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Bt
cotton fiasco
STEPPING ONTO A BOOBY TRAP
By Devinder Sharma
"Isn't it like sending a soldier to the battle front and then
ask him not to use the latest sophisticated assault rifle," a
British radio journalist asked me the other day. He was obviously
referring to the Indian government's initial decision to burn down
the illegally grown genetically modified cotton on some 10,000 acres
of farmland in the Gujarat State.
"It will certainly be tragic to deprive a soldier of the latest
weapon. But it will be more sinister and criminal to provide the
soldier with an AK-47 gun and then deliberately make him step onto a
'booby' trap," I replied, adding that Bt cotton - containing a
gene from a soil-borne bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) - is
an attractive biological trap, more potent than the toxin it
produces that kills the dreaded bollworm pest. Experience has
conclusively shown that gullible cotton growers have been
continuously pushed over the past few decades into 'a vicious circle
of poison'. The only difference being that the 'chemical treadmill'
is now being replaced with a more dangerous and hitherto unknown
'biological treadmill'.
"But then a majority of cotton growers are happy with the
standing crop even if the seed was clandestinely supplied,"
asked the journalist, stating that there is a growing demand that
the genetically modified crop, which has proved to be effective
against the bollworm insects, should not be destroyed. "Yes,
you are very right," I replied. "This is exactly what had
happened when the fourth generation pesticides synthetic pyrethroids
were introduced in the country less than 20 years ago. And since
then over 10,000 cotton growers have committed suicide."
Who will be responsible if and when thousands of cotton growers
again take the fatal route once the insect develops resistance to
the Bt gene, I asked? Will the secretary of the Department of
Biotechnology (DBT), who appears to be more than eager to hasten the
process of commercialisation, be held responsible for the resulting
deaths? After all, suicides by thousands of farmers resulting from
the targeted pest developing immunity against the chemical or the
gene are not 'collateral' damage? It is a heavy price that the
Indian farmers have paid and are more likely to pay in future with
the introduction of Bt varieties. Technology too has to be linked to
human rights.
The kind of jubilation that was expressed by cotton farmers in the
early 1980s when the synthetic pyrethroids were introduced in the
cotton growing areas throughout the country did not last long. For
the first two or three years, the farmers were visibly happy. The
chemical killed almost everything and that included the 'American
bollworm', as the main pest is generally called. The euphoria,
however, was short-lived. The insect gradually began to develop
resistance and in the next few years while the number of costly and
environment-unfriendly sprays increased, so did the resistance
against the chemical. In 1987, Andhra Pradesh recorded 37 suicides
by cotton growers from crop failures, all result of the chemical
equation going wrong, and forcing the farmers into mounting debt.
Unable to withstand the humiliation that comes along with increased
debt, these farmers drank the same pesticide that was unable to kill
the insect.
Ten years later, a serial death dance began. Starting from Warangal
district in Andhra Pradesh once again, the suicides spread to the
neighbouring districts, and then onto Karnataka, Maharashtra,
Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana. Government denials notwithstanding,
more than 10,000 cotton growers have perished so far. No scientific
institution, no chemical industry and no chief minister have been
held accountable for arguably the greatest man made human disaster
to have struck independent India.
It didn't end here. In fact, the same arguments, the same rhetoric,
and the same vested interests are desperately pushing in genetically
engineered crops as the ultimate savior of the farming community. No
one has questioned, not even the Genetic Engineering Advisory
Committee (GEAC), the highest regulatory authority in India, as to
how many more thousand farmers need to be sacrificed at the altar of
development? Who is responsible for the families of those farmers
who end their life abruptly as victims of commercial agriculture?
After all, thousands of farmers ending their lives is not a small
price for scientific experimentation.
And that is reminiscent of the dilemma that the former Indonesian
President Suharto was faced with in the mid-1980s. Indonesia's rice
crop, its staple food, was devastated by brown plant hopper insects.
No pesticides were effective against the menacing pest. After trying
all kinds of permutations and combinations, President Suharto
finally sent an SOS to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the
United Nations (FAO) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
at Manila in the Philippines. The international scientific community
responded and for once with a sensible and sustainable alternative.
