India Ratings, a Fitch Group company, has downgraded India's leading hybrid seed producer and retailer Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) due to a recent ban imposed by the government of Maharashtra. The rating has been lowered to ”negative” from ”stable” earlier. The outlook revision reflects India Ratings' view that continuation and possible proliferation of regulatory road blocks may disrupt Mahyco's revenue cycle and pressurize its operating profitability, which in turn could negatively impact its credit profile.

If you think the debate over genetically modified crops has ended with Union minister Jairam Ramesh settling for a two-year moratorium on the commercial release of Bt-Brinjal, Dr Pushpa Bhargava has some shocking facts for you. According to Bhargava, who's considered as the father of genetic engineering in India, the battle is far from over since GM products, mostly from the US, are flooding markets of big cities like Kolkata through big food chains. Bhargava, who spoke on the agrarian crisis and GM crops at an event organized by the Forum Against Monopolistic Aggression on Thursday, pointed out that 70% of imported food products are genetically modified in the USA. But unfortunately, there is not a single laboratory in India to test GM food products.

Even as farmers in Vidarbha continue to kill themselves, experts fear an agrarian crisis is sprouting in the farmlands of Beed district. Cotton cultivation in the district has seen a steep rise, which agriculturists say, may not be in the best interests of farmers. Between 2004 and 2011, drought-stricken Beed in Marathwada recorded a 104% increase in area under cotton cultivation. For the same period, the area under rabi Jowar — Beed's dominant crop — fell 41%. The area under cotton went from 1.61 lakh hectares to 3.31 lakh hectares in seven years, while area under jowar reduced from 2.60 lakh hectares to 1.53 lakh hectares, according to data official data.

In a major setback to the proponents of genetically modified technology in farm crops, the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture on Thursday asked the government to stop all field trials and sought a bar on GM food crops (such as Bt. brinjal). The committee report, tabled in the Lok Sabha, demanded a ”thorough probe” into how permission was given to commercialise Bt. brinjal seed when all evaluation tests were not carried out. It said there were indications of a ”collusion of the worst kind from the beginning till the imposition of a moratorium on its commercialisation in February, 2010, by the then Minister for Environment and Forests.”

Confirming the widespread doubts in the Indian farming community about the efficiency of genetically modified cotton seeds, the Maharashtra government has banned the sale and distribution of Bt cotton seeds by a US multinational giant. The state announced its decision after Mahyco, the Maharashtra-based partner of the Monsanto group, failed its appeal against a show-cause notice. The company was served a notice over allegations of hoarding and over-pricing. Mahyco accounts for 5% of the total demand of 165 lakh seed packets supplied to farmers annually.

Admitting for the first time that genetically modified cotton may have had an adverse impact on the state's farming community, the Maharashtra government has ordered a socio-economic study of the Bacillus thuringiensis cotton by the country's leading independent institutes. The survey will be carried out by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Instituteof Rural Management, Anand, and a report will be submitted to the state government in three months. ”Our system has failed to live up to the expectations of the farming community, which has suffered because of the introduction of a series of policy and technology measures in the past. It is time we studied what has led to a state's agrarian problems resulting from Bt,” said agriculture minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil.

The Government's move to allow duty-free imports of soyameal for livestock feed has not gone down well with the green brigade. Environmentalists fear such imports could result in genetically modified material landing up in the food chain, as most of the soyameal produced overseas is of the GM variety. [...] ”Given that most soya in the world is now GM, the oilmeal will be genetically modified. It is not in the jurisdiction of the EGoM to make this decision,” said Vandana Shiva, noted environmentalist. ”This decision needs to be made by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee. And the Supreme Court has set up a high-level technical committee to which I have made submissions to elaborate the full bio-safety testing. The EGoM decision is thus ultra vires,” she said.

Though studies after studies are being brought out by the biotech proponents and industry, claiming that they have findings to show that Bt technology has improved cotton yields in India, and therefore net returns of farmers (increase that more than makes up for the increased cost of cultivation, is the claim) and from those net returns, everything from women's empowerment to better quality education is being claimed, nobody has been able to give a convincing answer to a fairly common sensical question, based on something that everyone accepts – that bollworm incidence itself has been low since 2002 – if pest pressure is low, how did the Bt technology end up contributing to yield increases?

Maharashtra Agriculture Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil wants Bt cotton companies to tie up with agriculture universities in the state and pump money into research to find an alternative to itself. Companies that refuse to cooperate will be banned, Vikhe-Patil said. ”I had my serious reservations about Bt even in 1999. It hasn't helped dry-land farmers, like those in Vidarbha. It takes care of only bollworm. But farmers still have to use pesticides for other pests like reddening of leaves (lalya),” the minister told The Indian Express. ”There is a clear mismatch between promised and actual benefits, especially in input costs and productivity.”

Genetically Modified mosquitoes could soon be unleashed in the country to control the population of their own dengue and chikungunya virus transmitting species. British company, Oxitec, which developed the technology, partnered with a company in the country to test and evaluate GM mosquitoes. According to the World Health Organisation, dengue is a fast emerging pandemic-prone viral disease in many parts of the world. According to the ministry of health and family welfare, there were 1,209 dengue cases and six deaths in the state last year while this year there have been 96 cases and one death. About 70 cases of chikungunya have been confirmed this year.