Farmers have a different take from NGOs on weedicide-resistant cotton. [...] Favourable prices apart, another major factor for cotton becoming the preferred crop for Maharashtra’s farmers — proof being the area jump from under seven million to more than 10 million acres in the last ten years — is Bt technology. [...] ”Why not”, is a uniform response one hears when talking to farmers about Roundup Ready Flex cotton. They seem little worried about it fostering seed monopolies or reinforcing technological dependence on a company headquartered in St. Louis, US. For them, the more immediate concern is how to reduce dependence on manual weeding.