Ishmael
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2001
- Posts
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http://www.aworldconnected.org/article.php/305.html
The Boll Worm, Suicidal Farmers...
And the Government that Got in the Way...
The BollwormThe year was 1998--one of the darkest years in recent history for small cotton farmers in India.
A tiny worm known as the "Bollworm" was silently invading the cotton crops all over the Indian subcontinent, literally eating away the hopes of one million farmers in the largest cotton growing region of the world.
Driven into debt by failing crops and the need for expensive pesticides quality, farmers found themselves in an endless cycle of frantic spraying, more borrrowing, and bleak prospects.
In Kadavendi village, farmer A. Narsoji, unable to sleep, rose from his bed to get something to drink. His cotton crop had recently failed, he had already sold his two oxen to repay one loan and had nothing more to offer moneylenders who were hounding him.
Narsoji owed about $3,300, equal to two-and-a-half years' earnings in a good year. And this was hardly one of those good years.
The bollworm had ravaged his cotton, seemingly immune to the pesticides he sprayed over and over again. Containers of the useless chemicals lay around his home.
Lifting one of the cans that had failed to protect his crops, he gulped the pesticide and collapsed in a fit of convulsions in his open-air kitchen.
Two days later in a nearby village, S. Sailam told his wife he was leaving to spray pesticide on his besieged cotton crops. Instead, he drank the pesticide.
He left behind his illiterate widow, six months pregnant with their third child and saddled with debt.
Narsoji and Sailem were not alone; in the year that followed, no fewer than 1,000 of their fellow cotton farmers in Warangal alone ended their lives in similar fashion.
Meanwhile, in other cotton growing regions of India, a strange phenomenon emerged.
While acres upon acres of cotton fields lay decimated in regions of Gujarat and Punjab, some crops stood tall, healthy and untouched by the bollworm. 500 farmers in Gujarat had planted an unapproved variety of Bt Cotton on around 11,000 acres.
While a major bollworm attack had left the other fields with conventional cotton devastated, the ones using the Bt Cotton variety not only survived, but thrived.
The farmers who had planted these crops were jubilant. They had managed to stave off the utter devastation of their livelihood.
There was no region that needed Bt cotton more desperately than Punjab as the cotton yield had fallen almost to a tenth of the total production in the previous year because of a severe bollworm attack.
But celebrations were shortlived. The government of India ordered that the crops be burned down--Bt Cotton was not yet on the 'approved' list of seeds permitted within India. Farmers who normally live on the edge of subsistence were collectively asked to burn standing crops, worth $21.6 million.
History of the Controversy
India is the world's third largest cotton grower, producing 5.2 million tons a year compared with 14.6 million tons in China and 11 million tons in the United States.
But productivity is low. Despite having the largest area in the world under cotton cultivation, India yields less than half the world average per hectare.
Cotton accounts for roughly a third of its export earnings, either directly or indirectly, through clothes manufacture.
And Bt cotton, a cotton seed genetically-engineered to resist pests, is considered by experts and many farmers to be an answer to the bollworm attack.
In the case of cotton, the Bt protein acts on three major caterpillar pests - the tobacco budworm, the American bollworm and the pink bollworm.
Bt has been widely used since the 1950s in the form of an aerial insecticide sprayed on crops. The introduction of Bt into seeds in the mid-1990s, many argue, provides a more biologically sustainable method of managing insect pests.
The debate over Bt Cotton has been simmering in India since 1998, when a private firm began field trials under the supervision of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
On learning of this, environmental activists burned down fields in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. But, even after three years of successful field trials, the government insisted on still more trials.
Precious days and months ticked by and the desperate farmers, impatient with governmental dithering on legalizing Bt cotton, obtained seeds of Bt cotton on the black market and quietly planted them in their fields.
Plagued by repeated pest attacks, farmers were desperate for a solution that would save their farms and help them feed their families.
Freedom to Farm
Barun Mitra of the Liberty Institute in New Delhi had been following the entire Bt cotton contoversy as it emerged in the Indian media over several years.
The more he researched the topic, the more he was troubled by the apparent contradictions between what some vocal public figures and activists were saying and the real needs and aspirations of the cotton farmers.
According to opponents of Bt cotton, the Indian farmers were suffering economic hardship because of price fluctuations. Furthermore, activists charged greedy corporations with selling farmers poor quality seeds, chemicals, and pesticides.
Mitra learned from the farmers that the price of cotton was far more stable than that of grain and that farmers had switched to growing cotton for that reason.
And he learned that farmers were prevented from using the better quality Bt cotton seeds not because of corporations, but because of government regulations.
