India's Mahyco Plans Field Trials for Herbicide-Tolerant GM Wheat

India's seed-development major Mahyco is developing a series of genetically modified varieties of wheat and rice to boost crop yields by tackling drought, salinity and pests, a senior company official said.

"We are working on a herbicide-tolerant variety of wheat and have submitted an application to GEAC seeking permission to undertake field trials," Usha Zehr, chief technology officer of Mahyco, told Dow Jones. U.S.-based crop science multinational Monsanto Co.has a 26% stake in Mahyco.

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, or GEAC, is the regulatory authority that grants permission for such trials in India.

Mahyco has also undertaken laboratory tests to develop genetically modified rice with improved nitrogen use efficiency and now plans to undertake field trials.

"We are awaiting no-objection certificates from state governments in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra," Ms. Zehr said.

A cycle of field trials has been undertaken for salinity-tolerant GM rice, and three cycles of field trials have been done for yellow stem borer resistant GM rice, she said. After completing such trials, the next step is to obtain permission for large-scale trials in multiple locations.

She said the salinity in soil is a major issue hurting grain production and developing tolerance can improve yields in the case of wheat by 5%-7%.

"We are developing drought and salinity tolerant [GM] wheat and aim to start field trials in the coming two years," Ms. Zehr said.

Such research is significant because unlike corn, soybeans, cotton and canola, in which genetically modified varieties are grown on millions of hectares globally, no commercial cultivation of transgenic wheat and rice is permitted anywhere in the world because of concerns over food safety. Online WSJ

Mexico bans planting of Monsanto’s GM-Corn!

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the Food and Drug Administration’s job."

- Phil Angell, Monsanto’s Director of Corporate Communications.

The sheer audacity of the claim leaves one momentarily speechless. Unbelievable thought it is, Monsanto’s bigwig was ‘quoted’ as above in the New York Times Magazine of October 25, 1998 in an article appropriately titled Playing God in the Garden.

Unarguably, Phil Angell’s attitude in 1998 said it all – and, whether we like it or not, still does.

But it didn’t take too long for the game of ‘playing God’ to go badly awry for Monsanto et al.

Almost 15 years to the day, October 2013 proved to be a terrible month for the multinational agri-giant as well as the biotech industry as a whole.

On October 22, 2013, Mexico banned the planting of genetically-modified corm in the entire country. Citing the risk of imminent harm to the environment, a Mexican court ruled that, effective immediately, no genetically-engineered corn could be planted in the country. Monsanto and their like will no longer be allowed to plant or sell genetically-modified corn within Mexico’s borders.

At the same time, the County Council for the island of Kauai passed a law that mandated farms to disclose pesticide use and the presence of genetically-modified crops. The bill also required a 500-foot buffer zone near medical facilities, schools and homes, among other locations.

And the big island of Hawaii County Council has given preliminary approval to a bill that prohibits open air cultivation, propagation, development or testing of genetically-engineered crops or plants. The bill, which still needs further confirmation to become law, would also prohibit biotech companies from operating on the Big Island.

Ocean Robbins, founder and co-host (with best-selling author John Robbins) of the 85,000-member Food Revolution Network, in an Op-Ed article on the AlterNet website on October 25 suggested that perhaps the biggest bombshell of all was now unfolding in Washington state.

"The mail-in ballot state’s voters are already weighing in on Initiative 522, which would mandate the labeling of genetically-modified organisms," she wrote. "Knowing full well that 93 percent of the American public supports GMO labeling, and that if one state passes it, many others are likely to follow, entrenched agribusiness interests are pulling out all the stops to try to squelch yet another state labeling effort."

But this time round things aren’t going quite as planned by the biotech industry.

On October 23, Washington state Attorney-General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit against the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the public face and lobby for the junk food industry; the GMA has been by far the largest donor to efforts to defeat the GM-labeling initiative. The lawsuit alleges that the GMA illegally collected and spent more than $7 million while shielding the identity of its contributors.

