The Hindu Business Line : Bt cotton and the price blight

The country has 7.9 million hectares under cotton, or just about 5 per cent of the total cropped area. At the height of the so-called Green Revolution came the hybrids and cotton was no exception.

However, with time, came the pests as well. It was in the early 1980s that the fourth-generation synthetic pyrethroids were developed as `effective' pest-control measures in cotton, and the initial success was `spectacular'.

But, soon, the pests outsmarted the insecticide sprays and cotton crop began to succumb, like others.

Yet, the High-Power Central team that probed the failure, in the North, of the October 2000-September 2001 cotton crop recommended banning the use of synthetic pyrethroids, at least for three years, and instead suggested crop mixture — cotton-maize, cotton-sorghum (fodder) and cotton-bajra — to encourage multiplication of predators and parasitoids to control the bollworm. The Central team's report clearly showed that it was the cotton `monoculture' that had led to innumerable environmental-related problems, including the pest attack.

The human toll it took in terms of farmer suicides ran into thousands, in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

Battle against the MNC

Putting aside political differences, governments of seven cotton-growing States have now come together against the Bt cotton technology provider for the exorbitant price it charges the Indian farmer.

First, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) ruled that the Rs 1,850 charged last season for a packet of 450 gm was too high and the Andhra Pradesh Government backed the decision and asked the MNC to slash the price to Rs 650-750, which has now been challenged in the Apex Court by the latter saying that a local government had no business setting a ceiling to the price of a commodity sold in India by a foreign agency. The Apex Court has, however, ruled that for now it would stand by the State Government's order.

The affordability factor

The Bt cotton is more affordable to the poor Chinese farmer unlike in India, primarily because the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which developed the indigenous technology, sold it to more than 30 private and provincial seed companies. Biocentury Transgene Techonology Company Ltd in China does not collect royalty on each seed packet sold, but $60,000 a year from each company regardless of the volume sold.

In India, on the other hand, the poor farmer is made to cough up a huge sum on each packet of the seed. And, he cannot re-use the seeds for the next season as they would no more be viable, and so is again left at the mercy of the MNC.

The MNC has agreed to bring down the trait value to Rs 880, as against its earlier insisted upon rate of Rs 900, for 450 gm of seed, citing that in China the company charges Rs 1,200. But the catch is that in China this amount is on the basis of an acre for 8 kg of seeds. Thus, in effect, the trait value in China works to just Rs 75 for 500 gm, which is only about 9 per cent of what the company charges the Indian farmer! In other words, it would cost an Indian farmer in excess of Rs 15,600 to sow one acre with Bt cotton.

India is a poor country and millions of cotton farmers toil in the parched tracts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. A trait value of Rs 1,250 works out to less than $30, but, in India, for a poor cotton farmer, it is a huge investment just for a 450-gm packet. This is another reason why thousands of farmers committed suicide last season when the crop failed.

That the Bt cotton is here to stay is proved by number of private seed companies that have become sub-licencees of the Monsanto-Mahyco combine and despite the Andhra Pradesh Government's clamp down and the Apex Court order, more private seed companies will get into the act. And with the Centre's decision to go in for an "event-based" clearance for genetically modified crops, rather than clearance of individual ones, the door is wide open for the "Gene Revolution".

This means that once a gene like Bt is tested for bio safety in cotton, it need not be tested in another edible crop, say, tomato, cauliflower or even rice.

Plight of farmers

Whether all this augurs well or not for the country, only time can tell. But it is carte blanche for GM crops in India, as also reiterated by the draft Biotechnology Policy which clearly puts the industry and not the Indian farmer at the centre of everything.

The country's agriculture may go the Green Revolution way, leaving the poor farmer heavily indebted, while the coffers of the farmer-barons overflow. One is left wondering where India's agriculture is headed with the corporate biotechnology bandwagon set to roll.

(The author, an eminent international agriculture scientist, can be reached at nair_kpp@yahoo.com)

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