India is forecast to gather a record 31 million bales in the year to September after farmers increased the use of genetically altered seeds, Commissioner Singh said. A bale weighs 170 kilograms (375 pounds). The U.S. will plant cotton on 9.19 million acres this year, the smallest in more than two decades and down 15 percent from the previous year, Tennessee-based Informa said last month. ”India is filling in the gap” created by reduced supplies from the U.S., Singh said.

Private companies make a kill by fleecing gullible farmers to the tune of Rs. 50 to Rs. 60 crore annually by selling ordinary and quite often spurious seed. The cotton seed which is sown in an extent of 3.5 lakh acres in the district is entirely sold by private companies at the rate of around Rs. 750 per packet. The companies sell an average of five lakh packets a year. Similarly, maize is sown in an extent of 1.5 lakh acres and each packet is sold at Rs. 300 and the chilly is sown in about 25,000 acres and one seed packet is prices at Rs. 3,000.

Bt. Cotton is the only genetically modified crop released for commercial cultivation in India by Genetic Engineering Approval Committee of Ministry of Environment & Forest. Bt. Cotton seed of 167 hybrids is produced and marked by 25 private seed companies at prices ranging from Rs. 750/- to Rs. 900/- per packet of 450 gms. The prices have been fixed by the Seed Industry in consultation with States. Cultivation of Bt. Cotton has increased from 29,073 hectare in 2002 to 3.37 million hectare in 2006. Production of cotton has increased from 86.24 lakh bales of 170 kg. each in 2002 to 226.96 lakh bales in 2006.

Early next year, Villoo Morawala-Patell, fou-nder and chairman of Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd (Avesthagen), will embark on a roadshow that will cover 100 cities and towns, even small ones, across India in an attempt to sell the company’s initial public offering (IPO) to investors. By doing this, she will be bucking two trends: one, of Indian biotech companies shunning the equity market; and two, of trying to get investors who understand only such things as revenues and cash flows buy into the economic benefits of research and development (R&D).

One outcome of the Indo-US deal on Agriculture appears to be the deregulation of the GM (genetically modified) foods sector. The Ministry of Environment and Forests has through a notification withdrawn the requirement that importers of GM foods must first take permission from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), India’s premier regulatory body in the sector of genetic engineering.

Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh has asked the Directorate-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to explain reports that imported genetically modified (GM) food products were entering Indian supermarkets and food chains unchecked. The move came after representatives of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) and the Greenpeace-India met him here on Wednesday and cautioned about food products imported into India with soya, corn, canola and cottonseed ingredients from GM-producing countries that have no provision for labelling GM products as different from non-GM products.

The cultivation of Bollgard II version of genetically modified cotton has been adopted across 12 lakh acres in the country, up from about two lakh acres in its first year of cultivation last year. And this second generation technology is expected to increasingly gain acceptance among farmers due to its improved yield and better control of pest-resistance, said a Monsanto representative.

Bringing to an end the controversy over the disclosure of bio-safety data on genetically modified (GM) food crops, the Central Information Commission (CIC) on Thursday directed the department to make the data for Bt brinjal public. The CIC set aside the seed company, Mahyco’s argument before the Commission that the disclosure of such data has significant commercial implications to the company. The CIC bench headed by its chairman, Wajahat Habibullah said ; ”any further grounds for non-disclosure are invalid even if the information is in the process of development”. It directed the CPIO and the department of biotechnology to provide the information within 10 working days. The appeal was filed by Divya Raghunandan of Greenpeace India on February 23, 2006 asking the toxicity, allergenicity and other relevant data for GM brinjal, rice, okra and mustar

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre on a petition challenging a notification that allows import of Genetically Modified (GM) processed food without any regulatory checks and exempts them from compulsory labelling, a move which is alleged to be against public interests. A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan sought response from the ministries of environment and forests, food and food processing industries and the Department of Science and Technology on a petition filed by Gene Campaign, the NGO opposed to commercialisation of GM crops without any check.

Study after study has shown the pitfalls of Bt cotton. Every second cotton farmer who committed suicide in Vidarbha was a Bt farmer. But biotech industry lobbyists, who take a stock market view of agriculture, wouldn’t know this since these figures are not reflected in the Sensex, says PV Satheesh. [...] It is probably not coincidental that the ISAAA, the biotech industry’s lobby organisation, which relentlessly and aggressively promotes genetically engineered crops all over the world, held its board meeting in Delhi last month and decided to take some selected Indian farmers to Europe to propagate Bt cotton to European farmers.