The source of the money has now been exposed: it turns out to be Pepsico, Coca-Cola, NestleUSA, General Mills and a few other junk food companies. The lawsuit reveals that the GMA leadership held a series of secret meetings to plot how to perpetrate a money laundering scheme and illegally hide member donations from Washington state voters, in direct violation of campaign disclosure laws.

"All this label fighting and money laundering leads to some very significant questions," says Robbins. "Why are Monsanto and the junk food industry willing to spend many tens of millions of dollars every year trying to keep you in the dark about your food? What doesn’t Big Food want you to know? And what are they afraid might happen if you did?

"Monsanto tells us that their products are about the best thing to come along since sliced bread. For years they’ve been promising that GMOs would reduce pesticide use, increase yields, reduce water consumption, and offer foods that are more tasty and more nutritious. I wish they were right.

"But in the 20 years since GMO crops first came on the market, studies have found that they have led to higher pesticide use, and no meaningful improvement in flavour, nutrition, yield or water requirements. Instead, what they’ve created are plants that are engineered to withstand massive dosing of toxic herbicides, and plants that function as living pesticide factories. In case you didn’t know, Monsanto’s Bt. corn, for example, is actually registered with the EPA as a pesticide!"

Well, well. Filmstars generally consider all publicity – be it favourable or otherwise – as a positive career-boost; I doubt Monsanto thinks likewise about Project Censored’s choice as the 2014 winner "for an article or topic that was ignored or inadequately covered by the mainstream corporate media". The choice was announced, yes, in that awful month of October! [Ah, well, it never rains . . .].

Project Censored chose journalist Belén Fernandez’s Dirty White Gold: Monsanto’s Claim That It’s a ‘Sustainable Agriculture Company’ Doesn’t Hold Water. Excerpts:

Given Monsanto’s legacy as a producer of the lethal defoliant ‘Agent Orange’ during the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian agriculture would presumably beg to differ with this characterization as ‘sustainable’.

Sustainability is not the first word that comes to mind when contemplating Monsanto’s policy of sowing the earth with genetically modified seeds that destroy soil and are designed with nonrenewable traits so as to require constant repurchase as well as acquisition of a variety of other company products like fertilizers and pesticides.

Nor would the term appear to define a situation in which nearly 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995 after being driven into insurmountable debt by neoliberal economics and the conquest of Indian farmland by Monsanto’s Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton.

In tragic irony, many kill themselves by imbibing pesticides intended for their crops. [Sales, one way or another!]

Author Vandana Shiva outlined Monsanto’s contributions to a "suicide economy" in India: an increase in the price per kilogram of cotton seeds from 7 to 17,000 rupees!

Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped. Bt-cotton must be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest-resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the bollworm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500 kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average.

There are a couple of reasons why mass farmer suicides have not generated the international attention that should ostensibly accompany such a phenomenon. For one thing, the image of desperate peasants killing themselves by the hundreds of thousands does not mesh particularly well with the portrait of India fabricated by free market pundits, who hallucinate rampant upward economic mobility among the country’s citizens thanks to globalization.

According to filmmaker Leah Borromeo, director of the forthcoming Dirty White Gold about cotton and fashion, the dearth of international concern over the issue is also a result of the fact that "people haven’t made the connection between our consumer habits and the lives and deaths of farmers."

The objective of the film, which shines a light on the entire cotton supply chain, is to help force legislation that will "make ethics and sustainability the norm in the fashion industry." As Borromeo wrote in a recent article for the New Statesman: "I’m exploring science and the idea of open-sourcing technology to take power away from corporations and anyone who makes a killing out of suicides." The Island

Indonesia must adopt GMO to achieve self-sufficiency in food

Indonesia must adopt genetically modified crops if the world's fourth-most-populous nation wants to achieve self-sufficiency in food staples like corn, a senior agriculture official said. Corn imports into Southeast Asia's largest economy are rising rapidly as improved wealth levels drive poultry demand, and are forecast to nearly double this year to 2.8 million tonnes. 

