GM-free Scotland

News | September '07 | One big Indian mess

The latest reports coming out of India indicate a fresh wave of GM cotton crop disasters (to see what the first wave was check out TRY YOGA – News, September 2007).

The Punjab Agricultural department has said that, although a greater area has been planted with cotton than ever before, production will be down 20 to 25 %. The increased planting is overwhelmingly Bt cotton. One pesticide company official, who did not wish to be named said “It has been observed that when 100% of a region comes under Bt cultivation, it becomes susceptible to pests. The best example is Gujarat. We expected this to happen in Punjab too, as more than 80% is under Bt. And it did.”

The problem is that 'Bt' protects against one pest only. In India the cotton is attacked by 165 varieties of pest. Moreover, the increases in common secondary pests, such as aphids, thrips and jassids, are being boosted by new ones, such as tobacco leaf streak virus, and tobacco caterpillars. Input costs have soared as farmers buy extra pesticides, but even these are not controlling the situation. One farmer was advised by scientists to spray carbamates and organophosphates alternately, but after four rounds of expensive and ineffective spraying, he gave up. As a last resort, farmers are uprooting their top-priced GM plants and replacing them with rice paddy. If they're lucky, they might offset a small proportion of their losses.

As if India's experiences with Bt cotton haven't been bad enough, its GM problems are set to get worse. In his petition to the Supreme Court to control the spread of biotech crops, Aruna Rodrigues wrote “the commercialisation of a vast array of GM crops of every conceivable vegetable, oilseed and grain” is planned in India, on a scale “not being undertaken in any other country”.

Why is GM being promoted in the face of such obvious disasters?

In a country where even the poorest of the poor have to bribe officials just to get the food subsidies they are entitled to, entrenched government corruption is a useful lever for industry to pull.

The Indian Government “functions as an extension of the crop developers, oriented to facilitating Industry objectives “ (Aruna Rodrigues). Up to now, the Government has been hiding its careless control of GM behind claims of 'commercial business information' from the biotech industry. Multi-location field trials have been approved even though, by its own admission, the data on GM rice, GM okra, and GM mustard are still “under development” and “still to be evaluated”.

GM crops in India are regulated by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC). Recently, a government taskforce reporting on the GEAC said that the body:

Pressure is also being applied to the GEAC from other quarters. Earlier this year, concern that India's prosperity would be threatened if its exports were rejected abroad due to GM contamination, led the commerce ministry and stakeholders to ask the GEAC not to approve any GM field trials in 60 agri-export zones. One reason given was the present lack of transparency and absence of validated scientific procedures. This coincides with an application filed in the Supreme Court by the Association of Rice millers and Exporters for a moratorium on GM. Over 6 ½ million farmers from every State in India have joined this case.

However, the biotech industry is using the usual subterfuge to counteract any moves towards GM regulation. Members of the taskforce which reported unfavourably on GEAC have been targeted by a pro-GM group, asking them to withdraw their support because the report could be used by the petitioners to the Supreme Court calling for a halt to GM trials.

It will come as no surprise to most readers to know that behind this paradox of a government siding with multinational biotech companies against the wishes of its people and home agricultural industries, lies a history of US interference.

The green revolution of the 1960s sowed the seeds of US-India co-operation when American experts and advisers arrived to convert India's agriculture to an exogenous, high-input basis. This move was heavily supported by finance from the World Bank, USAID, and the Ford and Rockerfeller Foundations. By 2005, it culminated in the launching of a US-India Agriculture Initiative focused on promoting the teaching and research of genetic engineering, besides service and commercial linkages. Monsanto, Walmart and ADM are on the board of the Initiative.

However, all is not gloom and doom in the lands of cotton. There is now a rapidly expanding international market for organic cotton. Data collected by an Indo-Swiss team over a two-year period found that organic cotton producers benefited from:

OUR COMMENT

If this sounds like one big mess, that's because it is one big mess.

When Indian farmers have finished practicing the yoga and spirituality suggested by their government, and become fed up being manipulated and exploited by foreign super-powers, hopefully they'll try organic.

Since a move to small-scale, unpatentable agriculture of any kind will not suit the biotech industry, and the biotech industry is quite good at manipulation, Indian farmers need all the help they can get.

That's YOU, the final customer for their organic products.

Ask for, and buy, organic cotton. Make it clear to the clothing industry you don't want anything else.

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