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Report on success of GE cotton
sows confusion
By T V Padma
NEW DELHI - Civil society groups have been taken
aback by a new scientific report that sings the praises
of the superlative yields of genetically engineered (GE)
cotton in India, at a time when ground realities speak
of massive failures.
It was left to leading
voluntary agencies to point out that the report in the
leading international journal Science in February was
outdated and based on data from field trials carried out
in 2001 by the Maharashtra Hybrid Company (MAHYCO), a
subsidiary of the US seed giant Monsanto Corp.
The report spoke of a 70 to 80 percent yield
increases of Monsanto's patented Bt cotton, compared to
conventional hybrids. Bt cotton is genetically
engineered to contain a gene borrowed from a common soil
bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which produces a
substance lethal to the bollworm that devastates more
than half of India's cotton crop.
The wide
international publicity given to the Science report,
authored by researchers from the University of
California, Berkley, and the University of Bonn,
Germany, underplayed the fact that it relied on data
from trials in India in 2001 - and was not from
commercially grown cotton, activists here say.
These trials were the ones that decided the
Indian federal government's clearance of commercial
production of Bt cotton in March the following year.
"Thanks to the publicity, there is an erroneous
impression that the study was based on the crop season
that ended. In reality, the analysis is based on the
data MAHYCO-Monsanto had collected in the final year of
field-testing in 2001, a year before the crop was
commercialized," says Devinder Sharma, a leading food
policy and trade analyst.
Data in the Science
report was recorded in the third and last round of
trials by MAHYCO-Monsanto before the cotton was cleared,
and not on data after the cotton was commercially grown
in actual field conditions. The controversial clearance
for commercial production of Bt cotton was given last
year despite the fact that a case against "illegal"
trials filed by voluntary agencies and farmers'
organizations was pending in India's apex Supreme Court.
Not only was MAHYCO-Monsanto entrusted with
carrying out its own field trials, unusual in a country
which has large, well-funded agricultural research
organizations, but the results were never made public.
India's first crop of Bt cotton sown by farmers last
year in several cotton-growing states, was, by the
accounts of several farmers' organizations, a failure.
There were in fact a clamor for compensation.
With no independent scientific assessment in
place, the government and scientists ignored these
failure reports often brought to their notice by
activists and farmers' groups. This was the data that
"still remains hidden from the public gaze in India",
and "has no relevance to the crop harvest in 2002-03",
Sharma says.
The report also errs in treating
savings in crop losses as yield increases, says Sharma.
"But then for an industry under tremendous pressure for
public acceptance of its risky technology, playing the
yield card was a simple way to hoodwink the masses," he
observed.
Commercial clearance to Bt cotton was
granted on the grounds that it has been fully tested in
Indian conditions, that it does not require pesticide
sprays and gives higher yield and farmers higher
incomes. "All the claims on the basis of which the
clearance was given have been proven false by the total
failure of Bt cotton in states where it was cleared for
planting, including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and
Madhya Pradesh," points out Vandana Shiva, director of
the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and
Ecology (RFTSE).
A field survey conducted by the
RFSTE from October 23 to November 2 last year in two
cotton-growing states - Maharashtra in western India and
Andhra Pradesh in southern India - belied claims of
super yields and successful warding off of the bollworm
pest by Bt cotton. In a statement, RFSTE said there
continued to be substantial attack of bollworm and
sucking pests like jassids, aphis and thrips on Bt in
Maharashtra.
It has documented instances of
several farmers in Yawatmal district in Maharashtra and
Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh saying they sprayed
pesticides for bollworm and sucking pests several times
in their cotton fields. Additionally, the cotton crops
were attacked by two fungal diseases, root rot and wilt,
which was confirmed by plant disease scientists at the
Zonal Agricultural Research Center in Yawatmal district
in Maharashtra and Warrangal district in Andhra Pradesh.
RFSTE also says that contrary to claims of 15 quintals
per acre with Bt cotton, yields have been as low as 20
kg per acre in some areas.
Yields in cotton in
general could have been lower last year due to a
crippling drought - the worst in the past 12 years.
Nevertheless, even Monsanto said in a statement that Bt
cotton did suffer from a condition called root wilt seen
in times of severe moisture stress, proving it is
certainly not drought resistant.
RFSTE says even
the claims of higher income for farmers are also
farfetched. Many poor farmers recorded poor yields and
lower prices for the genetically engineered crop,
despite paying much more for the Bt-cotton seed and
spending more on pesticide sprays.
RFSTE's field
survey also found no effective safeguards for biosafety.
Farmers growing Bt cotton did not plant adequate
"refugia" or areas planted plants with ordinary cotton
to prevent accidental transfer of pollen to nearby
non-genetically engineered plants.
The
performance of Bt cotton in India has been mired in
controversy since the country prepared itself for its
first harvest of the genetically engineered cotton last
year. In December 2002, Environment and Forests Minister
T R Baalu told parliament that the performance of Bt
cotton was "satisfactory" in the first year of its
planting.
But three voluntary organizations -
Greenpeace India, Center for Resource Education and
Sarvodaya Youth Organization said their investigations
showed otherwise. "The government has conveniently
ignored other important issues like the inferior quality
of Bt cotton, the weakness of Bt cotton wherein the
stalk breaks and the plant falls, unfavorable market
rates for Bt cotton and the fact that Bt cotton farming
is labor-intensive which increases the costs incurred by
the farmer,” said Kavitha Kuruganti, a Greenpeace
campaigner.
(Inter Press Service)
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