The BT cotton debate needs to be approached with an open mind, said Ananth Hegde Ashisara, Co-Chairperson of the Karnataka Bio-Diversity Board. Speaking at a day-long workshop titled ‘10 years of BT Cotton in Karnataka. Wither Other Cotton,’ Ashisara said that they were not against BT cotton but against the lack of an alternative argument. “At present as BT is still not a full-fledged technology, it is inappropriate and foolish on our part to abandon traditional farming practices to make way for it,” he said.

Minister of State for Environment and Forests Smt. Jayanthi Natarajan today revealed in Rajya Sabha that the State Governments of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Uttarakhand and Karnataka have informed that they have taken a decision to prohibit environmental release of all Genetically Modified seeds. She said currently field trials have been allowed only in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Recently Government of Rajasthan has conveyed its decision to withdraw the No Objection Certificate which was issued to Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants, University of Delhi for conduct of second season Biosafety Research Level trial with GM Mustard in their state.

Although the GM variety, officially allowed in 2002, sharply raised yields initially, productivity is now projected to decline amid signs of diminishing returns, according to a flagship paper presented by KR Kranthi, the director of the Central Cotton Research Institute, India’s ”Bt referral lab”.

New pests have emerged, repeated farming of Bt varieties has ravaged soils and farmers have been unable to pick the right variety from among 780 Bt hybrids, Kranthi’s points out. ”Currently the main issue... is stagnation of productivity at an average of 500 kg lint per hectare over the past seven years,” Kranthi has stated. Yields have simply leveled off, despite India’s Bt cotton acreage expanding from 5.6% in 2004 to 85% in 2010.

India’s Bt cotton dream is going terribly wrong. For the first time, farmer suicides, including those in 2011-12, have been linked to the declining performance of the much hyped genetically modified variety adopted by 90% of the country’s cotton-growers since being allowed a decade ago. Policymakers have hailed Bt cotton as a success story but a January 9 internal advisory, a copy of which is with HT, sent out to cotton-growing states by the agriculture ministry presents a grim scenario. ”Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton. The spate of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers,” says the advisory.

They may have lost their golden childhood, but a group of children rescued from being trafficked to neighbouring Gujarat for working in Bt cotton fields, now dream of a better, torture-free future. Anil, 14, who was lured into leaving his home three years ago to work in a cotton field in Gujarat, told PTI, ”Life was quite miserable there. Besides working hard for over 12 hours, we had to go through immense physical abuse on a regular basis.” ”I will never like any child to suffer this,” says Anil, who hails from a remote village in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district.

”Tomorrow, thousands of farmers and farmland widows shall protest in various towns and villages across Vidarbha against BT Cotton, which failed in 400,000 hectares since 2005 and in 4.20 million hectares this year,” Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti chief Kishor Tiwari told IANS. [...] Farmers will gather in two of the worst suicide-prone villages - Hiwara and Bothbudan - demanding suspension of all commercial trials of BT Cotton in the dry regions of the Vidarbha region of eastern Maharashtra and banning GM cotton in the country. ”Vidarbha is a classic example of a wrong selection of GM technology in dry regions since BT Cotton requires proper irrigation facilities that are lacking here,” Tiwari pointed out.

Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar told the Lok Sabha yesterday that the use of high quality hybrid cotton seeds had helped farmers make big gains due to reduced use of pesticides. At a time when India is passing through an agrarian crisis, this statement could have come as a glimmer of hope, except that Pawar’s own ministry seemed to think that the reverse was happening. According to the agriculture ministry’s reports, ICAR findings as recently as January 2012 proved that Bt cotton production in the last five years had declined whereas use of insecticide and pesticides had increased. Activists said the information given by Pawar was misleading.

The report by reputed geneticist and biosafety expert Jack A Heinemann has been submitted to the Minister of Environment and Forests, Jayanthi Natarajan, under whose charge GEAC functions. [...] His evaluation has vindicated once again the decision taken by Natarajan’s predecessor Jairam Ramesh in February 2010 to put on hold the commercial release of Mahyco’s Bt brinjal despite GEAC’s approval in 2009. Heinemann is the latest in a series of international scientists who have pointed out flaws in the Mahyco dossier on its EE-1 event.

The decision to deny approval of Bt brinjal was made by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. [...] Ramesh organized an unusually open consultation process — much more open than any other decision-making process I have ever seen on GMO’s. He solicited opinions from state governments, scientists, farmer organzations, and Indian NGO’s. He held open forums which were well attended; a lot of them are on Youtube and are pretty interesting viewing (Ramesh often challenges anti-GMO claims). Ramesh — who was moved to a different cabinet post soon after his decision — has provided a careful explanation of his decision.

Ten years after Bt cotton first made its appearance in India, the Coalition for GM-free India has demanded a comprehensive review of the policy. Releasing a report here titled “10 years of Bt Cotton in India: false hype and failed promises”, the Coalition demanded an immediate halt to the policy of promoting Bt cotton. “Examination of the data from the last 10 years negates the twin claims of dramatic yield increase and significant fall in pesticide usage. The report exposes the stagnant yields, pest resistance, new pests and disease attacks, the need for high levels of farm inputs and the spate of tragic farmer suicides in the cotton belt.”