Bt cotton row continues / Links for new report (21/9/2005) | |
1."TRUE STORIES OF FARMERS WHO HAVE SOWN BT COTTON"! COMMENT & IMPORTANT LINKS In item 2 the executive chairman of the farmers' federation Bharat Krishak Samaj (BKS), Dr Krishan Bir Choudhary, emphasises the need for compensation for farmers for crop failure with biotech crops. It was Monsanto's refusal to stick to an agreed Memorandum of Understanding on this issue and an alleged attempt to fix the figures, that got the company slung out of Andhra Pradesh (item 1). India's farmers also deserve compensation for all the lies they've been fed as part of the aggressive marketing of GM crops in India. The new report on that marketing campaign can now be downloaded online: http://www.greenpeace.org/india/press/reports/marketing-of-bt-cotton-in-indi 1."TRUE STORIES OF FARMERS WHO HAVE SOWN BT COTTON"! The Monitoring and Evaluation Committee has been touring the countryside in six Bt cotton states and reports back shocking instances of unethical advertising and trade practices. Forget retribution, this company is so sure that our pusillanimous state will not react, it now blatantly puts an address to a panwallah's claim of a bumper Bt harvest. Talk about chuna lagana! Kar lo jo karna hai. So will the Government of India dare? In Maharastra, [Bollywood star] Nana Patekar endorses the Bollgard brand and extracts a price but in Punjab who needs a star when you have the Chief Minister and all the administrative machinery and the agriculture extension system working for you? For free. Monsanto is blatant because it got Punjab Chief Minister Amrinder Singh to personally endorse the Bollgard brand. It works like this. Each time Markfed, the Punjab state agriculture marketing machine promotes Bollgard, your tax money foots the bill for the advertising which has Capt. Amrinder Singh as popular mascot. The desperate farmer pays dearly for Bt seeds he shouldn't be buying which his Chief Minister has no business pedalling. The company, of course, keeps the profits. Public investments made for private profit. The real meaning of public-private partnership finally visits us. At the beginning of this season, Mr Palanisamy of Salem, Tamil Nadu was approached by a company representative to register for a contest that could take him to Mumbai. That is when the company took a picture of Mr Palanisamy in front of a tractor. Investigations by MEC revealed that he had acquired it on a personal loan and was still paying it off! Palaniswamy says "with the yields that I get from Bt Cotton, I would not be able to buy even two tractor tyres"! This is part of a Monsanto poster series that reveals "TRUE STORIES OF FARMERS WHO HAVE SOWN BT COTTON"! Three months ago the agriculture minister in Andhra Pradesh called Monsanto a bad corporate citizen and threw it out. The state was singed when the irresponsible corporate had refused to honour the MoU it had signed regarding the performance of its BT cottonseeds. Monsanto had also fudged data when its Bt cotton crop was a spectacular failure. For a moment its true ugly and evil face was revealed. That alone should have cautioned our elected representatives in other cotton growing states. Instead of framing a MoU to safeguard the interest of the small farmer in the eventuality of a crop failure they are endorsing, abetting and conspiring against their own citizens. With Pied piper Monsanto you can never tell. Never mind the performance of crop: Heads they win. Tails they win. And Chief Ministers do their bidding. Read the related Press Release See the Slideshow on Bt aggression 2.Move for draft of biotech policy draws flak |