Indonesia set a goal after food prices surged five years ago to be able to feed itself in soy, beef, corn, rice and white sugar by 2014, but the policy is being softened amid signs the targets are a long way off. "In Indonesia, we are still not allowed to implement it (GMO)," Deputy Agriculture Minister Rusman Heriawan told Reuters late on Wednesday. "Using the GMO will increase our production more. That's the only one solution we have." 

At present, Indonesia allows the import of many GMO foods, like soybeans and corn, but politicians have shied away from backing the introduction of GM seeds for staple foods. Opposition to the agriculture ministry's GMO push is coming from the country's Bio Security Commission for Genetically Engineered Products, said Heriawan. Indonesian government departments and agencies often fail to work together because of a lack of communication or differing agendas, which can slow the progress of new initiatives and regulations. However, Heriawan said he was hopeful that GMO technology would be used in Indonesia within a year, despite consumer concerns. 

"We have tried different ways to increase our production and finally we came up with this idea that the remaining strategy for agriculture development is by using GMO," he said. Both Syngenta AG, the world's largest maker of crop chemicals, and Monsanto Co, the world's largest seed company, have been promoting GMO in Indonesia this year. 

GM technology using genes to modify crops in order to yield more output has previously faced resistance in the country in case of health or biodiversity risks. In 2001, Indonesia planned to cultivate 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of GM cotton in South Sulawesi sponsored by Monsanto, but the programme was stopped after strong protests from non-governmental organisations. 

Heriawan said the Indonesian government has also taken advantage of soft demand for rubber to spearhead a drive to re-plant rubber plantations this year, with an initial outlay of 100 billion rupiah ($8.6 million). "We started the re-planting program this year, mostly in Sumatra and in parts of Kalimantan," he said, adding that the scheme was expected to last four years. Rubber output in Indonesia, the world's second-largest producer, is seen at 3.2 million tonnes this year, up from 3 million tonnes a year earlier, according to industry and government forecasts. Business Recorder

Crop experiments needed for food security

Crop experiments needed for food security

A number of different genetically modified crop varieties are being tested as part of the country’s efforts to modernise our agriculture.

The jury is still out on the risks. Worldwide, the reception has been mixed and concerns have been expressed about detrimental effects on crop diversity or the development of new dependencies on particular fertilizers and pesticides.

Potentially however, they are an important part of efforts to increase farmers output and resilience. Recent reports on the successful flood-tolerant paddy cultivation experiment in Gaibandha represent good news on this front.

It is only right that the department of agriculture extension (DAE) should take all necessary steps to confine trials of modified varieties of rice and potatoes before such crops are put to production. Extensive piloting and testing have to be conducted, so the DAE is right not to act hastily.

The DAE should take as long as it needs, and be absolutely certain about whatever good and bad effects these products will have, as we must be absolutely certain of the benefits before we proceed.

If the DAE needs a case for why it should take more time before releasing these crops, the uncertainty surrounding BT Brinjal should serve as a pretty good example.

We support the DAE in its efforts to continue to supplement our agriculture with innnovations that increase output in a cost effective and sustainable manner. dhakatribune 

Indian biotech aiming to be $100-bn sector by 2025: Shaw

Indian biotechnology sector is looking to be a $100 billion sector by 2025, Biocon Chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said on Saturday.

“We want to make Indian biotechnology a $100 billion sector by 2025. I really believe this can be done if we have right policies in place, right resources and right investments,” Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told PTI.

She was speaking on the sidelines of the third convocation and fifth annual lecture of NIIT University.

Taking this road map is about delivering security like food security, health security and energy security and environment security, she added.

“Agri bio can itself provide a $40 billion sector, Already BT Cotton is a $7.5 billion sector for the country.

If you allow other genetically modified crops it could be much bigger,” Ms. Shaw said.

The government should allow the genetically modified crops. Without that the country cannot be food sufficient, she added.

“Moreover this would also lead to less use of pesticides which are very harmful. You need to reduce pests and pesticides and that can only be done with technology,” Ms. Mazumdar-Shaw said.

If farmers are to become prosperous you need technology, she added.

“This can happen when you have investments in agri-bio, pharma-bio among others,” Ms. Mazumdar-Shaw said, adding that “for this, we need enabling policies by the government.”

