Subject:
Bt cotton -- bitter harvest
Date:
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 17:11:23 +1200
From:
"Rod Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Bt cotton bubble is beginning to burst. Reports reaching from
Khargone distrct in Madhya Pradesh, in
the heart of the cotton-growing belt in India, indicate 100 per cent
crop failure. Farmers are naturally
demanding compensation from the company. In the northern regions of the
country, Bt cotton has been
afflicted with the 'leaf curl virus'. Elsewhere, the economics that was
worked out by the Indian Council of
Agricultural Research (ICAR) to promote the unsustainable technology has
turned out to be untrue.
In Indonesia, Agri Research Station for Tobacco and Fibre (Balittas) of
the Department of Agriculture has
accepted that Bt cotton yields less than the popular cotton (and
non-transgenic) variety Kanesia 7. To
know more about Indonesian findings, click here:
http://www.agbioindia.org/story3.asp
Another hidden cost of the Bt cotton cultivation is its water
requirement. Neither the ICAR nor the
department of biotechnology is willing to tell us that the water
requirement for Bt cotton is much more than
the traditional varieties.
The Bt cotton story has been mired in controversy from the very
beginning. We have repeatedly said that
entire exercise to approve Bt cotton for commercial cultivation was
scandalous. While the distinguished
panelists on the three committees that accorded clearance at different
stages --GEAC, RCGM, and MEC --
will go scot-free, the resulting cost of the bitter harvest will have to
be borne by the farming communities.
1. Bt cotton: bitter harvest
2. Bt cotton prone to leaf curl virus in north India.
------------------------------------
1. Bt cotton - bitter harvest
By Mihir Shah & Debashis Banerji
The Bt cotton story in India had all the makings of a terrible tragedy,
even before official permission was
granted for its cultivation.
First reports from Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh, one of the
cotton headquarters of India, endowed
with fertile black cotton soil, speak of a 100 per cent failure of the
Bt cotton crop. Farmers are up in arms
demanding compensation from the company that supplied these seeds. While
other cotton varieties have
also been adversely affected by the drought, they report a failure rate
of only around 20 per cent. This is a
performance that has shocked even the worst critics of
genetically-modified (GM) crops. We do not expect
such a complete disaster to be repeated everywhere. But the Bt cotton
story in India had all the makings of
a terrible tragedy, even before official permission was granted for its
cultivation in March 2002.
The tragedy began unfolding in Gujarat where over ten thousand acres of
Bt cotton were planted illegally
last year. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the
Union Ministry of Environment and
Forests, whose permission is required for cultivation of any GM crop,
ordered the destruction of this illegal
Bt cotton. But the decision was never implemented.
In March this year, three hybrid Bt cotton seeds supplied by the
Mumbai-based company, Mahyco, were
approved by the GEAC for cultivation in central and south India. The
U.S. multinational Monsanto has a 27
per cent stake in Mahyco. Bt cotton seeds have been genetically
engineered to produce a toxin that can
kill the bollworm, a major headache for cotton farmers. They are
ineffective against other pests and even
according to their suppliers do not have any mechanism to raise yields.
The idea is that they would raise
the net incomes of farmers since they are expected to reduce spending on
pesticides.
But a simple calculation shows that the economics does not quite work
out. Seeds currently being used
by farmers cost an average of Rs. 325 per hectare. The pesticide cost is
around Rs. 400 per hectare. The
Bt cotton seeds are about four times as expensive as existing seeds,
i.e., Rs. 1,300 per hectare. Some
pesticide has to be used even with Bt seeds, particularly because 20 per
cent of Bt cotton fields need to
be covered with non-Bt seeds (to ensure that pest resistance to Bt
cotton does not rapidly develop). Even if
Bt seeds are presumed to lead to a dramatic reduction in pesticide costs
to say Rs.150 per hectare, the
total cost of seeds and pesticides would still be double in the Bt case
- Rs. 1,450 compared to Rs. 725 per
hectare for seeds currently in use.
The mandatory requirement of growing non-Bt cotton in each Bt cotton
plot is based on "resistance
management plans" devised in the U.S., where farmers have huge land
holdings. The idea is that the
surviving resistant insects to the Bt crop will intermate with
susceptible ones on the non-Bt crop. But Indian
cotton farmers with much smaller land holdings have found it quite
impossible to set aside land for these
"refugia". Their inability to do so will only accelerate the development
of pest resistance to Bt cotton. There
are also a large number of technical specifications for refugia
management with which Indian farmers have
not even been made remotely familiar. This is obviously not a technology
meant for the poor, dryland small
farmers of India.
Inquiries in the field reveal that the attraction for Bt cotton had much
to do with the kind of hype that
surrounded its sale. Farmers worried about the cost were falsely
promised dramatic increases in yield.
Coercion was also employed - availability of credit and other inputs was
linked to purchase of Bt. But, most
farmers remained unconvinced because of the high price. And this is
where the tragedy got really
compounded.
