Posted on 04/15/2009 11:53:04 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
An epidemic of farmers suicides has spread across four states of India over the last decade. According to official data, more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.
These four states are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab. The suicides are most frequent where farmers grow cotton and have been a direct result of the creation of seed monopolies. According to official data, more than 160,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997.
Increasingly, the supply of cotton seeds has slipped out of the hands of the farmers and the public system, into the hands of global seed corporations like Monsanto. The entry of seed MNCs was part of the globalization process. Corporate seed supply implies a number of shifts simultaneously. Firstly, giant corporations start to control local seed companies through buyouts, joint ventures and licensing arrangements, leading to a seed monopoly.
Secondly, seed is transformed from being a common good, to being the intellectual property of Monsanto, for which the corporation can claim limitless profits through royalty payments. For the farmer this means deeper debt.
Thirdly, seed is transformed from a renewable regenerative, multiplicative resource into a non-renewable resource and commodity. Seed scarcity and seed farmers are a consequence of seed monopolies, which are based on renewability of seed, beginning with hybrids, moving to genetically engineered seed like Btcotton, with the ultimate aim of the terminator seed which is engineered for sterility. Each of these technologies of non-renewability is guided by one factor alone forcing farmers to buy seed every planning season. For farmers this means higher costs. For seed corporations it translates into higher profits. Fourthly, the creation of seed monopolies is based on the simultaneous deregulation of seed corporations, including biosafety and seed deregulation, and super-regulation of farmers seeds and varieties. Globalization allowed seed companies to sell self-certified seeds, and in the case of genetically engineered seed, they are seeking self-regulation for biosafety. This is the main aim of the recently proposed National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority, which is in effect a Biosafety Deregulation Authority. The proposed Seed Bill 2004, which has been blocked by a massive nationwide Gandhian Seed Satyagraha by farmers, aims at forcing every farmer to register the varieties they have evolved over millennia. This compulsory registration and licensing system robs farmers of their fundamental freedoms.
State regulation extinguishes biodiversity, and pushes all farmers into dependency on patented, corporate seed. Such compulsory licensing has been the main vehicle of destruction of biodiversity and farmers rights in U.S. and Europe.
Fifthly, corporate seeds impose monocultures on farmers. Mixed croppings of cotton with cereals, legumes, oilseeds, vegetables is replaced with a monoculture of Bt-cotton hybrids. The creation of seed monopolies and with it the creation of unpayable debt to a new species of money lender, the agents of the seed and chemical companies, has led to hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers killing themselves since 1997.
The suicides first started in the district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh. Peasants in Warangal used to grow millets, pulses, oilseeds. Overnight, Warangal was converted to a cotton growing district based on non-renewable hybrids which need irrigation and are prone to pest attacks. Small peasants without capital were trapped in a vicious cycle of debt. Some ended up committing suicide. This was the period when Monsanto and its Indian partner Mahyco were also carrying out illegal field experiments with genetically engineered Bt- cotton. All imports and field trials of genetically engineered organisms in India are governed by a law under the Environment Protection Act called the Rules for the Manufacture Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Microorganisms, Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells 1989.
We at the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology used these laws to stop Monsantos commercialization of Bt- cotton in 1999, which is why approval was not granted for commercial sales until 2002. The Government of Andhra Pradesh filed a case in the Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices Act (MRTP), Indias Anti Trust Law, arguing that Monsantos seed monopolies were the primary cause of farmers suicides in Andhra Pradesh. Monsanto was forced to reduce its prices of Bt- cotton seeds. The high costs of seeds and other inputs were combined with falling prices of cotton due to $4billion U.S. subsidy and the dumping of this subsidized cotton on India by using the W.T.O. to force India to remove Quantitative Restrictions on agricultural imports. Rising costs of production and falling prices of the product is a recipe for indebtedness, and debtedness is the main cause of farmers suicides. This is why farmers suicides are most prevalent in the cotton belt on which seed industries own claim is rapidly becoming a Bt-cotton belt. Bt-cotton is thus heavily implicated in farmers suicides.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has recently released a discussion paper Bt-cotton and Farmers Suicides in India: Reviewing the Evidence.
The report is manipulative of the truth about farmers suicides and Bt-cotton.at every level.
Firstly, it states that Farmers suicides is a long-term phenomena, and the long term is 1997-2007.