It suggested an immediate ban on spraying of chemicals on rice.
President Suharto understood the importance of integrated pest
management techniques that the scientists wanted him to adopt on a
mass scale. Under a presidential decree, 57 pesticides were banned.
The chemical industry, led by the American Embassy in Jakarta, were
up in arms saying that the decision would be suicidal and Indonesia
would be pushed into the throes of hunger and starvation. After all,
rice was and is still the staple food of Indonesia. President
Suharto refused to accept the industry's prescription. Instead, he
simultaneously launched a countrywide integrated pest management
programme.
In the next two years, contrary to all projections, rice production
increased by 18 per cent. Pesticides consumption was drastically
reduced by 65 per cent. The cost of cultivation slumped and the
environment became much safe.
For cotton too, there is no other escape route. Over the years,
indiscriminate use and abuse of pesticides have pushed the farmers
into a vicious trap. The more the insect attack, the more potent and
repetitive are the number of chemical sprays. Farmers have been
forced to apply all kinds of pesticides (much of it spurious) and
its cocktails to control the bollworm insects. So devastating is the
'circle of poison' that Punjab farmers are known to have sprayed
chemicals worth Rs 320 crore in 1998-99 to harvest Rs 280 crore
worth of cotton lint. While the farmers are the sole victims of the
exploitative system that cotton has spun, even the lesser-known
insects like white fly have now become a major pest of cotton
thereby bringing in more pesticide sprays.
What is deliberately overlooked is the fact that in the same cotton
field there exist 27 natural predators or the benign insects that
feed on the American bollworm. But when the chemical sprays begin,
it is the benign insects that first get knocked down. By the time
the American bollworm appears on the scene the cotton field is
bereft of its natural enemies. American bollworm than has a field
day merrily devouring crops.
Moreover, it has been conclusively demonstrated both within and
outside the country that much better yields and much-cleaner
environment can result from less use of pesticides on cotton. Cotton
productivity or yields in India are amongst the lowest in the world
not because we don\'t have high-yielding varieties. In fact, the
first cotton hybrids were evolved in India. What is not know is that
in the past 20 years, cotton farmers have been deliberately paid 20
per cent less every year by way of administered price to keep the
textile industry afloat. Which means, that the cotton farmers had in
reality subsidised the industry. If only cotton farmers had received
an attractive price, there would have been an incentive to produce
more.
Even now, while on the one hand we find that the biotechnology
industry as well as the DBT uses the same argument, the government
on the other has allowed the import of cotton into the country. In
the years to come, it will not be because of low yields but because
of heavy imports of cheap and highly subsidised cotton into the
country that the cotton farmers will be faced with an unprecedented
crisis of protecting their livelihoods. Under the WTO defined rules,
India will have to allow the import of cheap cotton. Ironically, the
sad aspect is that the same textile industry which was subsidised by
the cotton farmers all these years has dumped the domestic farmers
at the first given opportunity. They are asking for more cheap
imports.
Bt cotton in any case is a faulty prescription. For it is widely
accepted that in case of Bt cotton, the third generation of the pest
is the most problematic. It is true that in southern China farmers
have been growing this variety. But what is not known is that now
they have to spray pesticide to control third and fourth generation
of American bollworm insects. In Australia too, farmers have now
been advised to go in for more sprays because of a drop in
expression levels. With the insect increasingly developing immunity
against the Bt toxin in the plant, scientists are now trying to
introduce genetically manipulated varieties with two Bt genes. It
may then be the turn of a gene from scorpion, and then from a snake.
The 'biological circle of poison' is certainly going to be more
dangerous than the chemical cycle that farmers have been forced to
live with.
(Devinder Sharma is a food and trade policy analyst. Among his
recent works include two books GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair and In
the Famine Trap)
dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in
Address: 7 Triveni Apartments,
A-6 Paschim Vihar, New Delhi-110 063, India. (Tel: 011-525 0494.)
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