A study of 500 cotton farmers from Amravati and Yavatmal districts in Maharashtra found that farmers who had adopted Bt cotton had a net lower income than non-Bt cotton farmers

A new study has shown that the government's introduction of Bt cotton in Vidarbha, a rainfed area, has added to farmers' debts in an area that already has a history of indebtedness. Seventy per cent of small farmers have already lost their landholdings as collateral for loans they can never repay.

At a press conference on February 14, Suman Sahai, Director of the Gene Campaign, said that a new study on Bt cotton in Vidarbha reveals that it did not perform well in the region because inputs costs -- including cost of seeds - were high, there was an abundance of spurious seeds and the technology had been adopted without any preparation of the farmers for the complex management practices required. Sahai said that Bt cotton did better in irrigated areas and that it was introduced in Vidarbha despite the government's awareness that it would not work in rainfed areas.

The Gene Campaign study, which will be ready in four or five weeks, is based on interviews with around 500 cotton farmers from Amravati and Yavatmal districts. Preliminary data shows that farmers who had adopted Bt cotton had a net lower income than non-Bt cotton farmers. The preliminary results of the study came even as nine more farmers' deaths were reported over the last week, taking February's toll to 50. Since the beginning of 2007 as many as 120 farmers have committed suicide.

Four of the latest farmers' deaths occurred in Yavatmal, two in Wardha, and one each in Amravati, Buldhana and Washim, according to Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti, which has been documenting the suicides since 2001. As many as 1,377 farmers have ended their lives since June 2005 because of indebtedness.

According to activist Vijay Jawandhia, the crisis has worsened in recent times because of the meagre rate of raw cotton fixed by the government. The current rate is Rs 1,700 per quintal as against Rs 2,500 per quintal two years ago. Jawandhia said it was very difficult to repay loans and support families with this amount. The Gene Campaign study has also shown how input costs have increased because seed dealers are wrongly advising farmers to buy far more fertilisers and pesticides than needed with the lure that they would get 12 to 15 quintals per acre. In actual fact the production was in the range of three to five quintals per acre.

The study reveals that on average, farmers who adopted Bt cotton lost Rs 1,725 per acre. Decrying the role of the government as "irresponsible and damaging" Sahai said that many farmers adopted Bt cotton because they believed it was a "government seed" and did not know that it was privately produced and marketed. They also accepted it because the government was actively promoting the technology. While local officials, like the Agriculture Commissioner of Amravati, were aware of the failure of Bt cotton, the state agriculture department continued to promote it, she said.

The Bt technology was not need-driven but supply-driven, added Sahai.

The study also collected anecdotal evidence about other side-effects of Bt cotton on plants and animals. Cattle deaths had been reported in areas where they grazed in harvested Bt cotton fields, women working in cotton fields had complained of rashes, and there were reports that mango trees were not flowering. Despite such reports, the government had not conducted tests to establish whether any of this could be attributed to the introduction of Bt cotton. There have been no tests either of the impact of cotton oil, extracted from Bt cotton, on human and animal health. Sahai said it is essential to conduct safety tests and also put in place a regulatory system before any new technology is introduced.

Interestingly, District Commissioner of Amravati, Sudhir Kumar Goyal, under whose jurisdiction the five suicide-prone districts of Western Vidarbha fall, agreed that indebtedness was a consequence of cost-intensive agricultural practices, unbridled market forces and inadequate protection against the vagaries of nature. Goyal, who was the former Agriculture Commissioner for Maharashtra, told IANS last week that the crisis is "about the millions of farmers who are struggling for survival in a flawed system amidst adversity without proper help and guidance."

Goyal advocates low-cost farming with a stress on micro-watershed development in un-irrigated areas. He said the introduction of high-yielding varieties had eroded the subsistence base, and the shift to cash crops, without regard for soil type and climatic conditions, was compounding the problem. Till the 1960s, farmers produced traditional varieties of foodgrain for sale as well as self-consumption. Seeds and manure were also produced on-farm as was fodder for cattle. Hybrid food varieties, which replaced traditional ones, do not yield seeds and fodder.

Source: www.hindustantimes.com, February 19, 2007
www.thehindu.com, February 16, 2007
India Abroad News Service