Dr Ashwani Mahajan
Today, when GM supporters are trying hard to get approval for the commercial production of GM mustard, supposedly developed by Deepak Pental, Ex. Vice-Chancellor of University of Delhi, the chief promoter of GM/BT, Monsanto Company has been going into deep troubles. Ministry of Agriculture is contemplating price control on its BT seeds, citing the argument that the Monsanto BT seed has become ineffective against pink bollworm, which was the claim of the company for charging huge royalty from the farmers. Court also seemingly is in no mood to give any relief to the company.
GM Mustard: Data Being Held Back
Issue of the approval for commercial production of GM mustard is being hotly debated in the country. As per rules and also the directions of the Supreme Court and even logically, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) is supposed to place the data emanating from the field trials and also scientific outcome of the trials, for which permission was earlier granted by GEAC, for public and scientific scrutiny. This had been the convention earlier also. However, GEAC has been shying away from publishing (placing on its website) the said data. Deviating from the past practice, GEAC is not even placing minutes of their meetings on its website. Secretive manner in which the whole exercise has been going on, naturally creates doubts amongst the stakeholders, that deliberately possible ill effects of that GMO on health and environment are being withheld from public domain. Responding to the concerns expressed by those opposing commercial products of GM mustard, GEAC has put now the decision about the same on hold and has outlined several steps before the same could be brought to GEAC for review.
There is nothing new in bringing reforms by introducing new technology in agriculture. However, scientists are not one in context of GM crops; and precisely that is the reason, why GM supporters have not been able to promote these crops, or even getting any new field trial done. Opposition is so sharp and argument against GM are so strong that 19 countries of Europe including Italy, France, Germany, England, Norway and New Zealand and host of other countries including Russia have already banned GM crops in their respective countries.
Despite all efforts of MNCs promoting ‘their science’ and other supporters of ‘their science’ hardly 10 percent of cultivated area in the world grows BT/GM crops and of total GM production in the world, more than 90 percent is in 5 countries, of which, more than 50 percent is in US. Therefore, the claim of GM supporters that it is a worldwide phenomenon, is not tenable. During last UPA government, initially GM could not go ahead, however in later period GEAC under environment minister Veerappa Moily, brought a flood in field trial of GM/BT during his regime; however this is also a fact that no approval has been given so far for the commercial production of GM/BT (after the start of BT cotton production, though without permission). After, Narendra Modi government came to power, GEAC recommended for field trial of 15 crops, approval of which was withheld by the Ministry of Environment.
In fact, what happened, about a decade and a half back, without there being a regulator of GM in place and absence of public awareness about the implications of GM/BT technology, Monsanto was successful in spread of its BT cotton seeds through its dealers, on the main plank of its effectiveness against pink bollworm. It is really surprising that success story of BT Cotton is being cited to argue for GM/BT crops.
‘Success Story’ of BT Cotton?
Leaving aside scientists, who are generally in some way associated with and some of them also the ‘beneficiaries’ of the GM technology, there are ‘some other’ advocates of this technology. They argue that with BT cotton, farmers have benefitted from increase in per hectare productivity, reduced use of pesticides and therefore increase in their income.
It is notable that area under BT underwent a major shift between 2006 and 2013 from 34.6 lakh hectare to 114.6 lakh hectare. In 2006 hardly 37.7 percent area was covered by BT, which increased to 95.7 percent in 2013. During this period, yield per hectare increased from 421 kg/hectare to 532 kg/hectare. In terms of growth in productivity it comes to 3.36 percent per annum. It may be noted that in the same period growth in productivity in food grains was 2.6 percent per annum. We also find great upheavals in productivity during this period when productivity declined to 403 kg/hectare in 2009, before reaching 532 kg/hectare in 2013. Therefore the claim of the GM/BT supporters that BT cotton has been a great success in increasing the production and/or incomes of the farmers, is not supported by the data on productivity. Yet another claim that use of BT reduces the use of insecticides/pesticide is also not supported by the data, which shows that use of insecticides on cotton was 4623 metric tonnes, which increased to 11598 metric tonnes. This has happened because although the requirement of pesticide declined initially due to effectiveness of the seed against bollworms, and with now reduced effectiveness of the seed against pink bollworm and also attack of sucking and other pests, requirement of pesticide has multiplied. These facts coming to fore, Monsanto company is in no position to defend itself, which has so far collected more than 4000 crores of rupees from the farmers in the name of royalty. It is heartening to note that the government panel on genetically modified BT cotton has recommended a steep reduction in royalty fees payable by 70 percent to technology companies. This decision of the government is likely to benefit millions of cotton farmers.
Farmers incurring huge cost in the form of costly seeds, pesticides and other inputs; could not gain even in the early days of BT cotton. Rather failure of crop in various parts of the country sent them to miseries and lakhs of them committed suicide. Therefore there is no need to fall into the claims of interested sections about the benefits of GM/BT as they are unsolicited claims. We must keep in mind that GM technology is irreversible, because we know that once GM/BT is adopted we will not be able to go back to natural seeds and well depend on the seeds supplied by the companies, what we may call seed monopoly.
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