Last week we circulated news of an important new study, looking at how farmers in developing countries may be affected by the arrival of GM crops.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7490

The new study looks in particular at the reasons for rapid Bt cotton adoption in India, based on a study of the behaviour of cotton farmers in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh.

The study is available as a pdf file online. Here's the link and citation:

Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal by Glenn Davis Stone
Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 1, February 2007 67 http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/research/stone480102.web.pdf

Monsato has claimed the rapid spread of GM cotton is result of farmer experimentation and management skill. But Stone's multiyear study of Warangal cotton farmers shows something very different. He argues that, rather than a case of careful assessment and adoption, Warangal is plagued by cotton seed fads and that these fads can be exploited to encoyurage rapid crop adoption. Stone also suggests there is no convincing evidence to date that GM cotton is a success in India.

We strongly recommend reading the paper as a whole. The following are just fairly arbitrary excerpts from Stone's paper - some from footnotes:

In her history of maize breeding in the United States, Fitzgerald (1993) argued that adoption of hybrids led to "deskilling" of American farmers, turning farmers into passive customers of seed firms. Within a few years of the spread of hybrid corn, farmers who had previously been developing landraces and collaborating with public-sector breeders were told, "You may not know which strain to order. Just order FUNK'S HYBRID CORN. We will supply you with the hybrid best adapted to your locality" (Funk Bros. 1936 Seed Catalog, quoted in Fitzgerald 1993, 339).

"Like the adoption of any new technology, people planted it [genetically modified cotton] on smaller acres initially, but the ever-increasing Bollgard plantings demonstrate that the Indian farmer is willing to embrace a technology that delivers consistent benefits in terms of reduced pesticide use and increased income. Clearly the steadily increasing Bollgard acres being planted by increasing numbers of Indian farmers bear testimony to the success of this technology and the benefit that farmers derive from it." - Ranjana Smetacek, Director of Corporate Affairs for India, Monsanto

Producers of Bt cotton have been quick to attribute its adoption to farmer wisdom based purely on environmental learning. Monsanto cites small-plot experimentation, consistent results, and the development of "faith in the seed" (BBC 2005); the biotech industry's public relations consortium explains the Indian adoptions as a response to doubling in yield gains (CBI 2005). Pro-industry agricultural leaders such as P. Chengal Reddy insist that "we should leave the choice of selecting modern agricultural technologies to the wisdom of Indian farmers" (Pinstrup-Anderson and Schioler 2001, 108). Government officials such as the Andhra Pradesh agriculture minister stress the need to "let the farmers finally decide on the usefulness of Bt cotton. Farmers are wise enough to adopt anything good and discard things that do not work." (Venkateswarlu 2002).

The industry-supported International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications reported yield increases of 90% on test plots in India, although the source was only a personal communication (James 2002, 137). Mahyco-Monsanto's press releases reported on their own studies showing large boosts in yields coupled with lower pesticide costs in 2002, resulting in extraordinary increases in profits (Mahyco-Monsanto 2002). For 2003 the firms commissioned a study of cotton farmers in five states which again showed higher average yields and lower pesticide costs (Krishnakumar 2004; Mahyco-Monsanto 2004).

The few refereed studies on the performance of Bt cotton in India have had a variety of limitations and problems. Qaim and Zilberman 2002 analyzed 2001 test plot data supplied by Mahyco-Monsanto, showing that the Bt seeds gave an astonishing 80% yield increase. The article has been heralded by biotechnology companies (e.g., MonsantoIndia 2003), but its extrapolations set off a "firestorm" (Herring 2005a; Scoones 2003). It has been pointed out that 2001 was an unusually bad year for bollworm outbreaks, exaggerating the value of Bt (Herring 2005b), and that the source of the data was suspect. Even defenders of genetically modified crops complained that the study "used selective data sets from just one season when they had access to five years worth of data sets. . . This kind of astonishing yield increase due to a single gene trait was never going to be true" (Shantharam 2005).

At present the only safe conclusions seem to be that "an urgent need is obvious for further rigorous scientific evaluation of Bt cotton in India before deciding its further promotion" (Arunachalam 2004) and that this further research needs to address the enormous variation in the impact of Bt cotton (Qaim et al. 2006). A recent study of eight Bt cottons in test plots by India's Central Institute for Cotton Research showed that, although the gene construct was the same, Bt effectiveness varied markedly among hybrids; expression was also highly seasonal and imperfectly matched to the seasonality of Indian bollworms (Kranthi et al. 2005).

Go to a Print friendly Page

Email this Article to a Friend

Back to the Archive