Treadmill of Magic Seeds and Broken Promises: Dismantling the Myth of Bt Cotton Success in India
Political posturing aligned with
commercial interests means that truth is becoming a casualty in the
debate about genetically modified (GM) crops in India. The industry
narrative surrounding Bt cotton is that it has been a great success. The
current Modi-led administration is parroting this claim and
argues its
success must be replicated by adopting a range of GM food crops,
amounting to what would be a full-scale entry of GM technology into
Indian agriculture. Currently, Bt cotton is India’s only officially
approved commercially cultivated GM crop.
With the aim of putting the record
straight, a media event took place on Friday, 6 September in New Delhi
at the Constitution Club of India during which it was declared that Bt
cotton has been a costly and damaging failure. Speakers included
prominent environmentalists Aruna Rodrigues and Vandana Shiva who
presented a good deal of information based on official reports, research
papers and documents submitted as evidence to the Supreme Court on Bt
cotton.
It was argued that even the
government’s own data contradicts its tale of Bt cotton success and that
the consequences of irresponsibly rolling out various GM crops based on
a false narrative would be disastrous for the country.
PR and broken promises
In the early 2000s, Bt cotton was
being heavily promoted in India on the basis it would cut pesticide use
dramatically, boost yields and contribute to the financial well-being of
farmers. However, pesticide use is back to pre-Bt levels and yields
have stagnated or are falling. Moreover, some 31 countries rank above
India in terms of cotton yield and of these only 10 grow GM cotton.
As will be shown, farmers now find
themselves on a chemical-biotech treadmill and have to deal with an
increasing number of Bt/insecticide resistant pests and rising costs of
production. For many small-scale cotton farmers, this has resulted in
greater levels of indebtedness and financial distress.
Failure to yield
Over 90% of cotton sown in India is
now Bt. Although initially introduced to the country in 2002, its
adoption was only about 12 and 38% respectively in 2005 and 2006. A good
deal of data was contained in the media briefing that accompanied the
event in Delhi. In it, Aruna Rodrigues and Vandana Shiva
show that, even then (2005-2006), average yields had already reached
the current plateau of about 450-500 kg/ha. Average all-India Bt cotton
yields hovered around or below 500 kg/ha during the period 2005-2018.
What is particularly revealing is that
cotton production for 2018-2019 will be the lowest in a decade, down to
an estimated 420.72 kg/ha, according to a press release issued in July
by the Cotton Association of India.
Furthermore, the argument is that
increases in yields that may have occurred were in any case due to
various factors, such as increased fertiliser use and high-yielding
hybrid seeds, and not Bt technology.
The data presented by Rodrigues and
Shiva shows that cotton yield in the pre-Bt era increased significantly
from its 191 kg/ha low in 2002 to 318 kg/ha in 2004-2005, registering an
increase of 66% in just three years (the baseline for Bt cotton is
2005-2006 as prior to this adoption rates were not significant). The two
environmentalists say this was a result of increased acreage under
hybrids and a new class of insecticides.
They note that the momentum of this
upward swing carried into the Bt era and had nothing to do with that
technology. Their argument is that Bt cotton has failed but is being
trumpeted as a success under the cover of increased fertiliser use,
hybrid seed trait yield (not attributable to Bt technology), better
irrigation and insecticide seed coating.
Biotech treadmill and ecological disruption
Bt technology was used in conjunction
with high-yielding hybrids (as opposed to pure line varieties) and has
no trait for intrinsic yield. This, Rodrigues and Shiva argue,
conveniently allowed a smudging of the yield data (isolating the precise
impact of hybrid yield would prove to be difficult) and also provided a
‘value-capture’ mechanism for Monsanto: the introduction of these
hybrids disallows seed saving, forcing farmers to buy new expensive
hybrid Bt cotton seed each year (hybridisation gives one-time vigour).
Prior to Bt cotton, the extensive use
of insecticides to cope with the Pink Bollworm (PBW), which is native to
India, had become a problem. Spraying for PBW caused outbreaks of the
American Bollworm (ABW). The ABW is a secondary pest that was induced by
extensive insecticide use and became the target for Bt cotton.
Although Bt cotton was supposed to
control both species of bollworm, PBW resistance to Bt toxin has now
occurred and the ABW is also developing resistance. Moreover, post 2002,
new pests have appeared, such as whitefly, jassids and mealybugs.
However, Rodrigues and Shiva note that
resistance in PBW now occurs to both Monsanto’s Bollgard I and Bollgard
II Bt cotton (BGI and BG II). BGI was replaced by BG II as early as
2007-8, just six years after its introduction because the PBW had
developed resistance. The ABW is also now developing resistance to
stacked Bt toxins in BG II.
Irresponsible roll out
Hybrids are input intensive and are
sown at suboptimal wide spacing. Unlike in other countries that grow Bt
cotton, they are long season cottons and are thus more susceptible to
pest build-up. With this in mind, Rodrigues and Shiva refer to Dr K R
Kranthi, former director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research,
who says:
“Insecticide usage is increasing each
year because of resistance development in sucking pests to imidacloprid
and other neonicotinoid insecticides—by 2012 insecticide usage was at
2002 levels and will continue to increase inducing further outbreaks of
insecticide and Bt resistant pests.”
Bt cotton hybrids also require more
human labour and perform better under irrigation. However, 66% of cotton
in India is cultivated in rain fed areas, where yields depend on the
timing and quantity of highly variable monsoon rains. Unreliable rains,
the high costs of Bt hybrid seed, continued insecticide use and debt
have placed many poor (marginal) smallholder farmers in a situation of
severe financial hardship.