Private sector needs the ease to conduct its business, she said. PTI

Seed Monopolies, GMOs and Farmer Suicides in India – A response to Nature

The article by Natasha Gilbert begins a section entitled GM cotton has driven farmers to suicide by quoting me:

“During an interview in March, Vandana Shiva, an environmental and feminist activist from India, repeated an alarming statistic: ‘270,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto entered the Indian seed market,’ she said. ‘It’s genocide.’”

Yes, I am an ecologist and feminist. But I am also a scientist – a fact that Natasha intentionally avoids mentioning. As a Quantum Physicist, I have been trained to look at the interconnectedness and non-separability of processes, which in a mechanistic and reductionist paradigm, are seen as separate and unrelated.

As a scientist, I have tried to understand what is driving our small farmers to suicide. Two things are evident. One, the suicides begin with the period of globalization which allowed MNC’s entry into India’s Seed Sector, making seeds a non-renewable ‘input’, to be bought every year.

Secondly, the suicides have further intensified after the introduction of GMO Bt cotton. GMOs are intrinsically linked to Intellectual Property Rights, which in turn are linked to royalty payments. Royalties are extracted from poor farmers through credit and debt. The Monsanto representative, who appeared before India’s Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, admitted that Monsanto was collecting Rs 700 as royalty for a 450 gm packet of seed costing Rs 1600. The shift to Bt cotton meant a jump of 8000% in the cost of seed. This is at the root of the farmers’ distress in the cotton areas of India.

As a human being, it concerns me deeply that 284,694 small farmers of India, the most resilient and courageous people I have known, have in recent times been driven to the desperation of taking their lives because of  a debt trap created by a corporate  driven economy of greed that profits from selling them costly chemicals and non-renewable seeds. And we must not forget that the agrochemical industry is the biotechnology industry is the global seed industry.

I look at GMOs as a system of corporate control over seed, a system of Intellectual Property, a system of ecological impacts on soil and biodiversity, a system of health impacts on humans and animals, a system of socio-economic impacts on the livelihoods and survival of farmers.

GMOs are not a “thing”, they are a set of relationships, and it is the context created by these relationships that is driving farmers to suicide. GMOs are not a disembodied “technology” as so many pro-GMO commentators try to present. These commentators then proceed to protect this abstract construction of GMOs as disembodied technologies from the evidence of reality. In reality, what exists is a GMO complex, or nexus, that has an impact on real ecosystems and real farmers.

Shutting out evidence from reality is a completely unscientific approach. Reality cannot be cooked up in papers, no matter how prestigious the journals in which these concoctions are published.  Reality is what happens in reality – the reality of farmers’ suicides, reality of the emergence of super-pests and super-weeds, the reality of rising costs of seed as royalties are extracted from poor peasants. These are no abstractions; rather, they are the lived realities of the consequences of GMOs.

In a systems framework, the scientific approach is to identify the interconnections in reality, and identify systems causality and contextual causation. In the cotton areas, farmers’ suicides started in a context of seed monopolies and destruction of alternatives. And that is the context that must be understood. Contexts require the understanding of contextual causality. Systems require an understanding of systems causation.

The figures of farmers’ suicides are not mine. They come from government statistics of the National Bureau of crime records. The latest figure updated up to 2012 is 284,694.  Any human being anywhere should be outraged at this tragedy. And any scientist working for social and ecological responsibility should want to go to the roots of the crisis, not try and cover it up with unscientific analysis and false claims.

As Natasha’s quote makes clear, I link farmers suicides, which are concentrated in the cotton areas, to Monsanto’s entry into the Indian seed market and its establishment of a monopoly in the cotton seed market.  However, Natasha leaves out the role of Monsanto’s monopoly in her article, and reduces the issue to GM cotton. This is not a hard look, but a blinded, blinkered and biased delusion. What Natasha, in her article, brushes off as an ‘oft repeated story of corporate exploitation’ is a story that is deeply grounded in both human and scientific realities. It is, indeed, a genocide.

