1.India warned over GM rice crops - BBC
2.Indian Supreme Court bans GM crop trials - SciDev.Net
3.Haryana to probe burning of GM crops - Indo Asian News Service
4.New rice farming system promises wonders - Financial Express
5.It's About Besting Pests - Indian Express
EXTRACT: Officials from the country's top rice traders' body joined forces with a prominent farmers' union and the environmental campaigning group, Greenpeace, to criticise the government's policy at a press conference in Delhi. (item 1)
---
1.India warned over GM rice crops
By Jyotsna Singh
BBC News, Delhi, 31 October 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6103700.st
Rice traders and environmentalists have issued a stark warning to the Indian government at a meeting in Delhi.
They said that trials of genetically modified (GM) rice may harm exports and jeopardise the livelihoods of millions of poor farmers.
The campaigners say that they are concerned that commercial rice crops could become contaminated by GM strains which will affect overseas sales.
They say that could lead to restrictions on Indian crops abroad.
'Grave concern'
India is one of the world's largest exporters of the long grained, aromatic Basmati rice.
Small scale trials of GM strains have been carried out at 10 locations across the country since 2005.
The government allowed the trials to go ahead despite protests over trials in other GM foods such as mustard and brinjal (aubergine).
Last month however the Supreme Court suspended fresh tests on all crops pending a further court hearing.
Feelings 'running high'
Officials from the country's top rice traders' body joined forces with a prominent farmers' union and the environmental campaigning group, Greenpeace, to criticise the government's policy at a press conference in Delhi.
They urged the government to ensure that Indian rice remained GM-free.
The President of the All India Exporters' Association, Anil Adhlakha, said the trials were a matter of grave concern.
Feelings are running high on the issue.
On Saturday, nearly 400 protesting farmers set fire to a farm in the state of Haryana where tests for GM rice were being carried out.
Farmers' unions say Indian rice fetches a good price in the export market.
They insist any rejection or doubt of the GM-free status of Indian rice in the global market could threaten their trade.
They point to the European Union's decision to impose compulsory testing on all shipments of long grain rice from the US, after commercial supplies were found to be contaminated with GM strains.
---
2.Indian Supreme Court bans GM crop trials
M. Sreelata SciDev.Net, 31 October 2006
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=3186&language=1
[New Delhi] The Supreme Court of India last month banned any new field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops in the country to allow it to examine potential conflicts of interest in the approval mechanism.
The court's decision followed a public interest petition filed in May 2005 by four activists that requested the ban, saying that India's biosafety protocols are a serious threat to public health and the environment.
According to the petitioners' lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, the petition mainly argues that field trials should only be allowed once comprehensive, scientific, reliable and transparent biosafety tests have been carried out.
He said that the current practice in India is to allow field trials to precede [without] such rigorous biosafety testing, leading to irreversible contamination. This is compounded by absent or lax monitoring and accountability mechanisms.
The case follows campaigns by civil society organisations over the safety of field trials of the country's first transgenic food crop, Bt brinjal - a vegetable also known as aubergine or eggplant genetically modified to resist insect pests.
These protests forced the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) - whose prior permission is needed for GM trials - to form a panel of experts to give a final decision on the trials.
But the panel, as well as the GEAC itself, was criticised by civil society groups for not being sufficiently independent.
The petitioners in the hearing last month recommended five independent experts to be added to the GEAC, but the government refused.
The court has asked the government to respond within two weeks, putting its objections on record, and suggesting any other names from the government's side whose credentials must be verified.
In a subsequent hearing on 12 October the court sustained the ban, but gave permission for a limited field trial of GM mustard.
"The unfolding of the case so far clearly indicates that the court has taken on board the main arguments of the petition,'' says Kavitha Karuganti of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture in Secunderabad, one of the groups which has raised questions about the safety of GM crops.
The GEAC has already approved a number of field trials for a new variety of GM cotton that has escaped the scope of the court ban.
The activists who filed the petition are Aruna Rodrigues, economist consultant at Sunray Harvesters; Rajeev Baruah, managing director at Maikaal bioRe; PV Satheesh, director of the Deccan Development Society; and Devinder Sharma, agricultural scientist and writer.
---
3.Haryana to probe burning of GM crops
Indo Asian News Service
Chandigarh, Punjab, India, 31 October 2006 http://www.indiaprwire.com/businessnews/20061031/5055.htm
The Haryana government Tuesday announced that it will inquire into the burning of genetically modified (GM) crops by protesting farmers near Karnal city.
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the incident of burning of the GM crops was unfortunate and it will be probed.
A group of farmers belonging to the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Monday destroyed crops in a scientific farm at Raitpur village in Karnal district, about 100 km from here. They were opposing the field trial of the GM crops by Mahyco Company, the distributor of GM seeds.
The farmers said multinational companies were trying to destroy Indian seeds by bringing in GM seeds.
---
4.New rice farming system promises wonders
ASHOK B SHARMA Financial Express, October 30 2006
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=144897
In China, India, Peru and Sri Lanka, the system for rice intensification provided an average yield of around 15 tonne per hectare
NEW DELHI, OCT 29: Several efforts are on for increasing production of world’s major staple crop, rice, in a cost-effective manner. Conservation of natural resources and improvement in soil health are vital for boosting crop production on a sustainable basis.
One such model developed is the system for rice intensification (SRI), developed by Fr Henri de Laulanie in 1980s in Madagascar. "SRI offers unprecedented opportunities for improving rice production in a variety of situations around the world, not just by increments but even by multiples", says Norman Uphoff of the Cornell International Institute for Food Agriculture and Development.
Uphoff was recently in New Delhi to attend the 2nd International Rice Congress.
