Suicide: The New Harvest of GM Cotton
by Anuradha Mittal
Monsanto’s website boasts of 2005 marking a decade of commercial planting of biotech crops and that “eager adoption” of technology resulted in “planting and harvesting of the billionth cumulative acre of biotech crops” in its tenth year. It then continues to hail benefits that the technology provides to farmers – “increased crop yields, the ability to reduce on-farm chemical use, the opportunity to transition to more environmentally-friendly farming practices, and savings in both time and money.”
This fits in well with industry’s public relations exercise of preventing debate by creating a false sense of need. The key arguments used in this pro-industry publicity blitz are green washing – biotech will create a world free of pesticides, and poor washing – we must accept genetic engineering to increase yields, reduce costs, and improve livelihoods of farmers.
Evidence however reduces these claims to spurious suggestions. A new study, the first to look at longer-term economic impact of Bt cotton, by the Cornell University researchers concluded that the Chinese cotton growers who were among the first farmers worldwide to plant Bt cotton, inserted with the Bacillus Thuringiensis gene to produce lethal toxins against bollworms, are seeing their profits disappear. A study of 481 Chinese farmers in five major cotton-producing provinces found that after seven years of cultivation they had to spray up to 20 times in a growing season to deal with secondary insects such as mirids, which resulted in a net average income of 8 percent less than conventional cotton farmers because Bt seed is triple the cost of conventional seed. The researchers stressed that this could become a major threat in countries where Bt cotton has been widely planted.
One of the researchers of the study, Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen, former director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., however, urged researchers and governments to come up with remedial actions before farmers stop using it. “Bt cotton can help reduce poverty and undernourishment problems in developing countries if properly used,” he said.
Mr. Pinstrup-Anderson would instead do well to urge researchers to examine the harvest of farmer suicides in India. Between June 1, 2005 and August 9, 2006, an estimated 700 farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharastra, had taken their own lives to escape indebtedness.
Ramesh Rathod from the village of Bondgavhan, Vidarbha committed suicide in December 2005. He had purchased Bollgard brand MECH 162 variety for Rs. 1800 ($36) per 450 grams, compared with the 450 rupees ($9) that farmers pay for non-Bt seeds. Ramesh's hopes were dashed when his Bt cotton crops had a severe pest attack and the leaves of his cotton plants turned red before drying up. After having spent a lot of money on inputs and the yield destroyed irreparably, he was in no position to pay back the loans he had taken. He consumed pesticide. Left behind to pay back the debt and shoulder the responsibility of a young family, Ramesh's widow, Dharmibai used two costly pesticides, Endosulphane and Tracer against the bollworm pest, but the three acres of land did not even yield three quintals of cotton.
34-year old cotton farmer Chandrakant Gurenule from Yavatmal committed suicide in April 2006. He too had bought the genetically-modified cotton seeds for his 15-acre (six-hectare) farm, only to watch his crops fail for two successive years. When there was no hope left, despite him selling off the pair of bullocks he used to plough the fields, and pawning his wife's wedding jewelry, he doused himself in kerosene and lit a match.
As Bt cotton continues to jostle for public acceptance, travails of Indian farmers continue. Devastated by bollworm pest, Bt crops have been attacked by “Lalya” or “reddening” as well, a disease unseen before which affected Bt more than the non-Bt cotton crop, resulting in 60 percent of farmers in Maharashtra failing to recover costs from their first GM harvest. Some studies show that farmers are spending Rs. 6,813 ($136.26) per acre compared to Rs. 580 ($11.6) on non-Bt cotton since GE cotton requires more supplemental insecticide sprays
This failure of the Bt cotton resulted in Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of Central Government banning MMB’s Mech 12, Mech 184, and Mech 162 varieties in Andhra Pradesh (AP) while Mech 12 was banned all over Southern India. The local government in AP's Warangal district demanded compensation from Monsanto Biotech Ltd., for farmers who lost their crop. In addition, the AP government, backed by the Central government, challenged Monsanto under the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission for hugely overcharging farmers for its seed. In the face of the evidence that small farmers have borne the brunt of the Bt cotton, biotech industry and its researchers however continue to spin Bt cotton as the way to improve livelihoods of poor farmers and to ensure food security.
Genetic engineering and Bt cotton will not revolutionize the countryside in the developing countries or improve food security, but a new farm economy based on the principle of food sovereignty and farmers rights as the centerpiece of the country's economic development model, will.
Anuradha Mittal is the executive director of the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org), a policy think dedicated to creating a space for public participation and democratic debate on key social, economic, environmental and foreign policy issues that affect our lives.