The Emergence of Farmers’ Suicides

When the role of seed monopolies in cotton as contributing to farmers suicides has to be studied, one must focus on the cotton areas, not on the entire country . All studies that try and disconnect suicides in the cotton areas from Monsanto’s seed monopoly take the aggregate national data, not the figures of the regions and states where cotton cultivation and cultivation of Bt cotton is concentrated. It is equivalent to declaring that a patient suffering from throat cancer is fine by looking at the health of cells in the entire body, instead of focusing on the cancerous cells in the throat.

We have been studying the creation of seed monopolies since 1987, during the period of the Uruguay Round of the GATT, when corporations like Monsanto pushed intellectual property rights over seeds and life forms into trade treaties. This led to the TRIPS agreement of WTO. Monsanto has admitted that it was the “patient, diagnostician, and physician” in defining intellectual property in WTO. In this way, GMOs are the vehicle for introducing patents and IPR in order to collect royalties. With the introduction of Bt. cotton, the price of seed jumped 8000% because of royalties. Every year more $200 million flows from the Indian peasants to Monsanto. This is at the heart of the intensification of farmers suicides in the cotton belt of India.

We have been studying farmers’ suicides on the ground since 1997 when we first witnessed a suicide of a farmer in Warangal, who had shifted from mixed dry land agriculture to hybrid cotton cultivation and gotten into debt for seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation. We have issued reports entitled ‘Seeds of Suicide’ since 1997, based on field research on the ground, not secondary data analyzed incoherently in distant places.

In 1997, Monsanto started its illegal field trials of Bt. cotton in India. We had to sue them in the Supreme Court of India, and as a result they could not commercialize their Bt cotton until 2002. But the consolidation of the seed industry and the erosion of farmers’ seed sovereignty through creating dependence on purchase of non-renewable seed was already underway.

Farmers’ suicides started in 1995 when globalization enabled seed MNCs like Monsanto to enter the Indian seed market and start establishing seed monopolies. The suicides have increased with the commercial sales of GMO Bt. cotton. Bt. cotton currently accounts for 95% of the cotton seeds commercially sold in India. Famers have adopted Bt. cotton not because it gave higher yields or gave them higher incomes, but because all alternatives have been destroyed.

Destruction of Choice

Farmers are not choosing Bt. cotton. They have no choice left. The systematic wiping out of non Bt. alternatives from the market and the aggressive marketing of Bt. cotton has created a monopoly. It is not profits, but deliberate destruction of alternatives that have pushed farmers into the Bt. cotton trap, and as a consequence, into the suicide trap. Farmers’ varieties are displaced through the very clever strategy termed as “seed replacement”. Public varieties have mysteriously stopped being released. And most Indian companies are locked into licensing arrangements with Monsanto, and can only sell Monsanto’s Bollgard Bt. cotton seeds.

The Standing Committee on Agriculture of the Indian Parliament went to Vidarbha, an area where farmers been deeply affected, to hold public consultations. Here they found the reality to be entirely different from what promoters of Bt cotton had been telling them about increased production, productivity, and prosperity. The report from the committee states, “The last 10 years of Bt cotton also establish the fact that monopolies in the seed sector could be a great concern. In the current scenario, 93% of Bt. cotton has the propriety gene of Monsanto, the American seed giant, which is the world’s largest seed company. This monopoly has also given Monsanto the power to arm twist governments to increase prices of seeds.

Strangely, this lack of choice for the farmers is drummed around as farmers accepting Bt. cotton seeds.” (Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, Indian Parliament, 2012).

Failure to Yield

Yields of cotton have not grown since Bt. cotton was introduced. Cotton yields were higher before Bt cotton than after. Our field surveys reveal frequent failure. There has been a trend of declining yields as corroborated in the paper by Dr. Keshav Kranthi (CICR) reviewing the 10 years of Bt Cotton. “Currently the main issue that worries stakeholders is the stagnation of productivity at an average of 500 kg lint per ha for the past seven years. The gains have been stagnant and unaffected by the increase in area of Bt cotton from 5.6% in 2004 to 85% in 2010. The yield was 463 kg per hectare when the Bt cotton area was 5.6% in 2004 and reached a mere 506 kg per hectare when the area under Bt cotton increased to 9.4 M hectares at 85% of the total 11.1 M hectares.” (Kranthi.K (2011), “10 years of Bt. in India”:

