Now the government has enough reasons to ban the climate sensitive Gm cotton crop. Without wasting much time it should ban it, bringing happiness to the farmers that have been forced to commit suicides due to regular crop failures. IT IS official that dry land cotton farmers who opted for Bt, cotton in 40 lakh hectares are likely to lose Rs. 10,000 crores as per initial estimate of crop failure by Maharashtra administration, a farmer advocacy group has alleged.

New Delhi India’s claim of having developed its own Bt cotton (genetically modified) variety has taken an embarrassing turn with an RTI inquiry by two scientists revealing how the University of Agriculture Sciences at Dharwad went ahead — brushing aside all precautions — to produce an indigenous variety working on a gene originally patented by Monsanto.

In what is being described as major boon the state’s farmers, cotton export from Gujarat this year is likely to break all past records. [...] Gujarat will export nearly 75-80 per cent of the cotton produced in the country as a whole. [...] “Most of the export from Gujarat - nearly 90 per cent - will go to China. It is mainly the best variety Bt cotton, of Shankar variety, with 28-30 mm staple.” [...] Higher exports are likely despite the fact that farmers are unable to get a good price for their commodity. This year, the Government of India fixed the minimum support price for cotton at Rs 3,300 per quintal, and the farmers are unable to get more than Rs 3,500 per quintal. This is against Rs 6,500 to Rs 7,000 per quintal they got a year ago.

The country is reeling under a power crisis. Villages go without electricity for long hours. Yet, there is opposition to nuclear power and all the explanations of expert scientists do not seem to carry conviction. Even if a disaster like Fukushima were to happen, would it not be insignificant compared to the huge loss in terms of men and material, which the country is suffering due to a lack of adequate power generation? [...] If Bt rice with balanced protein and micronutrients were to be available, it would revolutionalise the health of millions of children in the mid-day meal programme. Why cannot organic farming, traditional practices, marker-assisted breeding and GM crops co-exist?

The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, proposed to be put up to Parliament, claims to take care of the deficiencies in the existing system of approval of genetically modified crops. As it turns out, the Bill is unconstitutional, unethical, unscientific, self-contradictory, and not people-oriented. It suffers from greater flaws and deficiencies than the present system. If passed, it will seriously and adversely affect agriculture, health of humans and animals, and the environment, causing unparalleled harm.

It has been over two months since the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee gave its approval to 16 companies and research institutions to conduct open air/field trials on 13 crops and 38 Genetically Modified Organisms in Karnataka. The trials are pending State government’s nod. The government, which had earlier declared that it would not allow GM field trials, has not made its stand clear on whether it will give permission for these field trials.

Biotechnology and its regulation are both aspects of science and so the Ministry of Science and Technology is the right ministry to handle it. But even so the ministry does not control BRAI’s functioning. Earlier all scientific regulation was with the Regulatory Committee for Genetic Modification of the Department of Biotechnology that is under MoST. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee was under the Ministry of Environment & Forests because the primary function of the GEAC is to ensure environmental safety. Nevertheless, the GEAC overstepped its mandate and interfered with all aspects. GEAC is a statutory body and the Minister has no business to interfere like Jaiaram Ramesh (former minister of environment and forests) did. It is absurd to project MoEF as more honest than MoST.

“According to information available with ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research), research related to genetic modification is currently being carried out in 72 crops/plant species,” Minister of State for Agriculture Harish Rawat said in a written reply to Lok Sabha. GM research is being carried in cotton, soyabean, rice, maize, wheat, sorghum, potato, brinjal, tomato, sugarcane, castor, blackgram, sunflower, jute, coffee, mustard, onion, ginger, tobacco, and chilli, among others, he added. “The traits being examined in these crop plants are abiotic and biotic stresses resistance, nutritional quality improvement, yield improvement etc,” the minister said.

Shortage of farm labour triggered by migration and social welfare schemes such as National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is resulting in increasing usage of herbicides in the country. Also the rising labour wage component in the total cost of cultivation is aiding such a trend. Companies including Monsanto India, Dhanuka Agritech, Excel Crop Care Ltd and state-run Hindustan Insecticides Ltd (HIL) have seen a rise in herbicide sales in the past couple of years.

Traditional (desi) and conventional cotton seeds are not available for sale in India. The dealers are selling only Bt cotton seeds to farmers, at the behest of seed multinationals. The big seed companies and government agencies are no longer producing conventional cotton seeds. Very few farmers have farm saved seeds of conventional varieties of cotton. As a result the area under Bt. cotton is targeted to be around 95.04 lakh (9.50 million) hectare for the year 2011-12, according to official sources