GM crops are inimical to food security. Claims of their success are baseless. The Government is promoting the interests of the MNC seed industry.
Agrarian distress in our country is not news anymore, neither are farmer suicides. Since the neo-liberal policies began in the 1990s, more than 2.5 lakh farmers have committed suicide. Majority of them are small and marginal farmers doing rainfed agriculture.
In a country where more than 60 per cent of the population is dependent on agriculture, the reality is that while year-on-year agriculture production is increasing, our farmers are in serious distress.
Last year, our food production touched a record 235 million tonnes. But surprisingly the number of hungry also seems to have risen in recent years.
viewing The context
It is in this context of ensuring food and livelihood security that we should view the current debate on GM crops. The debate, while it has seen ideological positions for and against genetic engineering, has also thrown up the question of appropriate technologies.
Is this the kind of technology that we should embrace to empower our farmers and bring food security to our country, or should we be looking at solutions that are sustainable?
Is the current government in a hurry to adopt this technology which is a subject of controversy due to various reasons — ranging from the potential impact on human health to the real issue of the exercise of monopoly on the seed sector, by multinational biotech seed companies?
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture took up this issue to find out whether GM crops should be part of our agriculture.
The Standing Committee, with 31 members from the ruling and opposition benches in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, started its deliberations in the end of 2009.
This was when the debate around GM crops was raging due to Bt Brinjal, the first GM food crop in the country to have reached commercialisation stage. Bt Brinjal was put under a moratorium by the then Union Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh, but the debate on GM crops continued as the country had close to 72 crops that were genetically modified and in the research pipeline.
Some of them were also undergoing open field trials. The Standing Committee, over the next two-and-a-half years, went through close to 467 memoranda from various stakeholders totalling some 15,000 pages, travelled to many States to understand and listen to various stakeholders, and to check the ground reality.
The final report was adopted unanimously at a committee meeting on August 3 and tabled in Parliament on August 9, 2012.
The report critically analyses the need for risky technologies such as genetic engineering in agriculture to ensure food security and improvement of farm livelihoods, and comes to the conclusion that GM crops, with their potential threat to the health of the citizens, biodiversity and farm economies, do not have a role in ensuring food security.
They could also put the livelihood security of farmers and farm labourers under threat.
MNC power
One of the eye-openers for the committee was our visit to Yavatmal to hold a public consultation to understand the reality behind Bt cotton, the first and the only GM crop commercially cultivated in our country.
While promoters of the technology, such as the biotech seed companies, and even the government consistently maintained that Bt cotton had increased production and productivity of cotton and lifted cotton farmers out of distress, what we saw was a different story.
Rising input costs with seeds and other inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides — which are essential for Bt cotton hybrids — and falling yields, have actually increased the burden of farmers in Vidarbha and other rainfed regions.
The committee’s investigations from yield data provided by the government institutions also found out that the national level yield has actually stagnated in the last five years when Bt cotton area increased. Added to this were cases of increased attack from secondary pests and other new diseases.
The last 10 years of Bt cotton also establish the fact that monopolies in the seed sector could be a matter of great concern. In the current scenario, 93 per cent of Bt cotton has the proprietary gene of Monsanto, the American seed giant, which is the world’s largest seed company. This monopoly has also given Monsanto the power to arm-twist governments to increase prices of seeds.
The company had even taken the State government of Andhra Pradesh to court over increasing its royalty per packet of Bt cotton seed.
The systematic wiping out of non-Bt seeds from the market and aggressive marketing techniques, along with the failure of our public sector institutions to provide ample quantities of seeds, have pushed farmers into the hands of the unscrupulous seed industry, which only sells Bt cotton seeds.
Strangely, this ‘lack of choice’ for the farmer is drummed around as farmers accepting Bt cotton. It is essential that an independent and comprehensive analysis of the 10 years of Bt cotton is done at the earliest.
Regulatory failure
The existing GM regulatory system with the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) under the Ministry of Environment and Forests as the nodal agency to approve the release of GM crops, and the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) located within the Department of Biotechnology under Ministry of Science and Technology as the risk assessment agency, has come under heavy criticism. The regulatory apparatus has been unable to put in place a scientific risk assessment system and carry out effective ground monitoring of GM crops.
Fingers have been raised at the systematic rigging of the regulatory system due to conflict of interest, lack of clear policy direction and an unscientific approach towards approval of environmental releases of GM crops, including experimental trials permitted in open fields.
In the approval for various Bt cotton hybrids in the past 10 years and the process run by the regulatory system on Bt Brinjal, it is evident that regulatory agencies seem more inclined to favour the industry.