In fact, Professor A P Gutierrez argues that Bt cotton has effectively put these farmers in a corporate noose: his research has noted a link between Bt cotton, weather, yields, financial distress and farmer suicides.
Monsanto’s profiteering
Rodrigues and Shiva note that Monsanto
was allowed a ‘royalty’ on Bollgard I seed without having a patent on
it. Drawing on conservative estimates (by K R Kranthi), on average, the
additional expenditure on seeds (compared to non-Bt seeds) was at least
Rs 1,179 per hectare and the Indian farmer may have spent a total extra
amount of Rs 14,000 crores (140 billion) on Bt cotton seeds during the
period 2002-2018. The trait value charged (2002-2018) is around Rs 7,000
crores. This excludes royalties accruing to Mahyco-Monsanto, which were
illegal on Bollgard I (first generation Bt cotton) and yet allowed by
the regulators.
Overall net profit for cotton farmers was Rs 5,971/ha in 2003 (pre-Bt) but plummeted to average net losses of
Rs 6,286 in 2015, while fertiliser use kg/ha exhibited a 2.2-fold
increase. As Bt technology was being rolled out, costs of production
were thus increasing. And these costs were increasing in the face of
stagnant yields.
Why GM anyway?
At this point, it is worth broadening
the scope of this article by noting that in 2010, an indefinite
moratorium was placed on Bt brinjal, which would have been India’s first
GM food crop. Despite the current push for a full-scale entry of GM
into Indian agriculture, the moratorium is still in place: the conflicts
of interest, secrecy, negligence and lack of competence inherent in the
GM regulatory process that were acknowledged at that time remain unaddressed.
It would therefore be grossly
irresponsible to roll out GM. If the experience of Bt cotton tells us
anything, it would also be extremely unwise to proceed without carrying
out independent health, environmental and socio-economic risk
assessments.
Of course, establishing the need for
GM – crops that outperform current non-GM options currently available –
is paramount but totally absent. With this in mind, Rodrigues and Shiva cite evidence that
traditional plant breeding and newer methods outperform GM agriculture
at much less cost, release fewer carbon emissions and earn much greater
profits for farmers.
Given this situation (the fraud of GM and its dubious track record aside), anyone
could be forgiven for thinking that the plan to get GM into Indian
agriculture is solely driven by ideology and commercial interest.
Instead of drawing on proven traditional knowledge and practices to ensure food security, the strategy seems to be to place farmers on biotech-chemical treadmills for the benefit of corporate interests.
Green Revolution to ‘gene revolution’
If we look at the Green Revolution, it too was also sold under the guise of ‘feeding the world’. But in India, according to Professor Glenn Stone,
it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per
capita showed no increase or actually decreased. Nevertheless, there
have been dire consequences for the Indian diet, the environment, farmers, rural communities and public health.
More generally, the Green Revolution
dovetailed with an international system of chemical-dependent,
agro-export mono-cropping and big infrastructure projects (dams) linked
to loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF directives, the
outcomes of which included a displacement of the peasantry, the consolidation of global agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries into food deficit regions.
Often regarded as Green Revolution 2.0, the ‘gene revolution’ is integral to the plan to ‘modernise’ Indian agriculture.
This means the displacement of peasant farmers, further corporate
consolidation and commercialisation based on industrial-scale monocrop
farms incorporated into global supply chains dominated by transnational
agribusiness and retail giants. It would also mean the undermining of
national food security.
GM-based agriculture is key to what
would amount to a wholesale corporate capture of the agri-food sector: a
sure-fire money spinner that would dwarf the amount drained from India
courtesy of Monsanto’s ‘royalties’ on Bt cotton.
Agroecological solutions
This wholesale shift to industrial
agriculture would have devastating impacts on the environment, rural
communities, public health, local and regional food security, seed
sovereignty, nutritional yield per acre, water tables and soil quality,
etc. Industrial agriculture has massive health, social and environmental costs which are borne by the public and taxpayers, certainly not by the (subsidised) corporations that rake in the massive profits.
It is no surprise, therefore, that an increasing international consensus is emerging on the role of agroecology. In
this respect, smallholder farmers are not to be regarded as residues
from the past but as being crucial to the future.
And this is not lost on Rodrigues and
Shiva who note the vital importance and productivity of small farms
(which outperform industrial-scale enterprises and feed most of the
global population) and the advantages of agroecological farming. They
refer to the recent UN FAO High Level Panel of Experts which concludes that agroecology provides
greatly improved food security and nutritional, gender, environmental
and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture.
Furthermore, according to Rodrigues
and Shiva, regenerative organic farming can draw down excess carbon from
the atmosphere and put it in the soil, thereby reversing climate change
and making agriculture climate resilient. They argue that organic
systems are competitive with conventional yields and leach no toxic
chemicals. As for cotton, they state that ‘desi’ species of cotton
varieties are highly amenable to low-cost organic farming, providing an
excellent opportunity for India to emerge as a global leader in organic
cotton.
The take-home message is that if GM
food crops are to be rolled out – based on a narrative about Bt cotton
that relies more on industry spin than actual facts – it would be
disastrous for India. Given the evidence, it’s a warning that should not
be taken lightly.
An eight-page briefing was issued to
coincide with the media event and contains relevant references,
additional data and numerous informative charts. It can be accessed here.
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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
Featured image is from Abhishek Srivastava / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
The original source of this article is Asia-Pacific Research
Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Asia-Pacific Research, 2019
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