I wonder if the actual issues with this rice are similar to the miracle rice programs of the '70s where western aid programs introduced commercial strains of rice to traditional farmers in Indonesia and other SE Asian countries. These strains promised higher yield but at the cost of buying in commercial fertilisers and herbicides. The side effect of higher rice yield was disappearance of fish and companion/accidental crops that would typically grow in the rice paddies, along with poisoning of rivers downstream due to excess nutrients from fertilised rice paddies.