Biotechnology: Lessons from Bt Cotton

GM technology arrived in India in 1995, when US biotech giant Monsanto collaborated with India's Mahyco to import Bt cotton seeds. In 2002, Government of India allowed farmers to commercially cultivate Bt cotton.

In 2003, cotton farmers in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh suffered severe agricultural and financial losses, and many committed suicides. Though there was no evidence to link the suicides to Bt cotton losses, in May 2005, then Andhra Pradesh government revoked permission to grow three varieties of Bt cotton. Also, in the Vidarbha district of Maharashtra, farmers growing Bt cotton accounted for most number of the suicides. This brought Bt cotton to the spotlight again.

The polarized opinions of the GM lobbyists and anti-GM activists made a serious inclusive scientific debate quite impossible. The supporters of GM argued that the weak regulatory system allowed entry of illegal Bt cotton seeds in Gujarat and prevented regulators to monitor Bt cotton plantations. Farmers suicides were cited by Prince Charles in a lecture via video conferencing to the New Delhi based NGO Navdanya in November 2008, as "GM Genocide"- one of the ills of GM technology. But a report from the Washington based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in October, 2008 stated, "Despite the recent media hype around farmer suicides fuelled by civil society organizations and reaching the highest political spheres in India and elsewhere, there is no evidence in available data of a resurgence of farmer suicide in the last five years" (http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/dp/IFPRIDP00808.pdf ). Neither the stand-off between GM supporters and non-supporters nor contradicting reports is helping the farmers or the public.