http://www.cotton247.com/article/27520/part-ii-10-years-of-bt-in-india

Increase in Pests and Pesticide Use

Secondly, contrary to the claim of the GMO lobby, pests have increased not reduced, and therefore pesticide use has gone up, not come down. Insects which were not cotton pests have become pests. These include aphids and jassids, mealy bug, army bug. The mealy bug was not observed in India before the introduction of Bt. cotton. The increase in no target pests is as high as 300%. In his 2011 report Dr. Kranthi states, “Productivity in north India is likely to decline because of the declining potential of hybrids; the emerging problem of leaf curl virus on the new susceptible Bt-hybrids; a high level of susceptibility to sucking pests (straight varieties were resistant); problems with nutrient deficiencies and physiological disorders; and mealy bugs, whiteflies and miscellaneous insect problems that are likely to increase (Kranthi.K (2011). Part-3: “10 years of Bt. in India”:

http://www.cotton247.com/article/27614/part-iii-10-years-of-bt-in-india

Meanwhile, the bollworm, which was supposed to be controlled by the Bt. toxin in Bt. Cotton, has become resistant. This is admitted by Monsanto, which has now introduced the more expensive Bollgard II to replace the Bollgard I.  [Sharma, D (2010). Bt cotton has failed, admits Monsanto. India Today, March 6, 2010: 

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/86939/India/Bt+cotton+has+failed+admits].

Bollworm resistance to Bt. resistance monitoring studies done at CICR have demonstrated that bollworm (helicoverpa armigera), the target pest of Bt cotton, has developed tolerance for it. Other studies have also shown bollworm surviving and reproducing in Bt. Cotton, in both single gene and double gene Bt.

(M.T. Ranjith, A. Prabhuraj, & Y.B. Srinivasa. (2010). Survival and reproduction of natural populations of Helicoverpa Armigera on Bt. cotton hybrids in Raichur, India, Current Science, 99, (11) 1602-1606)

Our field studies in Vidarbha show a 13 fold increase in use of pesticides after Bt cotton was introduced. Farmers’ profits have not increased; in fact, the farmers have got into debt, and that is the reason they are committing suicide

Table 1: Increasing Cost of Pesticide in Maharashtra

Year	Maharashtra
	Area under Bt Cotton Million Hectares	Cost of Pesticide (Rs. Crores)
2004-05	0.200	92.10
2005-06	0.607	273.45
2006-07	1.840	847.32
2007-08	2.880	1326.24
2008-09	2.984	1335.34
2009-10	3.315	1483.22
2010-11	3.9	1654.00
2011-12	4.095	1858.00

The increase in pesticide use in Maharashtra is confirmed by the official statistics. The pesticide usage trends in the major cotton-growing states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka are shown above. While Maharashtra shows a significant upward trend from 3198 MT to 4639 MT, the other states show only marginal change, except for the downward trend in Andhra Pradesh. The decline in Andhra Pradesh is because of a major government programme to promote sustainable, non pesticide farming.

Table 2: Pesticide usage in Metric Tonnes technical grade

	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
Andhra Pradesh	1997	1394	1541	1381	1015
Gujarat	2700	2670	2660	2650	2750
Karnataka	1638	1362	1588	1675	1647
Maharashtra	3198	3193	3050	2400	4639
Punjab	5610	5975	6080	5760	5810
Madhya Pradesh	787	957	696	663	645
All India	39773	41515	43630	43860	41822

Source: Directorate of Plant Protection:  http://ppqs.gov.in/IpmPesticides.htm

Seeds of Suicide: GMO Bt. cotton has contributed to an increase in farmers’ suicides

The combination of high costs of seed due to royalty collection, failure to increase yields or control pests, Bt. cotton has intensified the agrarian distress faced by farmers in the cotton areas of India.

