A relatively low-tech approach to managing pesticides promises to help hundreds of thousands of cotton farmers across Asia raise yields and reduce environmental contamination. Melbourne scientists are already collaborating with groups across Asia to combat the cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), an agricultural pest that causes five billion US dollars worth of crop damage each year and serious distress to farmers in countries like India.

”Gujarat’s farmers are not like those in other States. Our farmers drive Maruti cars,” Chief Minister Narendra Modi declares in his speeches at public meetings. However, the widows of farmers have a different story to tell. [...] Gujarat was considered the rare cotton-growing State that was immune to farmers’ suicides. Now inflation and the unsustainable commercial mode of cultivation have affected them too. ”Earlier, farmers only had to pay for seeds. Now, they pay for everything - tractor, power, water and labour. Farming has become more cost-intensive and less viable,” says Sudarshan Iyengar, Vice-Chancellor, Gujarat Vidyapith.

Cotton output in India is surging just a few years after it started growing genetically modified varieties. Now some are saying the country may have to shift that model to other crops if it is going to succeed in its quest for food security. Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, cotton, is the only genetically modified crop commercially grown in India. And the wide acceptance of Bt cotton has catapulted India into its new role as a major producer and exporter of raw cotton and textiles. Cotton production is on an upswing at a time when production of most food crops, including staples such as wheat and rice, has stagnated, leaving a supply gap for food that can be met only by high-priced imports.

The sustained and no-holds-barred campaign by Indian farmers against the ”backdoor and sly” move to introduce the genetically modified GM rice variety into the country, has resulted in the farmers in parts of Haryana and Tamil Nadu destroying the trial plots of GM rice. These experimental rice fields were being monitored by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) on behalf of the American agro-business outfit Monsanto.

In an intriguing development, three members of a Planning Commission taskforce on genetically modified organisms have dissociated themselves from the report submitted by the study group months after it was released. The report had castigated existing GM regulatory authorities and rules, as TOI had reported earlier. But, in an odd coincidence, the letter, though shot off more than two months after the report was made public, was sent on the same day - April 11, 2007 - when the three members and other taskforce members received an e-mail request from a pro-GM group. The e-mail warned that the report could be used to support a certain argument in an ongoing Supreme Court case where an argument has been made out by a petitioner against GM trials in India.

Chairperson of the Planning Commission’s Task Force on Agro-biodiversity and Genetically Engineered Organisms and founder of Gene Campaign, Suman Sahai has been advocating for farmers’ rights and against the dangers of genetically-modified (GM) crops for more than a decade. One of India’s foremost agro-economists, Sahai feels the country should avoid buying expensive gm seeds from global monopolistic corporations when it has the resources to develop indigenous technology. What is required, she told Harsha Baruah and Swati Mongia, is to develop a methodology to solve problems at an affordable cost and increased agricultural research.

stry convention lauds subcontinent market

BOSTON — India’s mushrooming biotech industry is poised to become one of the driving forces behind the country’s torrid economic growth in the near future, according to a panel of Indian biotech industry executives and government officials who convened May 7 at the BIO 2007 International Convention in Boston. But the group also concluded that India’s biotech elephant won’t grow to its full potential unless it can lure more foreign investors and partnerships to the country.

The total area under cotton in India, the world’s third largest producer, may see little change in 2007/08, but genetically modified varieties would account for half of it, a trade body official said on Tuesday. Kishorilal Jhunjhunwala, president of the East India Cotton Association, told Reuters the crop had covered 9.1 million hectares in 2006/07, with good yield and prices. Thus, farmers would have little incentive to shift to any other crop now. ”Any kind of change in area will not be more than 5 percent down,” he told Reuters over the telephone.

In what could be an important breakthrough in agro-technology, scientists at the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) have been able to apply apomixis—a technique to develop cotton hybrids that behave virtually as varieties—enabling the farmers to replicate the seeds themselves. It promises an end to the costly hybrid bargain for cotton farmers before every sowing season, and if everything goes well, farmers using other crops will also benefit.

In the orders passed after the May 8th hearing in the GMOs PIL filed by Aruna Rodrigues and three others, the Supreme Court of India clearly upheld once again the importance of biosafety when it comes to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The Union of India applied for a vacation of the Court’s orders in September 2006 which directed the GEAC (Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, the apex regulatory authority in India) ”to withhold (any) approvals till further directions are issued”. [...] All in all, despite some misleading and gloating headlines and editorials in several newspapers, the biotech industry and the GM regulators have an uphill task ahead in the coming year, having the Supreme Court, the state governments and various political parties holding them accountable, unlike in the past.