n the Malwa belt of rural Punjab, mile after mile of Bt cotton fields are under attack by the mealy bug pest. Bathinda, Muktsar, Faridkot and Ferozepur, Punjab’s four major cotton-growing districts, have been badly affected. The so-called ’magic bullet’, Bt cotton has turned into a bitter pill for farmers who were promised profits but who are now faced with huge losses.

Cotton output in India, the world’s third-largest exporter of the fiber, may reach a record this year as farmers increase the use of genetically altered seeds, likely posing competition for the U.S., the biggest supplier. [...] Higher exports may help India garner a bigger share of the Chinese market as the U.S., the Asian nation’s main supplier, is forecast to harvest a smaller crop after farmers switched their fields to more-profitable grains such as corn. Prices of cotton traded in New York have risen 12 percent in the past year.

The study clearly establishes Bt cotton yields to be higher than that for non-Bt hybrids/varieties under both irrigated and non-irrigated conditions, and this holds irrespective of landholding size. Average net incomes from Bt hybrids, too, work out higher across small, medium and large farmers. Bt cotton has also been found highly resistant against bollworm pest attacks. But on the flip side, the reduction in pesticide consumption has not been to the extent claimed by seed companies.

With an aim to declare the state as ’Jaiva Keralam’, the draft organic farming policy of Kerala is expected to be finalised by the State Government in a month after presenting it on September 8. The modalities are being worked out by the government to finalise the draft organic farming policy and with that 100 panchayats in Kerala will be declared as ’Jaiva Panchayats’ , Agriculture Minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran told this website’s News Paper. [...] That would be in a bid to save the state from the entry of genetically modified crops and the use of chemical pesticides.

Expressing its inability to conduct large scale trials of transgenic cotton within the norms defined in a Supreme Court order, a prominent research institute has urged the Centre to intervene in the matter. The Nagpur-based Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR), in a meeting of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the apex body for clearing genetically modified crops, said the ”stringent” norms for test protocols defined in the court order ”has proved to be a major setback in the research and development of transgenic crops”.

Pesticide companies are again in the limelight as they have made sales worth Rs 500 crores in the last two months. They are expecting a sale of Rs 800 crore this season. The intense attack of mealy bug in Malwa region has made the farmers go for intensive pesticide sprays. Most of the farmers have lost their crop. The farmers first purchased the costly Bollgard Bt seeds and after the mealy bug attack they have to buy pesticides. After the seed companies it is now the turn of pesticide companies to make big bucks. Once the attack spread, there was panic among the cotton farmers.

Climate change is likely to undermine food production in the developing world, while industrialized countries could gain in production potential, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said today in a speech at the M.S. Swaminathan Foundation Conference in Chennai, India. [...] But, he cautioned, most genetically modified (GM) crops being cultivated today were developed to be herbicide tolerant and resistant to pests. Development of GM crops with traits valuable for poor farmers, especially within the context of climate change -- such as resistance to drought, extreme temperatures, soil acidity and salinity -- is not yet a reality.

Riding on the success of Bt cotton, agriculture biotechnology has emerged as one of the fastest growing biotech industries in India in recent years, a latest report of the US department of agriculture (USDA) has said. ”It is the third largest contributor among various biotech sectors with total revenues of more than $229 million in 2006-07 fiscal, registering a growth of 55%,”? the report said. Export revenue from agriculture biotechnology has grown to $11.6 million in 2006-07 from around $8 million in the previous year, it added.

Reforms in India are expected to replace control and licensing with regulations that will benefit both industry and the people. The report card on the performance of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), however, shows no evidence of this balance. Instead, what we find is an evident and inherent bias in favour of industry, while farmers and consumers have been left on the margins.

The government has agreed to place the toxicity and allergenicity data relating to Bt cotton in public domain. Additional solicitor general Amarender Saran said, during the hearing on a petition calling for a moratorium on GM crops in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, that the government was willing to share the data related to toxicity and allergenicity of Bt Cotton and would also hand over a soft copy of it to all the petitioners. The data would be placed on the website hosted by the GEAC.