Explaining the success of SRI, Uphoff says than in less than 5 years ago, it was known and practiced only in Madagascar. Today, there are successful results from 18 other countries, including India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Gambia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, The Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Peru, Benin, Guinea, Laos and Thailand.
According to Uphoff, the average yield of rice under SRI reported 7 to 8 tonne per heactare, which is much higher than the average yield under conventional chemical agriculture. In China, India, Peru and Sri Lanka, the reported average yield was around 15 tonne per hectare. India’s rice productivity is around 2 tonne per hectare.
In India, SRI was first introduced in Andhra Pradesh in 2003 by the state agriculture university with 10,000 farmers. The achievements were an increase in 50% to 100% increase in yield, using less water and lowering input costs. SRI was found to be effective in all 22 districts of the state on widely varying soils. SRI is expected to spread to the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu and also in Karnataka and Maharashtra in the next season.
A number of NGOs have become stakeholders in the process, as the system is close to organic farming. In Andhra Pradesh, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) which is involved in the non-pesticidal management (NPM) practices in agriculture have offered to support SRI.
CSA believes that NPM in agriculture as evolved by the former director of the Central Tobacco Research Institute, MS Chari, can be coupled with SRI to give better results.
"This practice elicit more productive phenotypes from existing rice genomes, whether high-yielding varieties, hybrids or traditional landraces. SRI practice promotes greater root growth that is easily verifiable and improve soil biological activity. It does not depend upon external inputs. Instead, it increases the productivity of the land, labour, water and capital devoted to irrigated rice production by capitalising on existing genetic potentials and by better biological processes, particularly in the soil," says Uphoff.
SRI has three basic concepts —transplantation of seedlings while young (less than 15 days), maintaining wide spacing between plants and keeping the soil both moist and aerated at least during the vegetative growth period. Frequent weeding with a rotating hoe that aerates the soil while it prevents weed growth, should be practiced. Small amount of water should be applied daily, or alternate flooding and drying for 3 to 6 days, should be done and organic manure should be applied.
Uphoff lists a number of gains from SRI like greater root growth, increased grain filling, higher grain quality and greater grain weight, water saving, less lodging, fewer pest and disease attacks, seed savings, no need for chemical fertiliserss, lower costs of production, increased factor productivity, increased income for farmers and reduced risks.
---
5.It's About Besting Pests
Vivek Deshpande
Indian Express, October 30 2006
http://www.agbios.com/main.php?action=ShowNewsItem&id=7956
WARDHA - Kishore Wakde of Raifuli village is an odd man out in this suicide-affected district of Vidarbha’s cotton belt. He is a happy farmer. Ask him the secret of his happiness. "It's due to aram," he says. He actually means IRM (Integrated Resistance Management), but the native expression delivers the right meaning. "This year, I didn't use insecticides and saved nearly Rs 9,000," says Wakde, showing off the healthy cotton crop in his 13-acre farm. "Despite excessive rains this year, I am still hoping to get at least 5 quintals per acre."
Rambhau Kakpure and Suryabhan Muzbaile from Karanji Kanji, and Ritesh Mangekar from Sirasgaon have a similar story to tell. Over 2,000 farmers from 68 villages in the district have come out of the insecticide trap, one of the major reasons for the spree of suicides in the cotton belt.
Across the country, over 95,000 farmers from 1,010 villages are now benefiting from the IRM technique in terms of drastic reduction in their expenditure and better crop protection. It is also helping in recreation of the right eco-system around the cotton crop. Leading the effort in Wardha and Yavatmal is Atul Sharma, project officer of Community Polytechnic, a Gandhian institution. Sharma has been spreading the IRM message to scores of villages in the district. A technological response developed after 10 years of research by the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) here to the devastation caused by indiscriminate use of insecticides, IRM is an eco-friendly way of pest control by encouraging natural enemies of cotton pests to proliferate. It prescribes least use of select insecticides and on the right time.
Since 1997, when IRM was first started at village Rohana in Nagpur district, CICR has been playing a pivotal role in extending the concept to over 28 cotton-producing districts in the country by training field workers from villages and holding farmers’ congregations.
"About 55 pc of the total insecticide used in the country has been on cotton and is grown only on 5 per cent of the total cultivable area. Farmers spent on an average 50 per cent of their total budget on pesticides. In Wardha, it goes up to 80 per cent," says Dr Keshav Kranthi, CICR Deputy Director and a decorated scientist credited with development of fake Bt detection kit and resistance detection kits for farmers. "Over the years, early application of pesticides from organophosphate category destroyed the naturally-occurring biological control beyond redemption. That has seen the unchallenged reign of monsters like cotton bollworm. Allowing the natural enemies to survive and multiply by avoiding the use of insecticides and judiciously using the right pesticides to control the pests harmful to cotton is what the IRM is all about," he says.
Integrated Pest Management was the name of the game before IRM was brought to the fore. Under it, biological agents were developed in lab and were given to farmers for pest control. "It prescribed initial application of organophosphate insecticides, followed by application of biological agents like neem extract, trichogramma and Bt spray. IPM was successfully demonstrated for about a decade, but proved unsustainable due to sparse availability and inconsistent performance of the bio-agents. Harmful cotton pests had developed resistance to pesticides. All this led to the need for a new thinking and eventually led to development of IRM," says Kranthi. And the IRM results are wonderful in Wardha. Farmers now can identify both harmful cotton pests and their natural enemies. "Earlier, we used to spray insecticides as soon as we saw any type of pest. Now, we know which pest has to live and which to die," says Gajanan Thakre of Kapsi village.
This year, many of them haven't used insecticide at all. And everyone speaks of having saved at least Rs 1,000 per acre on insecticide count.
Go to a Print friendly Page
Email this Article to a Friend
Back to the Archive
|
