The National Biodiversity Authority, the country’s biodiversity-preservation watchdog, has finally woken up to its job. It has decided to prosecute multinational seed company Monsanto for allegedly using Indian brinjal varieties for commercial purposes without permission. The decision was taken in a vote at a meeting on February 28, 2012. The majority of the members voted in favour of initiating action against Monsanto for violating India’s biodiversity law. [...] The vote was essential as some board members of the NBA were against holding Monsanto to task, sources said.

Marking the global anti-GMO Week, over 500 women from the Deccan Development Society — communities from the mandals of Zaheerabad, Jharasangam, Raikode and Nyalkal — took out a procession at Zaheerabad against the government’s inaction on the spread of Bt cotton in Medak, 80 km from here. The women believe that Bt cotton is not only environmentally unsafe but is also wreaking havoc on farm economies. Farmers who are lured by Bt seed dealers with dreams of great returns are finding it to their dismay that even 50 per cent of the promised yields are not being realised.

Like many other state governments Rajasthan government also felt that unless the Central government decides on the fate of GM food crops such as BT Brinjal, on whose commercial release environment ministry issued a moratorium in 2010, the field trials may not be allowed. Most of the bigger states such as Bihar, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal had refused to give no-objection certificate for field trials. In the wake of ban, big bio-technology companies have not been left with many options to conduct field trials of genetically modified food crops such as tomato, cabbage and maize. The only viable option is Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh

Concerned over the fading away of traditional cotton seeds, city businessman Jaganath Shenoi, managing trustee of Smt D Ramabai Charitable Trust, on Friday pledged Rs 50 lakh for research to develop a new hybrid desi cotton seed by the University of Agricultural Sciences. In the first installment, he handed over a cheque of Rs 8.68 lakh to the varsity. For the five-year project, field trials will be conducted in different parts of the country including Mysore’s Heggadadevana Kote where there is intense cotton cultivation. The main aim is to propagate non-BT cotton hybrids and varieties having better performance. The seed will remain in public domain and be a gift to farmers, say stakeholders.

Biocon Ltd chairman and managing director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said India’s regulatory environment was the only factor holding back the country’s progress in biotechnology as the company opened a consolidated basic research centre in life sciences in Bangalore on Thursday. “The fact that you are not approving any GM crop after Bt cotton, or your aversion to clinical trials, tells you what is thought of the promise of biotechnology,” Mazumdar-Shaw said in an interview. “Sure, there will be criticism and concerns, just as it is there in Europe and elsewhere, but you have to learn to handle it. Other countries have learnt to handle it because they know what is important for the nation.”

For the first time, the State government filed cases of cheating and criminal breach of trust in 18 districts against Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco) for failing to deliver the promised quota of a single variety of Bt cotton seeds in the 2011 kharif season. Official sources said before sowing last year, Mahyco had accepted bookings from dealers and retailers for 16.76 lakh packets of MRC 7351 variety Bt cotton seeds but delivered only 9-10 per cent of what was assured. The company could only produce 9.88 lakh packets of this variety in the country. Of this [...] The seeds, priced at Rs. 930 per packet of 450 gm, sold in the black market for Rs. 1500 to Rs. 3000.

Amid reports of diminishing returns from cotton crop due to fall in prices and rising production cost despite Bt crops, farmers of Punjab have started leaning towards growing guar crop whose seed could fetch around Rs 23,000 per quintal price. “Cotton crop sowing has come down from about 5.6 lakh hectares to around 5 lakh hectares,” Punjab’s principal secretary of agriculture department Gurinderjit Singh Sandhu told The Times of India.

This has reference to a series of articles published in DNA in March 2012 quoting certain NGOs who blamed Bt-cotton as being responsible for crop failures and farmer suicides! These are false and totally baseless allegations deliberately intensified to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Bt-cotton on March 26 in an effort to negate its remarkable success in revolutionising cotton cultivation in our country. [...] farmers were honest in admitting that it was due to drought that their Bt-cotton crops failed, as also observed by the agriculture ministry, the report titled ‘Marathwada region beats Vidarbha in farmer deaths’ went on to provide statistics on farmer deaths and attributed such suicides to Bt-cotton! Further, the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti has mooted an immediate ban on GM crops. How can anyone hold Bt-cotton responsible for the failure of monsoons or lack of irrigation?

Bt cotton completed 10 years in India this week and Vidarbha farmers used the moment to raise their voice against the seed that once promised them gold. Instead, they cry, it has turned them into paupers. India commercialised its first transgenic crop, Bt cotton, in March 2002. [...] But in the impoverished belts of eastern Maharashtra, Bt technology started losing its sheen in 2005 as crops began to fail. [...| On the 10th anniversary of the introduction of this technology in India, as Punjab’s farmers return to organic farming, the Bt story seems to have come full circle.

The Indian arm of German-origin Bayer Cropscience was ordered to pay Rs 45 lakh to 164 farmers in Maharashtra’s Dhule district after one of its BT cotton hybrids failed. In Madhya Pradesh, the state’s consumer forum, which has the powers of a court, ordered Bayer Bio Science Private Limited to pay Rs 15,500 as compensation for each packet of BT cotton sold to 331 farmers.