"Indian farmers are clamouring for genetically-modified seeds"; so said India"s agriculture minister Agit Singh five years ago. If that indeed was the case then - which is open to dispute - much has changed since. [...] The only GM crop now being grown commercially might put a shirt on your back but is absolutely guaranteed not to alleviate hunger - it is cotton.

"Indian farmers are clamouring for genetically-modified seeds"; so said India"s agriculture minister Agit Singh five years ago. If that indeed was the case then - which is open to dispute - much has changed since. [...] The only GM crop now being grown commercially might put a shirt on your back but is absolutely guaranteed not to alleviate hunger - it is cotton.

DuPont India, subsidiary of the US-based $29 billion EI du Pont de Nemours, is setting up a research and development centre in Hyderabad at an investment of over Rs 100 crore. The DuPont Knowledge centre will focus on basic research, application development and other knowledge services including IP management. Hyderabad, emerging as a favourite research destination, houses R&D divisions of Motorola and Novartis. ”The centre will be the sixth major R&D centre of the company outside the US. We are looking at employing about 300 scientists at the centre and it will be fully operational in the second quarter of 2008,” said Balvinder Singh Kalsi, president, DuPont India.

The usage of Bt cotton has resulted in higher productivity and satisfaction levels, farmers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka continue to show poor awareness about it and thus resulting in lower cotton yield nationally, a survey has revealed. According to an IMRB survey, farmers using certified Bt cotton seeds showed higher levels of satisfaction with increased productivity expectations as opposed to those who used non-Bt seeds. Also, there is enough awareness on Bt cotton seeds in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

But as is so often the case, neither side’s explanation fully captures the situation on the ground. For that we must turn to a brilliant new paper by anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone, ”Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal,” from the February issue of Current Anthropology.

Since 2000, Stone has spent some 45 weeks doing field research on Warangal farmers’ cotton seed choice decision-making process. There is a granularity to his research, embedded in careful anthropological theory, that puts most conventional ”investigative reporting” to shame. And unlike so many commentators on the topic of genetic modification, he comes neither to promote nor condemn. His purpose is to understand.

A new study in the February issue of Current Anthropology explores how the arrival of genetically modified crops affects farmers in developing countries. Glenn Davis Stone (Washington University) studied the Warangal District of Andhra Pradesh in India, a key cotton growing area notorious for suicides by cotton farmers. In 2003 to 2005, market share of “Bt cotton” seeds rose from 12 percent to 62 percent in Warangal. Bt cotton is genetically modified to produce its own insecticide and has been claimed by its manufacturer as the fastest-adopted agricultural technology in history. [...] “Warangal cotton farming offers a case study in ‘agricultural deskilling’,” writes Stone. The seed fads had virtually no environmental basis, and farmers generally lacked recognition of what was actually being planted, a striking contrast to highly strategic seed selection processes in areas where technological change is learned and gradual.

The fully owned subsidiary of US biotech major Monsanto, Mahyco has been asked by the government to compensate cotton farmers for failure of Bt cotton in the current season, industry sources said here on January 07. The Bt cotton crop has failed in the major producing district of state, Dharampuri and farmers in the region has complained to the district collector and subsequently the agriculture officials.

Farmers continued rapid adoption of biotech crops around the globe in 2006 driving multiple adoption milestones for the technology-enhanced crops that produce greater yields of food, feed, fiber and fuel, according to an annual report released today by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). At the beginning of the second decade of biotech crop adoption, biotech crop area jumped 12 million hectares or 13 percent to reach 102 million hectares, breaking the 100 million- hectare mark for the first time and achieving the second highest growth in the past 5 years. Growth for the period 1996 to 2006 is equivalent to an unprecedented 60-fold increase, the highest adoption rate of any crop technology. Additionally, the number of farmers planting biotech crops surged past 10 million for the first time, to 10.3 million, from 8.5 million farmers in 2005.

In Asia, India has emerged as a leader in genetically modified (GM) crops by tripling its area under Bt cotton to 3.8 million hectare in 2006, surpassing China which remains at an area coverage of 3.5 million hectare, according to annual report prepared by the US-based International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). The report also said that India alongwith China, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa with a combined population of 2.6 billion (40% of the global population) grew 38.2 million hectare of GM crops in 2006, equivalent to 37% of the global total.

A quiet revolution is sweeping across the cotton fields of Vidarbha, notorious for its farmer suicides. The seeds — genetically modified — are being sown. ET travels to Ground Zero Kamthiwada is just another faceless village in Yavatmal district in Vidarbha, the heart of cotton country in Maharashtra, one of the many that dot the state. It is one of the 640 villages in the district that have repeatedly hit the headlines for the wrong reasons: a spate of farmer suicides. In the past one year alone, Yavatmal had seen 324 such cases, the highest in the state.