Added to this is the lack of accountability and liability that has provided a field day for promoters of such GM technologies to get away with violations that could affect food and environmental safety.
It is shocking to see that instead of learning from these regulatory lapses, the government, in the last one year, has been trying hard to introduce a new Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Legislation (BRAI Bill, 2012) in Parliament, which would provide for a single-window clearance system for GM crops.
Biosafety authority
The need of the hour is an all-encompassing biosafety authority which will not restrict itself to just approving products of modern biotechnology.
The main mandate of the authority should be ensuring biosafety by protecting biodiversity, human and livestock health and environment, while regulating products of modern biotechnology.
It should be created through an Act of the Parliament, which is extensively discussed and debated before acquiring the shape of a law.
Until then there should be no environmental releases of any GM crops, including those in the garb of field trials.
(The author is a CPM MP, and Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture.)
Comments:
It is astonishing that this communist MP, given to his natural proclivities of hating American multi-national corporations is allowed tout the voices of the anti-GM lobby like a broken record. Mr. Achria is deliberatley misleading the parliament and the public by completing ignoring the empirical evidence of the success of Bt cotton in the country. Are more than 95% of Bt cotton gorwers fools to keep grwoing Bt cotton year after yaer? Has he spoken to a single Bt cotton farmer in all parts of the country? Has he spoken the Indian scientific community? He has completely relied upon the anti-GM lobby of the country to suit his political ideology. The way communists have run down agriculture in West Bengal and Kerala stands testimony to how ideolgically arrogant and intellectually deceitful and dishonest India's communitsts are. The parliament ahd teh goverbnment of India would do a great service to the nation by shafting the parliamentary committee reprot into the trash can.
As a farmer I would like to respond to some of the issues raised by
the author. India has become the largest cotton producing country
after China which also grows bt cotton.Bt cotton has transformed our
country from an importer to a major exporter.But for bt cotton we
would have trailed behind countries like US and Pakistan.Does the
author oppose the MNC or the technology.There are many private and
public research institutes which have developed indigenous
technology.GM crop is not all about bt cotton alone.We can have
drought resistant,flood & salinity tolerant crops.Please don't throw
the baby with bath water.Bt cotton is meant to address boll worm
infestation alone which had been the major pest before.Once this is
taken care of,sucking pests which was secondary pest before is more
visible now.Polio,small pox were deadly disease earlier.We rarely come
across them now.Does it mean vaccination causes other ailments.Bt and
non bt seeds are available.We select the one that suits us more
What do you expect from a communist M.P except hate American companies cry? And Communists are anti- growth and want the country to remain poor They are the worst enemies of the poor. Communism thrive where there is poverty and they have vested interest in perpetuation poverty so that they can garner votes of the poor..
There is a need for more MPs like Basudevji who have led a democratic process in actually understanding whether there is a need for GM technology in agriculture, instead of jumping on a bandwagon which in fact is detrimental to Indian Agriculture and food security. Bt cotton adoption is not a measure of its success, as there are lots of factors at play here like introduction of hybrids, the intensive marketing tactics by biotech seed companies. It is also scientifically accepted that Bt cotton has led to the increase in secondary pests like sucking pests. On the other hand methods like Non Pesticide Management which do not involve pesticide or Bt have given equivalent if not better results to farmers. On the question of food security, it is a false solution promoted by the industry as GM promotes monocropping and there is also the issue of food safety, where increasing scientific evidence is pointed towards the fact that GM is not safe for human health and environment.
Hybridisation is accepted by the government of the day .How so and why.Does anybody bother try to find whether they are safe?Nobody knows and nobody cares.So what is the cause for crying wolf when BT crops are being attempted to be introduced.BT introduction protocol involves one of the most stringent tests for safety.
Mutations take place spontaneously due to various factors in the natural conditions and do we know whether it takes place at all in the crop that was grown in the previous season and whose seeds were saved for sowing in this season.Do we test at each step on the safety of the seeds that we use every time.
What we are doing in the lab is under controlled condition and safety is the prime focus here and is a single occurence.In nature ,natural forces carry out innumerable such mutations which we do not even know of-is it safe to consume crops grown from seeds of the previous season which may have been subjected to natural forces?????? Pl ponder .
The Parliamentary Standing Committee Report at last, delivers it on
the chin. There is nothing political or partisan about this report,
which had a representation across all political parties and was
signed unanimously. This is a loud and emphatic recognition of the
cosy partnership between our Regulators, the 'Industry', amply
supported by the Ministry of Agriculture. This is proof of the serious
conflict of interest that has led to such an appalling mortgaging of
the national and public interest. This is a voice of sanity and at a
critical time, when the Regulators and the 'Industry' had run away
with the GM crop agenda in India.
