Cotton Conundrum

Cotton farmers gained media attention when around 50 of them committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh by consuming the same pesticide that was meant to protect their crop. The apparent reason being large scale destruction of cotton crop caused by Bollworm. The real reason however lay in a spiral effect. Traditionally, the farmers of Andhra Pradesh grew pulses. Search for a quick cash crop drove them to grow cotton instead. Andhra is a semi-dry zone where the farmer has to take high interest loans to pay for seeds, irrigation, pesticide, labour and what not. However, when acres of cotton were chewed away by Bollworm, the farmers failed to liquidate their debt. This pessimism drove them to commit suicide. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic... http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...

To overcome this serious problem, a Maharashtra based Hybrid seeds company named Mahyco in collaboration with Monsanto launched "Bollgard", a genetically modified cotton seeds variety resistant to bollworm. It is also referred to as BT Gene Cotton, which is An insecticide toxin gene from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a naturally occurring soil bacterium and used since early 1960s as a biological pesticide. It is cloned and inserted into a crop plant. The plant then produces its own toxin in most parts of the plant. The larva when it eats the plant, dies as its digestive system is severely affected. Cotton, corn, and potato engineered with such genes were grown commercially for the first time in 1996. These seeds are also being used in the US, Australia and China where its benefits and ill effects are now being discussed critically.

Out of a projected plantation of 8.5 million hectares, BT cotton was sown in around 110000 Hectares, mainly in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Opposition to BT cotton comes from two distinct quarters. On one hand we have environmentalists like Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksha, the Greenpeace and Vandana shiva's Research Foundation on Science and Technology. These insist upon a thorough investigation of environmental as well as long term economic impact of using genetically modified crop. On the other, we have government departments who claim that prior approval was not obtained before these seeds were given to farmers. Farmers themselves are divided for and against its use.

Greenpeace genetic engineering campaigner Mitchell Chawla expressed her disgust with the inability of Indian regulatory mechanism to check the injection of genetically modified organisms into India's environment without conducting a thorough assessment of its long-term effects. According to Greenpeace, the third generation pests are most difficult to control. Farmers in Southern china who have been growing this variety were forced to spray pesticides to control third and fourth generation H. Armigra due to a drop in expression levels. The Bollgard variety being marketed by Mahyco is a low dose variety with potential for developing resistance within 7-8 generations. This means that farmers will be forced to spray pesticide very soon and the very purpose of using this variety will be defeated. Greenpeace's scientific advisor Doreen Stabinsky who made a scientific presentation before the GEAC about bt.gene cotton said "Data from the US, Australia, China and India confirm that the gene Cry1Ac is not uniformly effective against different populations of Helicoverma armigera, nor are there high-dose events for H. armigera, needed to kill 99 per cent of the population." Environmentalists are demanding that the government must make its investigation transparent by involving NGOs. Farmers must be informed very clearly about how soon insects will develop tolerance to BT cotton and what other damage can this variety cause to agriculture.

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