Taking strong exception to the recent statement of agriculture director Dr Aurobindo Padhi that Bt cotton is necessary to boost the production of cotton in Orissa. Living farms, spearheading anti-Bt cotton campaign today said that Bt technology is never meant to boost yields but to introduce the Cry1Ac gene to transfer the toxicity of Bt to the plant itself to try and control pests.

In an effort to create a level playing field among biotech companies developing genetically modified (GM) seeds, the government plans to set up a new research facility which will enable smaller firms to outsource field trials. [...] Accordingly, the department of biotechnology and a Hyderabad-based non-profit, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (Icrisat), will form an organization that will act as a so-called single-window service provider to undertake trials on a contract basis and walk companies through the process.

The MNC’s seed partner doesn’t want details of its safety test in the public domain. A case filed in the Delhi High Court will decide the fate of exclusive data shared by companies with the government. Companies, especially those in the pharmaceutical and agri-chemicals businesses, don’t want such data to be made public in order to protect their commercial interests.

Accusing Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) of ’carrying on research upon the diktats of US-based Monsanto’, farmers and environmental organisations on Friday staged protests at the field trial sites of Genetically Engineered brinjal within the campus. More than 100 activists of Greenpeace, ’Pasumai Thaayagam’, the green wing of PMK, and Tamil Nadu Agriculture Protestion Committee, along with a several farmers marched to the site holding placards and banners and raised slogans demanding stoppage of all GE field trials. They alleged that the University was being ”converted into a property of Monsanto”.

Bt cotton was introduced in India in 2002 and has found favour with the government as well as Cotton Association of India, which attributed increased output this year to higher productivity of Bt cotton. [...] However, Krishan Bir Choudhary, president of Bharatiya Krishak Samaj and former director, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed), junked the claim. ”The rainfall was better. Wherever crops receive enough water, production has been good, and not just for cotton. The Bt gene is meant to prevent bollworm pest and does not boost productivity at all,” said Choudhary.

Yothi Ramulla Naga is 4 feet tall. From sunup to sundown she is hunched over in the fields of a cottonseed farm in southern India, earning 20 cents an hour. Farmers in the Uyyalawada region process high-tech cottonseeds genetically engineered to contain a natural pesticide, on behalf of U.S. agriculture giant Monsanto. [...] U.S.

At the edge of where Jyothi is working, a rusting sign proclaims, ”Monsanto India Limited Child Labour Free Fields.” Jyothi says she has been working in these fields for the past five years, since her father, a cotton farmer, committed suicide after incurring huge debts.

India is likely to grow genetically modified (GM) cotton on 80 percent of its total cultivated area under the fibre in the next 2-3 years, a global research body said on Monday. The country, the world’s second-biggest cotton producer, hopes to produce a record output of 31 million bales (1 bale = 170 kg) in the crop year to September as farmers plant more transgenic seeds. Indian farmers, who grow cotton on an average 9.06 million hectares, produced 28 million bales last year.

India finds itself increasingly on the defensive in agricultural trade for permitting field trials across the country in a host of genetically modified (GM) food crops — rice, brinjal, okra, potato, tomato and groundnuts — and thereby exposing conventional crops to the risk of transgenic contamination. A case in point is a rather dodgy no-contamination certificate that the regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), was forced to give two months ago in response to a restriction imposed by Russia on import of rice, groundnuts and sesame seeds from India.

On Wednesday the apex court bench consisting of Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan, Justice RV Ravindran and Justice JM Panchal vacated the ban order and allowed the GEAC to approve new GM crops and events for field trials. It said that GEAC should put in place proper guidelines and biosafety norms. While passing the order the apex court, however, asked the GEAC to invite eminent scientists like the founder director of the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Pushp M Bhargava and MS Swaminathan as invities in the meetings for approval of GM crops.

The ISAAA chair, Clive James said, ”Biotech crops has the potentiality to play a role in food, feed and fibre security, contributing to poverty alleviation and hunger, reducing environmental footprints in agriculture, mitigating climate change and contributing to cost-effective bio-fuels.”