Much to the consternation of Mahyco-Monsanto, illegal Bt seeds from last
year's Gujarat harvest (that the
Government failed to destroy) began flooding the market. A large number
of illegal dealers started offering
Bt cotton much cheaper, at anywhere between Rs. 100 and Rs. 800 per
hectare. In Gujarat last year these
seeds were covertly sold under the brand name "Navbharat 151" by the
Navbharat Seeds Company. This
year, with Bt cotton having being cleared by the Government, and with no
action against Navbharat, the
seeds obtained from last year's harvest, were openly sold as "Maxi 151"
by a Vadodara-based company
describing itself as "B.T. Cotton Trial Farm". Its proprietor, Piyush
Patel, published huge ads in prominent
Gujarati dailies not only extolling the higher yields of "his" Bt
cotton, but also claiming its superiority over
that supplied by "big companies" (which he described as a "terminator
seed"). Following several
representations to the GEAC, Mr. Patel was finally arrested in May 2002.
But much damage had already
been done. Many illegal F2 and even F3 (second and third generation)
seeds are reported to have been
sold to cotton farmers of Punjab and Haryana, where Bt cotton has yet to
be approved. They have also
found their way into Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. A khadi institute
in Gujarat that apparently used
last year's Bt seeds, reported uncommon itching and rashes among users
of cloth produced from this
cotton.
As this illegal trade of bogus operators spread, the Government largely
remained a silent spectator. The
irony is that those who set so much store by Bt cotton are also
passively watching their magic product
being made a complete mockery of! We are more concerned that farmers are
being taken for a ride. We
have consistently argued that any new technology must be introduced only
after farmers and consumers
have complete information on all its aspects. So that they can make an
informed choice. Such a choice
has been denied to our people, who are being forced to learn the hard
way.
Why can't a large number of public debates be organised in our cotton
growing areas, with the participation
of the Government, companies, scientists, farmers and consumers? Where
this has been done, as in
Chitradurga in Karnataka and Medak in Andhra Pradesh, farmers have
overwhelmingly rejected GM crops.
But the Government has still not placed in the public domain, data
generated by Bt cotton trials in India.
Ridiculously, the monitoring and regulation of Bt cotton has been
entrusted to the very same company that
is producing and selling it. Meanwhile, evidence against Bt cotton
continues to accumulate worldwide. A
study by the Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences under the
Chinese State Environmental
Protection Agency reveals that Bt cotton is harming natural parasitic
enemies of the bollworm and seems
to be encouraging other pests. The Chinese experience needs to be taken
seriously since Bt cotton
accounts for more than 1.5 million hectares (35 per cent of total cotton
acreage) in that country. The study
finds the diversity index of the insect community in Bt fields much
lower than in conventional cotton farms
in China. It also finds that the populations of pests other than
bollworm have increased in Bt cotton fields
and some have even replaced it as the primary pest. It would be
pertinent to remember that since Bt cotton
was developed in the U.S. to tackle only one main pest, the bollworm,
its applicability to regions of the
world with higher pest diversity was always suspect from the word go.
(The writers are scientists in the field of alternatives to
genetically-modified agriculture)
Source: The Hindu, New Delhi, India; Aug 24, 2002
--------------------
2. 'BT COTTON PRONE TO LEAF CURL VIRUS IN NORTH INDIA'
By L.N. Revathy
COIMBATORE, Aug. 19. THE initial euphoria for the Bt cotton appears to
be strangely missing, with
growers adopting a 'wait and watch attitude' to see how it performs this
season. Sowing is yet to
commence in Tamil Nadu but in the northern and central parts of the
country, the growers seem to have
evinced more interest for the Bt cotton crop to tackle the heliothis
menace.
Even while preliminary reports from the North zone reveal that the crop
performance has been good this far,
cotton scientists say the Bt cotton raised in the northern belt has been
found susceptible to the leaf curl
virus (LCV), though in a 'limited way' in about 5 to 10 per cent of the
area.
Dr Venugopal, ex-project coordinator of the Central Institute for Cotton
Research (CICR), Coimbatore told
Business Line that while some of the private hybrids and varieties
released earlier were resistant to LCV,
Bt cotton was found susceptible to LCV.
In some pockets, the spotted bollworm infestation was noticed, he added.
He pointed out that the craze for raising the genetically-modified
cotton crop looked real with cotton
farmers in Punjab taking to cultivation of 'Udang Super' Bt cotton,
which is yet to be cleared by the
Government.
Having toured the entire cotton belt in the north and central zone, he
said 'Udang Super' Bt cotton was
sown in vast areas of Punjab. "It is a wrong tendency, but then the
State Government can intervene and
legalise it," he said and observed that this was found resistant to both
LCV and drought.
"The fear psychosis is looming large among the farmers as 70 per cent of
the area under cotton is rainfed
and with the monsoon playing truant, there is wide spread apprehension
particularly because of the high
cost of Bt seeds," he said.
According to him, private hybrids continued to be raised in about 20 per
cent of the area, despite the steep
decline in the area under cotton this year. The estimated shortfall in
area is said to range between 10 and
20 per cent in the north zone comprising of Punjab, Haryana and
Rajasthan. He conceded that the extreme
drought conditions with temperatures hovering at over 43 degree Celsius
had been bad for germination and
the spoilage due to wet weather conditions was not there.
Source: Business Line; August 20, 2002
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