Harvest of Hypocrisy: Farmers Being Blamed for GMO Crop Failures
Of all the GMO controversies
around the world, the saga of Bt cotton in India continues to be one of
the most interesting and important. In the latest chapter, reported by
the Business Standard, cotton yields have dropped to a 5-year low, setting off a fascinating round of finger pointing.
India approved Bt cotton in 2002 and
within a few years yields were up dramatically. There are different sets
of data out there, but let’s use the India Ministry of Textiles data
since it’s this weeks news story. This chart shows the national trends
in cotton yield (kg per hectare).
If you follow GMO debates you will have heard several years of kennel barking about how these figures show a “remarkable success.” But as I have pointed out (in my blog and in EPW), most of the rise in productivity had nothing to do with Bt cotton; in fact it happened before Bt cotton became popular.
Check it out: the biggest rises were
from 2002/3 to 2004/5, when yields rose 56% from 302 to 470 kg. But by
2004/5, only 5.6% of India’s cotton farmers had adopted Bt. Do the math:
if those 5.6% of planters were really responsible for a 56% rise in
yields, then they must have been harvesting 3,288 kg/ha.
Data from the India Ministry of Textiles.
So Bt didn’t explain the big rise in
yields, and since Bt has taken over, yields have been steadily
worsening. What are we to make of this? Well, two things, according to
the Business Standard and the Monsanto spokesperson who was their main
informant. One has to do with what has gone wrong, the other with what
we need to get out of this mess.
1. What Went Wrong? (the farmers screwed up?)
It seems the bollworms — the voracious
pests that that Bt cotton is designed to kill — are developing
resistance. But resistance, according to Monsanto, is “natural and
expected.”
Whoa — that’s not what the farmers
were told to expect. I was there when Bt cotton was being rolled out
and they were told repeatedly and confidently that they wouldn’t have to
spray any more. In fact we were all being told
that “genetic farming is the easiest way to cultivate crops. All that
farmers have to do is to plant the seeds and water them regularly. The
genetically modified seeds are insect resistant, so there is no need to
use huge amounts of pesticides.”
All the farmer has to do is plant and
water the seeds… and then wait around for resistance, which is natural
and expected. But wait there’s more: when it does appear, it’s the
Indian farmers’ fault. Monsanto’s spokesman explains:
Among the factors
that may have contributed to pink bollworm resistance to the Cry1Ac
protein in Gujarat are limited refuge planting and early use of
unapproved Bt cotton seed, planted prior to GEAC approval of Cry1Ac
cotton, which may have had lower Bt protein expression levels, he added.
A “refuge” is a strip of non-Bt seeds
farmers are asked to plant around their Bt fields, basically to raise
bollworms that aren’t resistant to Bt, so they can hopefully breed with
any resistant bollworms.[1] Very few Indian farmers actually do this,
because it’s a lot of extra work for no return. Here’s an insight from
30 years of research on farming: if you’re pushing a technology that is
only sustainable if farmers follow practices that require extra work for
no return, you are pushing an unsustainable technology.
The other Monsanto suggestion is that
the farmers are to blame for planting unapproved seeds. Sorry, that dog
don’t hunt. Those unapproved seeds were Navbharat-151 and they have been
much written about;
they were better than the approved seeds, and their Bt levels were
apparently sky high. Gujarat, where they were planted, has had India’s
biggest rises in yields.
But while we’re blaming Indian farmers, why stop there? Monsanto also explains that
farmers have been
constantly educated to adopt measures such as need-based application of
insecticide sprays during the crop season and adoption of cultural
practices like keeping the field clean of cotton stubble and
crop-leftovers, ploughing of land after harvest so that the resting
stages of the insects in the soil could be destroyed.
I have yet to bump into the educators
who are giving farmers constant remediation on spraying, plowing, and
field clearing. But I do bump into a lot of biotechnology people who
pontificate on the wisdom of the Indian farmer. The farmer has long been
seen as backward, tradition-bound, and inept. “We need to teach proper
tillage,” a Monsanto executive explained to me years ago. But farmers
are obstinate, and in fact this was one of the arguments for GM seeds:
for years people
have tried to change cultural practices of these farmers, and it just
hasn’t worked. It has been a complete failure, because you have to
modify infrastructure, you have to re-educate them as to how to modify
their farming practices themselves. But with biotech, the technology is
in a seed. All you have to do is give them the seed. (-biotechnologist Martina McGloughlin)
But as soon as Indian farmers adopted GM
seeds, we were told that “we should leave the choice of selecting
modern agricultural technologies to the wisdom of Indian farmers” and
that “farmers are excellent businessmen who aren’t persuaded by anything
or anybody that doesn’t make their job easier or more profitable.” [2]
So don’t question the wisdom of the
farmer! He is a genius — at least when he is buying GM seeds. But
otherwise, he has to be told how to plant, spray, plow, and clear
fields!
2. Now What? (More innovation?)
So despite all the GM seeds, India’s cotton yields keep on dropping. (In some states, they are now lower than they were before Bt seeds became popular.) So what’s the way forward?
To me this is a very hard question, but not to the Business Standard, which simply reports the news that
continuous R&D
and innovation to develop new value-added technologies is imperative to
stay ahead of insect resistance. To support such innovation, Monsanto
demanded government policies’ support to encourage investment in R&D
which will result in Indian farmers having a wider choice of better and
advanced technologies translating thereby, higher yield.
No kidding — innovation from Monsanto is
going to keep us ahead of the insects and guarantee higher yields. But
lets take a look at the facts, at least as reported by the
industry-friendly ISAAA.
Yields started dropping after 2007/8. But that was just after new
genetic constructs started appearing: a new 2-gene technology in 2006/7,
and by 2009, six different constructs were approved. And these rapidly
proliferating technologies were appearing in dizzying numbers of seed
products. After 2006/7, the number of Bt hybrid seeds being offered to
farmers jumped from 62 to 131 to 274; by 2009/10 there were 522.
There you have it: Indian cotton farmers
today are being pelted with a hailstorm of new gene technologies and
seed products, their yields steadily dropping, and the way forward is
clear to the Business Standard: invest in Monsanto innovation.
Glenn Davis Stone is Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University
in St. Louis. Over the past 30 years he has studied and written about
food, farming, and biotechnology. He has conducted extensive research
in West Africa, India, and the U.S., with additional fieldwork in So.
Africa, Viet Nam, Thailand, and England, and laboratory work at the
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. He is president of the Anthropology & Environment Society of the American Anthropological Assn.
Notes
[1] Further explanation: A field full of
Bt plants puts selective pressure on bollworm populations favoring
worms with natural resistance to Bt. The resistant bollworms would
thrive and spread the resistance trait, while the Bt-vulnerable
bollworms die off. The plants in the refuge are non-Bt, so Bt-sensitive
worms are supposed to thrive there; they are supposed to mate with the
Bt-resistant worms and water down the resistance trait.
[2] Pinstrup-Andersen, P., and E. Schioler 2000 Seeds of Contention:
World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press; Fumento, M. 2003 BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is
Changing Our World. San Francisco: Encounter Books.
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