“The largest number of suicides was reported from areas where Bt cotton was used. Farmers have no option there but to use the Bt cotton” — Basudeb Acharia
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture has come down heavily against the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in the country. The Committee, which took almost three years to complete its report on the controversial issue, concluded that GM crops, particularly Bt cotton, had not helped farmers.
The Committee, headed by veteran CPI(M) MP, Basudeb Acharia, said that there were arguments that locally-developed biotechnology had significantly contributed to the farmers’ well-being. Adding that “transgenic” in agriculture crops was being propagated as the panacea for several ills in the sector, the report said various Ministries, Departments and the industry supported this “new technology” while placing evidences in the panel.
The panel said it critically analysed the evidence and maintained that “pure science” had not been the only benchmark for its analysis. The report said that more than 70 per cent of India’s farmers were “small and marginal” and agriculture for them was not just a mean of survival, but a way of life.
Vidarbha issue
The Committee, which visited the Vidarbha region to study the impact of Bt cotton, said that the farmers there were not able to shift from transgenic cotton to traditional and farmer-friendly varieties due to non-availability of seeds.
“The largest number of suicides was reported from areas where Bt cotton was used. Farmers have no option there but to use the Bt cotton,” Acharia told reporters here on Thursday.
He said the Co-Chairman of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), Arjuna Reddy, was under tremendous pressure to give approval to Bt brinjal, as he was getting calls from the industry, GEAC and a Minister (whose name he declined to provide).
The Committee has recommended a thorough probe into the incident. “We are convinced that these developments are not merely slippages due to oversight or human error but indicative of collusion of a worst kind,” the report said.
Keywords: Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, genetically modified, GM crops, controversial issue, GM crops, Bt cotton, Basudeb Acharia, locally-developed biotechnology, farmers’ well-being
Comments:
This is one report that should define the future of agriculture development in India. Should it go the way the MNCs and dangerous technologies define it or should it go as is noted in many places in the report - supportive of the farmer, environment, biodiversity, national security and sovereignty. We must commend the rather detailed work done by the Parliament Standing Committee to bring all the truth on the table. Ironically it has in so clear terms exposed the illness of our ministries and departments handling such a dangerous technology. Its a shame that we lost 10 years to actually know that there was a dangerous game behind the propoagation of GM technology. Today farmers are killing themsleves, land is degraded, our cattle is dying, and we have lost all our traditional gene pool. Who should be blamed and held for this disaster. I think a detailed judicial probe is warranted for this. Nothing short of that can bring the truth. The culprits should be punished.
The Parliamentary standing committee's decision is the correct one. Bt cotton is a glorified insecticide to control a few worms in cotton. It is not designed to improve cotton productivity per acre which is badly needed in India to bridge the vast gap that exists with developed countries and China which have achieved up to 7 times more yield per acre than India. A pesticide's role in productivity improvement is way behind other cultural needs such as nutrition, placement of fertilizers at the growing tips of roots using fertilizer shanks, irrigation using siphon tubes to improve water use efficiency, proper land preparation including chiseling of land prior to planting, etc. Unless we provide these crop production technologies and tools to the farmers, the farmers will dig their own graves with the use only of highly priced Bt cotton seeds. The farmers are forced to use Bt cotton seeds now obviously because the supply of regular cotton seeds are effectively cut off from the market.
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