Maharashtra is the state which today has maximum area under Bt. cotton. In the state there were 1083 farmer suicides in 1995 which increased to 3695 in 2002, more than three times jump; coinciding with the year when Monsanto introduced Bt Cotton. The scenario of Vidarbha, which is the epicenter of Bt. cotton cultivation, and the epicenter of farmers’ suicides, clearly shows that suicides increased after the introduction of Bt. Cotton. There were only 52 farmer suicides in 2001 but since 2002 suicides increased alarmingly as the area under Bt. cotton increased.

Table 3: Number of farmers’ suicides

Year	No of Suicides
2001	52
2002	104
2003	148
2004	447
2005	445
2006	1148
2007	1246
2008	1248
2009	916
2010	748
2011	916
2012	927

The figures went down in 2008 after the announcement of the Rs. 169.78 billion debt relief package by the Prime Minister:

Farmers” suicides prompts Cabinet into announcing over 16,000 crore rehabilitation package

http://agrariancrisis.in/tag/prime-minister-relief-package/

What even the accurate figures, hide, though, are the lives ruined as collateral damage. Every suicide ruins the lives of 8-9 people in a family. A simple calculation shows that during 2002-2011 the lives of 55,000-65,000 people was ruined due to the farmers’ suicides in Vidarbha. The stories of surviving members are tragic. With the husband’s death, a new vicious cycle of debt is set in motion, wherein the widows inherit their husbands’ debts and work round the clock both to pay it back as well as to make ends meet.

According to P Sainath, who has covered farmers’ suicides systematically, “The total number of farmers who have taken their own lives in Maharashtra since 1995 is closing in on 54,000. Of these, 33,752 have occurred in nine years since 2003 at an annual average of 3,750. The figure for 1995-2002 was 20,066 at an average of 2,508.”

The fact is clear: suicides have increased after Bt. cotton was introduced. The price of seed jumped 8000%. Monsanto’s royalty extraction and the high costs of purchased seed and chemicals have created a debt trap. According to Government of India data, nearly 75% rural debt is due to purchased inputs. Farmers’ debts grow as Monsanto profits grow. It is in this systemic sense that Monsanto’s seeds are Seeds of Suicide. An internal advisory by the agricultural ministry of India in January of 2012 had this to say to the cotton growing states in India – “Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt. cotton. The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers”:

(http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Business/Ministry-blames-Bt- cotton-for-farmer-suicides/Article1-830798.aspx)

Natasha quotes Martin Qaim, who in many of his studies has used data from Monsanto. She states” Bt. cotton has benefited farmers, says Matin Qaim, an agricultural economist at Georg August University in Göttingen, Germany, who has been studying the social and financial impacts of Bt. cotton in India for the past 10 years. In a study of 533 cotton-farming households in central and southern India, Qaim found that yields grew by 24% per acre between 2002 and 2008, owing to reduced losses from pest attacks. Farmers’ profits rose by an average of 50% over the same period, owing mainly to yield gains (see ‘A steady rate of tragedy’). Given the profits, Qaim says, it is not surprising that more than 90% of the cotton now grown in India is transgenic.”

Every statement of Qaim’s is false as shown from both our field studies and studies of India’s parliament and leading scientific institutions.

Natasha also cites Gruère, G. & Sengupta, D. Their findings, published in 2008 (ref. 4) and updated in 2011 (ref. 5), “show that the total number of suicides per year in the Indian population rose from just under 100,000 in 1997 to more than 120,000 in 2007.

But the number of suicides among farmers hovered at around 20,000 per year over the same period.” What she does not cite is that they admit that in the Bt. cotton dominated states of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, the suicides have increased.  “What we cannot reject, however, is the potential role of Bt cotton varieties in the observed discrete increase in farmer suicides in certain states and years, especially during the peaks of 2002, 2004 and 2006 in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.”

In the cotton areas of India, which are now predominantly Bt. cotton, the potential role of Bt. cotton in aggravating farmers distress cannot be brushed aside.

Artificially separating farmers’ suicides from seed monopolies and Bt cotton is bad science. But the issue of farmers’ suicides is not an academic debate. It is a social debate about lives unnecessarily extinguished for corporate profits. It is a debate about democracy, and the choices we make as free citizens, without our alternatives being closed by corporations and their spokesmen and women. It is a choice between corporate control over seed and over our knowledge systems.

