The project involving the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), Monsanto Company (USA) and Monsanto Thailand (a local affiliate), the IRRI, and the Thai Department of Agriculture, aims to use a micro-credit system to encourage rice farmers in the Nang Rong and Lamplaimart districts in Buri Ram province of north-eastern Thailand to use Monsanto's pesticides and other technologies.

Under the project, the IRRI and Monsanto are to train farmers on how to use the recommended technologies - including land levelling, Monsanto's conservation tillage technology, tractor operation, use of herbicides, use of seeds with 'improved quality and traits', and harvesting and threshertechnology.

The participating farmers will then work with the PDA to train other farmers.However, the Pesticide Action Network-Asia and the Pacific (PANAP) and BIOTHAI, a local NGO, have come out in opposition to the project.

The intentions of the project, they contend, are clear: to develop large-scale extensive and industrial rice farming in Thailand, increase and introduce sales and use of Monsanto's herbicides in Thai rice farming, and improve Monsanto's tarnished name through alliances with established development groups. The Thai project, PANAP and BIOTHAI say, is also likely to be used to introduce Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds or its hybrid varieties into Thai rice farming.

Monsanto is currently developing rice genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides. Monsanto also holds the patents for the Terminator Technology, which makes seeds sterile and prevents farmers from saving seed from year to year as they have done for generations, forcing them to buy anew seeds every year.This could be highly dangerous to Thai rice since it is the result of generations of careful selection and breeding by Thai farmers.

It is inappropriate for a Thai development organisation to work with Monsanto, a US transnational corporation that has been responsible for such products as PCBs and Agent Orange, which have caused and continue to cause suffering and death, PANAP and BIOTHAI contend in a press release widely circulated via the Internet.

Monsanto is currently trying to create a new image as a `life sciences' company seeking to feed the world. It has invested heavily in biotechnology, buying up many smaller companies. Due to these recent acquisitions, it is now the world's third largest seed company. Almost all its biotech work in agriculture focuses on development of crops resistant to the herbicide, Roundup Ready. Farmers who buy these seeds are required to sign stringent contracts and are not allowed to save seeds or use other agro-chemicals.

Monsanto has encountered widespread resistancewherever it has tried to introduce its genetically engineered crops. Also, the seeds are costly and not compatible with small-scale farms of Asia that are not heavily reliant on agro-chemicals.

In response, the company has tried to forg alliances with development groups that can not only 'clean' up Monsanto's image, but also bring its products to farmers through development programmes and micro-credit schemes. In July 1998, Monsanto offered the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, a pioneer of the micro-credit system, $150,000 to provide loans to poor farmers to buy Monsanto's agriculture products and establish a Monsanto-Grameen Centre. But a wave of local protests and international condemnation that followed persuaded Grameen, and its founder Mohammad Yunus, to withdraw from the agreement.

Monsanto has also offered to support other NGOs such as BIOTHAI, but they have refused to accept its help. PANAP and BIOTHAI have expressed the hope that Viravaidya would reconsider his cooperation. It is also inappropriatefor the IRRI, an international agency funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and operating from the World Bank, to be associated thus with Monsanto.

The IRRI's gene bank contains nearly all the Asian rice cultures, including Khao Daw Mali (Jasmine) rice. The director of biotech of Monsanto (USA) and the company's main contact for the Thai project is a former high-level employee of the IRRI. And Viravaidya is on the IRRI board of directors.

The Thai project is designed to reorganise Thai rice farming in such a way that TNC agribusinesses, such as Monsanto, can make profits. The project will use Monsanto's 'conservation tillage', which has been described by Monsanto as substituting the judicious use of herbicides for mechanical tillage, and at the same time mechanise Thai rice farming with tractor operations and threshing technology.

Thai farms suited to Monsanto's technology and its financial interests will be created. But mechanised farms, highly dependent onproducts of TNCs, will not improve the livelihood of Thai rural communities, the two well-known NGOs complain.