales of their hybrid rices, they have to help the farmers in terms of financing, such as:

(a) Consult first with the farmer and make sure he understands the requirements of hybrid rice, such as amount of seeds to sow for transplanting, age of transplants, number of seedlings per hill, distance of planting, and fertilizer(s) to apply and how much.

(b) Loan out the total amount and collect payment only after marketing.

Assistances (a) and (b) guarantee efficient production and a little peace of mind of borrower farmers. However, we have yet to consider the biggest problem of farmers.  

In the 2004 study “Socioeconomic Evaluation of Hybrid Rice Production in the Philippines[2]” in 5 major rice-producing provinces – Davao Del Norte, Davao Del Sur, Iloilo, Isabela, and Nueva Ecija, the group of PhilRice researcher Flordeliza H Bordey found that the net profits from inbred and hybrid rice farming “did not differ significantly,” meaning that the higher risk with hybrid rice was a deterrent to its adoption.

I can explain that. The net profits are comparable even with the higher yield of hybrid rice because those farmers sell to middlemen who dictate the prices. The farmers cannot demand higher prices because the middlemen are their sources of funds for farming. You cannot bite the hand that feeds you!

If we want to help the poor farmers, we have to help them (a) decrease costs of production, and (b) increase consumers who pay guaranteed premium prices – contract consumers.@517


[1]http://sl-agritech.com/myslagri/home/govt-welcomes-super-hybrid-rice

[2]http://agronomyaustraliaproceedings.org/images/sampledata/2004/poster/4/4/723_bordey.pdf

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