It is time that the law was changed to make conflict of interest a
criminal offence. It underpins every scam in the Country.
As lead petitioner in the Supreme Court for a moratorium on GM crops
largely because of the proven conflict of interest, I can testify to
the lack of independent science in the regulatory evaluation of the
biosafety of GM crops.
These anti-technology forces will never allow India to reach self-sufficiency at the
food front. Now is the time Indian farmers take this challenge and suspend all the
agricultural activities in this country in order for saving her biodiversity, for
agriculture is the first enemy of biodiversity, as it advocates repetitive cultivation of
a few grasses (rice, wheat, sorghum and ragi) through the ages.
Only hungry mouths can judge the value of food vis-a-vis that of biodiversity and not
the elitist talks by these anti-technology forces. Prof. P. Balasubramanian
As Shanthu Shantharam is so keen to dismiss people with labels, such as "communist", even though, as Aruna says, there is "nothing political or partisan" about the Parliamentary Standing Committee Report - it's curious that he failed to mention that he's a former Syngenta man and CEO of ABLE, the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises, which represents the biotech industry in India, and companies like Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta etc. who are all desperate to sell GM seeds to Indian farmers. Failing to disclose that really is "deceitful and dishonest" - to quote Shantharam.
While this article is written by the "communist" MP Basudev Acharya, why are we ignoring the fact that it is a 31 member Parliamentary Standing Committee ( with mostly Congress and BJP MPs and a few others from most parties ) that have come up with this report. Infact, I did check the Parliamentary Standing Committee constitution and found only one communist MP among 31 members. I did read the report in full, and I do find it so well articulated and logical. If Biosafety regulatory systems have miserably failed, why blame the report and the MPs. If Bt Brinjal proponents have lied and manipulated scientific studies, why blame the MPs. I think in this case, amidst all the chaos of this democracy, here is one shining example where the people's verdict were upheld by the Parliament of the country. We should not forget that in 2010, the MoEF did the same, and now the Parliament also does the same. Hope the GM crops and field trials are outrightly banned and we saved from a disaster.
I have a lot of respect for Mr Acharia for his passion as well as his
diligence at this stage and age of life. What baffles me however, is
that he has been blatantly using his good office for a cause, which he
knows at the core of his heart, is wrong. What pains me is his
exploitation by the likes of Greenpeace and he fails to understand
this. Mr Acharia is doing the country a great disservice by opposing a
technology which is progressive and inevitable. While one can still
appreciate the viewpoint that he may hold, Mr Acharia's open embrace
of Greenpeace clearly shows he is being partial. As a chairman of the
very crucial standing committee he should not have addressed a press
conference using Greenpeace's platforms. It is sad but we are
struggling to keep the march of the technology alive. In the garb of
MNCs, our scientists are demoralised, demonised. Attack on biotech is
suspecting the integrity of science and scientists.
We should be focusing in terms of strengthening the deficiencies in our system to make it more capable, robust and authentic in adopting new technologies, rather than focussing on deficiency in a specific technology itself or any MNCs.
In my opinion, its matter of our own capacity of safely handling and regulating the technology rather than technology being good or bad, if our system is capable enough to tell whether a technology is safe or not, there is no need to discuss the scientific merits of a technology in the parliament.
The anti-GM lobby in India only likes the science proposed by the anti-GM scienists like Judy Carmem, Jack Heinemann, Eric Seralini and Terge Traavik as it suits its conveneince. It does not matter if the opinions of these worthies have never been accepted by any established scientific organization or a respected regulatory authority. It is unfortumate that in India the government has not presented sufficient proof that exists to show that these anti-GM scienists are playing politics and have scant respect for scientific truths. If the MoEF had sent in a lawyer with all the ammunition, the case in the Supreme Court could have been blown away long time ago. It is the sheer incompetence of the government lawyers that the case has been dragging on for years. Shame on Basudeb Acharia for having sold his soul to the anti-GM lobby and publishing articles ghost written by the anti-GM lobby. Otherwise, he and other members of the committee are clueless about modern biotechnology.
GM crops can make this earth a better place by reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture. GM crops that require less water, less fertilizers, less pesticides, less labour, less energy and which are nutritionally fortified are the way to go. Make no mistake, GM crops are the smartest invention of mankind in the history of modern agriculture.
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