I am not the only one connecting farmers’ suicides to debt and seed monopolies. The Agriculture Committee has made this point. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, of India’s National Parliament led by CPM’s Basudeb Acharya, which tabled the report “Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops – Prospects and Effects” has also stressed the link between Bt. cotton and farmers’ distress. Unlike the researchers who work separated from reality, the Parliamentary Committee has worked over 4 years, interacting with every sector of society – government, industry, scientists and farmers. The All Party Committee visited the epicenter of suicides, Vidarbha in Maharashtra, to interact with farmers and understand the ground reality. This is what they concluded unanimously:

“8.124 During their extensive interactions with farmers in the course of their Study Visits, the Committee has found there have been no significant socio-economic benefits to the farmers because of introduction of Bt. cotton. On the contrary, being a capital intensive agriculture practice, investments of the farmers have increased manifolds thus, exposing them to far greater risks due to massive indebtedness, which a vast majority of them can ill afford. Resultantly, after the euphoria of a few initial years, Bt. cotton cultivation has only added to the miseries of the small and marginal farmers who constitute more than 70% of the tillers in India.” NAVDANYA'S Dairy

IS BT COTTON HARMING OUR ENVIRONMENT?

IS BT COTTON HARMING OUR ENVIRONMENT?

The name ‘Bt cotton’ comes up every now and then. Bt cotton is a genetically modified (GM) variety of cotton and its seed contains genetically engineered soil bacterium gene, Bacillus thuringiensis, which acts as a natural toxin against insects and pests including bollworms. Bt cotton initially led to the increase in yield per hectare in India, and major reductions in pesticide use in China. This type of cotton seed has been used by several other countries such as USA, Australia, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa and Pakistan to reduce pesticide use, and consequently contribute to a positive impact on the environment. There is evidence that countries, which have allowed the cultivation of Bt cotton at a commercial level, have effectively gained in terms of higher yield and lower pesticide use.

Initially GM seeds (genetically modified seeds) adopted by developed countries were expensive but gradually the use of the Bt cotton seed spread to developing countries as well. It was widely believed that Bt cotton not only decreased spraying against the pest cotton bollworm, but also reduced the spreading of the pest on other crops. However, the views on Bt cotton have not always been sanguine.

Time and again, questions have been raised on GM seeds as they are super expensive. However, aggressive marketing tactics had convinced poor Indian farmers that the high seed-cost would be compensated by higher yield and savings on pesticides. Many farmers soon realized that Bt cotton was weak to fight bollworms effectively and ended up buying expensive pesticides and other GM seeds for the new planting cycle. Slowly, the steps taken to revolutionize food growth are believed to have turned into a vicious cycle of debt, poverty and suicides. GM seeds were then believed to have reinforced a farming process, which undermined the sustainability of poor Indian farmers.

The questions raised over the environmental and health impacts of Bt cotton seem to have subsided. In the recent past, little has been published on impacts of genetically modified (GM) crops on environment. But does that in any way reduce their harmful impacts? Very recently, farmers in Karnataka were found in a state of disillusion with the tall claims of genetically modified cotton and finally went back to growing indigenous varieties, after sowing Bt cotton for a few years. They believed that hybrids are costly, give low yield and lead to the disappearance of honeybees.

It is true that the world's changing climate has raised concerns about feeding a growing population. And many farmers across the world believe that genetic engineering will lead to the development of crops that will adapt to the changing climate. Bt cotton has been widely approved and a major percentage of India's cotton is now genetically modified. Nevertheless, growers face problems of non-availability of quality Bt cotton seeds and exposure to unapproved Bt varieties readily available in the market. This may lead to reduction in yields of poor quality crops. Considering the present scenario, at times it seems like adoption of biotechnology is not about science, but rather political science. As far as the environment is concerned, the conflicting views of the different schools of thought regarding GM crops’ impact will remain a lingering issue for the years to come. Skymetweather