BY VICTOR REYES

THE celebrated opening of the Global Seed Vault in Norway, touted as the modern-day "Noah’s Ark," had a most unassuming guest speaker: A Filipino farmer from North Cotabato.

Eulogio "Tay Gipo" Sasi Jr., 64, of President Roxas town, spoke at the opening conference of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic island of Svalbard last month.

His audience included about 200 scientists, diplomats and world leaders including Kenya’s Wangari Maathal, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize awardee; Terje Riss-Johansen, Norway’s minister of agriculture and food; and, Jacques Diouf, secretary general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Sasi was invited by the Norwegian agriculture ministry for his work on seed conservation, rice breeding, and maintenance of biodiversity in his farm.

He developed the rice variety Bordagol, which is widely used by farmers because of its good tillering trait and resistance to pests and diseases.

Sasi said his variety’s name was based on a comic character in a children’s book. The character Bordagol, he said, saved their planet in the story.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault houses seed samples of food plants from all over the world, according to Ola Westengen, operations manager.

The facility is a project of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the Nordic Genebank, and the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food. It consists of three caverns blasted 130 meters into the permafrost outside Longyearbyen.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the facility can store up to 4.5 million seed samples. It will eventually house seeds of as well as all important food plants in the world. If seeds are lost, e.g. as a result of natural disasters, war or simply a lack of resources, the seed collections may be re-established using seeds from Svalbard. The seed vault is owned by Norway, which also funded the entire project costing nearly NOK 50 million.

‘EMBARRASSED’

Sasi said he had mixed emotions when he was invited to the conference.

In his speech, he said: "I am embarrassed to talk in front of many people, especially in front of important people, like all of you. For a poor and simple farmer like myself, it seems impossible and hard to face and address you all. This is very far from the Philippines. I thought I could not make it here because I do not have a birth certificate."

Sasi was born on June 8, 1944 in La Castellana, Negros Occidental. He said his parents were not able to register his birth because it was in the middle of the Second World War. He was still young when his family migrated from the Visayas to Mindanao where they now reside.

Sasi said he reached only fourth grade in primary school and did not bother getting basic documents such as a birth certificate because he thought he would not need these being just a farmer.

FARMER ACHIEVER

Sasi received a plaque of recognition for being one of the "Most Outstanding Farmer Achievers" on Sept. 1, 1993.

The year before, Sasi met Rene Salazar and Frank Magnifico of Southeast Asia Research Institute on Community Empowerment (SEARICE). He participated in the programs of the institution and learned more about rice breeding and other farm technologies.

In 1997, he tried breeding Bordagol with Basmati, a rice variety from India. It took him five years before he was able to stabilize and release the seeds that he called GIFTS (Genetically Improved Farm Technology of Seeds).

Sasi asked governments to provide more support to farmers, "including fair and better prices for our products."

"I hope that the knowledge that goes with the seeds will not just be stored in ice, but further enriched by giving support to the work of farmers," he said.

Sasi, for being the "best speaker" at the conference, was given a big lithograph of a Svalbard scene with a polar bear in an arctic night.