The Hindu Business Line : Of Bt cotton and the criticism against it

India has recently replaced the US as the world’s second largest producer of cotton. If only India had shed its reservations against Bt cotton earlier, and more farmers had started using the seed, it could have achieved this status some time ago.

Sharad Joshi

The good news for the Rabi season 2007-2008 was that India has overtaken the US as the second largest producer of cotton in the world.

In the US, some of the areas under cotton were shifted to the production of food-grains. The rise in production in India by everybody’s account is due, among other things, to the increased use of Bt seeds. India’s advancement in cotton pro duction is not only quantitative but also qualitative.

The bulk of the Indian cotton production is now of longer staple and can be used for production of finer cotton textiles. In many areas, the yield has increased multi-fold, which is likely to have cut the cost of production substantially.

Opposition to Bt cotton

This is a remarkable development. A recent advertisement in a well-known American weekly featuring a pretty young woman resenting competition from Indian cotton shows how drastically things have changed.

The genetically modified seed, particularly Bt cotton, had attracted severe opposition from various quarters, because a US-based multinational company sponsored it.

The environmentalists claimed that the Bt seeds might be disastrous for Indian farmers. It was even claimed that the cattle that had grazed in the cotton fields had died of poisoning.

Some self-proclaimed champions of the cotton farmers went to the extent of claiming that most of the suicides of cotton farmers were on account of the failure of the Bt seed.

How come the seed of disaster has turned out to be the seed of prosperity? How did the forecasters of doom prove to be so completely wrong?

Genetic engineering is a new technology and it is understandable if some of the even well-meaning people had apprehensions about it. But would it be too much to expect these people to retract their criticism now? Those who opposed biotechnology raised awareness of the threat from the use of such seeds, because of which a regulatory mechanism, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) was created.

These bodies worked under pressure from domestic and European environmentalists. As a result, the first Bt seed became available for cultivation seven years after it was ready for trials.

The remarkable thing is that Indian farmers were already using the gene under scrutiny. It was well known that it had no pernicious effects, no economic disadvantages and no threat to plant, cattle or human life.

Stumbling block

The environmentalists are as much to blame as the governmental machinery that is manned by people with little knowledge of the field.

Some of the organisations opposed to genetic engineering went to the extent of physically attacking the trial plots and destroying them, which resulted in further delays. India lost the incremental crop for seven years.

Even after the seed was officially released for planting, a vicious campaign was carried out that the germination was poor and that the incidence of crop failure was very high. It was propagated that many of the farmers’ suicides were because of the use of Bt cotton seed.

This certainly affected the pace of adoption of the technology. Many farmers, ignorant about the Bt seed, bravely took to the seed only after being convinced by concrete evidence in the neighbourhood and by its beneficial effects.

Were it not for these delays, India may, by now, have been the largest cotton producing country. A study needs to be carried out on the monetary losses incurred by the country due to the delay in introducing Bt seeds and its impact on farmers.

The irony is that, throughout this period, those who opposed the technology have done well for themselves.

They have been honoured, received celebrity status and even ‘parallel Nobel Prizes’. They produced mountains of glossy literature with multicoloured graphs and illustrations and photographs.

The NGOs that opposed biotechnology continue to frequent the prestigious seminars and mouth the well-worn phrases without regret.

What happened in the case of cotton was nothing new. In the past obscurantist forces have opposed the advent of mines, industry, trains, computers, River Valley projects, etc., on the ground that they will bring ecological or economic disaster. Their sister organisations have opposed the use of pesticides in agriculture, saying it is hazardous. In fact, some time ago, a well-known philanthropist announced a prize of Rs 1 crore if the activists concerned could prove any of their claims.

Modern technology

India is on the threshold of the modern era in agriculture. Nobody denies the fact that the old methods of agriculture had their own merit in an era where the population to be fed was relatively smaller. It is generally conceded that the old style of traditional farming will not be able to feed the country today.

Nobody denies that, in the long run, modern agricultural technology might have an adverse effect on the earth, as a whole. But it is equally true that nobody can accept policies that will result in food insecurity and starvation in the present and the near future.

(The author is founder, Shetkari Sanghatana and Member of Parliament — Rajya Sabha. He can be reached at sharad.mah@nic.in)

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