Ten years is not a long term in a 10,000 year old farming tradition. And 1997 is precisely when the suicides take on an epidemic proportion due to seed monopolies, initially through hybrids and from 2002 through Bt. Hybrids. Secondly, the chronology of Bt-cotton introduction is false. The story begins with Monsantos illegal Bt trials, not with commercialisation in 2002.
Secondly, the report states that In specific regions and years, where Bt-cotton may have indirectly contributed to farmer indebtedness (via crop failure) leading to suicides, its failure was mainly the result of the context or environment in which it was introduced or planted; Bt-cotton as a technology is not to blame. This is an interesting argument. A technology is always developed in the context of local socio-economic and ecological conditions. A technology that is a misfit in a context is a failed technology for that context. You cannot blame the context to save a failed technology.
The technology of engineering Bt-genes into cotton was aimed primarily at controlling pests. However, new pests have emerged in Bt-cotton, leading to higher use of pesticides. In Vidharbha region of Maharashtra, which has the highest suicides, the area under Bt-cotton has increased from 0.200 million ha in 2004 to 2.880 million ha in 2007. Costs of pesticides for farmers has increased from Rs. 921 million to Rs. 13,264 billion in the same period, which is a 13 fold increase. A pest control technology that fails to control pests might be good for seed corporations which are also agrichemical corporations. For farmers it translates into suicide.
The IFPRI study uses industry data to falsely claim reduction of presticide use in Bt-cotton when the empirical data and ground reality shows pesticide use increase.
There are alternatives to Bt-cotton and toxic pesticides. Through Navdanya we have promoted Organic Farming and Seeds of Hope, to help farmers move away from Monsantos Seeds of Suicide.
Organic farmers in Vidharbha are earning Rs. 6287 per acre on average, compared to Bt-cotton farmers who are earning Rs. 714 per acre on average. Many Bt-cotton farmers have a negative income, hence the suicides. The field data of Bt-cotton is also manipulated when cotton yields are shown as low in the pre-Bt-cotton years, it is not mentioned that cotton has traditionally not been grown as a monoculture but as a mixed crop converting biodiversity to monocultures of course leads to increase in yield of the monoculture, but this is accompanied by a decline in production at the biodiversity level.
The IFPRI paper has attempted to play with figures, just like the investment bankers and hedge fund managers played with figures and caused the collapse of Wall Street. Manipulation of reality with numbers does not make for truth. In the case of seeds, it is threatening farmers lives.
Technologies are tools. When the tool fails it needs replacing. Bt-cotton technology has failed to control pests or secure farmers lives and livelihoods. It is time to replace GM technology with ecological farming. It is time to stop farmers suicides.
GM farming is saving the world.
This practice will eventually doom the human race. I find it hard to believe that no one “in charge” can't see the imminent danger this spells out.
Sounds like Nutty Globalism is starting to affect the Indians, also.
Scary that one organization can have a monopoly on seed production. Competition is what grows economies...not communism, or its cousin...monopolism
Nothing says the Indians cannot hold back and plant non BT seed from one season to another. They reaped higher yields and more income from the high bred seed.
*****
Every on “in charge” sees eggsackley what they are doing and knows well what it spells out.
I know. The future sure doesn’t look so good to me these days.
We’re greedily hoarding as many seeds as we can. Already got the chickens, half a side of black angus, and are considering rabbits. I refuse to be dependant on the government.
Yep.
The more worthless Indian farmers we can get rid of, the better.
It is definitely a Catch 22. The Bt seed gives you so much protection and the yields are almost double the regular cotton varieties. The price of the seed is astronomical and the technology fees per acre are high but there is still more profit in the Bt cotton.
There is some regular seed out there because you have to plant 10% regular cotton for a refuge for bugs so that they don’t adapt and become resistant, and that just reenforces the yield disparity because you are using the same techniques for both and yielding much less on the conventional cotton.
One of the additional reasons that it caught on here was that we could no longer delint the seed for planting because of new regulations and you know the huge companies are the only ones who can afford the new technology.
We used to grow a premier 1517 variety and always saved our seed.
Cotton lint is a valuable feedstock for specialty paper.
The global struggle over GM plants is fascinating. GM foods are integral for overcoming the Malthusian nightmares forecasted by Paul Ehrlich who was certain in the 1970s that India would never feed itself— let alone become the food exporter that it is today.
The Neo Malthusians are determined to keep starvation alive on the planet by banning GM plants and creating the franken-food sensation. Indian politics seems to be highly driven by this kind of radicalism.
It would be interesting to know what various death rates [including starvation, malnutrion, etc.] in India were prior to the introduction of GM crops to the region.
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