The farmer reaches down into a sack he keeps stored on the second floor of his house in a small farming village south of here and pulls up a fistful of rice that he says has no equal.
"This is really remarkable rice," he says, forcing it into the hands of his guests. "All you do is plant it and it grows. You don't need to use all those chemicals any more."
Farmers and seed market officials here say the planting of biotech seeds is widespread in the region and has occurred for about two years. But they also say many farmers do not eat the rice they harvest. Some farmers think that anything that kills a field pest could also prove harmful to people.
But the farmer holding the fistful of rice in his home says he and his family eat all the anti-pest rice he produces.
"Why not?" he says with a broad smile. "I don't believe the government would poison its own people."