Mitra became convinced no one was willing to give the largest and most important stakeholders--the farmers--a hearing.
So, he organized a press conference in March, 2002, in New Delhi, to give these farmers an opportunity to speak for themselves.
One after another, farmers stood up to say that they wanted legal access to the very Bt cotton that intellectuals and activists wanted the government to stop in their name.
The press conference was an enormous success, generating so much outcry that for two days the issue of Bt cotton was in the headlines of print and electronic media.
The farmers recently scored a major victory against the bollworm. Even as the national government ordered Bt cotton crops be burned, the state government of Gujarat refused to destroy the crop.
Consequently, much of the crop was allowed to be harvested and sold.
In July, 2002, following approval by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committe, the state government of Andhra Pradesh (the same place where farmers in Warangal had been committing suicide by the hundreds) approved Bt cotton for commercial cultivation.
For now, it looks like the bollworm may meet its match after all, but only as long as government does not get in the way.
-------------------------------------------------
Ishmael
The Boll Worm, Suicidal Farmers...
And the Government that Got in the Way...
The BollwormThe year was 1998--one of the darkest years in recent history for small cotton farmers in India.
A tiny worm known as the "Bollworm" was silently invading the cotton crops all over the Indian subcontinent, literally eating away the hopes of one million farmers in the largest cotton growing region of the world.
Driven into debt by failing crops and the need for expensive pesticides quality, farmers found themselves in an endless cycle of frantic spraying, more borrrowing, and bleak prospects.
In Kadavendi village, farmer A. Narsoji, unable to sleep, rose from his bed to get something to drink. His cotton crop had recently failed, he had already sold his two oxen to repay one loan and had nothing more to offer moneylenders who were hounding him.
Narsoji owed about $3,300, equal to two-and-a-half years' earnings in a good year. And this was hardly one of those good years.
The bollworm had ravaged his cotton, seemingly immune to the pesticides he sprayed over and over again. Containers of the useless chemicals lay around his home.
Lifting one of the cans that had failed to protect his crops, he gulped the pesticide and collapsed in a fit of convulsions in his open-air kitchen.
Two days later in a nearby village, S. Sailam told his wife he was leaving to spray pesticide on his besieged cotton crops. Instead, he drank the pesticide.
He left behind his illiterate widow, six months pregnant with their third child and saddled with debt.
Narsoji and Sailem were not alone; in the year that followed, no fewer than 1,000 of their fellow cotton farmers in Warangal alone ended their lives in similar fashion.
Meanwhile, in other cotton growing regions of India, a strange phenomenon emerged.
While acres upon acres of cotton fields lay decimated in regions of Gujarat and Punjab, some crops stood tall, healthy and untouched by the bollworm. 500 farmers in Gujarat had planted an unapproved variety of Bt Cotton on around 11,000 acres.
While a major bollworm attack had left the other fields with conventional cotton devastated, the ones using the Bt Cotton variety not only survived, but thrived.
The farmers who had planted these crops were jubilant. They had managed to stave off the utter devastation of their livelihood.
There was no region that needed Bt cotton more desperately than Punjab as the cotton yield had fallen almost to a tenth of the total production in the previous year because of a severe bollworm attack.
But celebrations were shortlived. The government of India ordered that the crops be burned down--Bt Cotton was not yet on the 'approved' list of seeds permitted within India. Farmers who normally live on the edge of subsistence were collectively asked to burn standing crops, worth $21.6 million.
History of the Controversy
India is the world's third largest cotton grower, producing 5.2 million tons a year compared with 14.6 million tons in China and 11 million tons in the United States.
But productivity is low. Despite having the largest area in the world under cotton cultivation, India yields less than half the world average per hectare.
Cotton accounts for roughly a third of its export earnings, either directly or indirectly, through clothes manufacture.
And Bt cotton, a cotton seed genetically-engineered to resist pests, is considered by experts and many farmers to be an answer to the bollworm attack.
In the case of cotton, the Bt protein acts on three major caterpillar pests - the tobacco budworm, the American bollworm and the pink bollworm.
Bt has been widely used since the 1950s in the form of an aerial insecticide sprayed on crops. The introduction of Bt into seeds in the mid-1990s, many argue, provides a more biologically sustainable method of managing insect pests.
The debate over Bt Cotton has been simmering in India since 1998, when a private firm began field trials under the supervision of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).
On learning of this, environmental activists burned down fields in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. But, even after three years of successful field trials, the government insisted on still more trials.
Precious days and months ticked by and the desperate farmers, impatient with governmental dithering on legalizing Bt cotton, obtained seeds of Bt cotton on the black market and quietly planted them in their fields.
Plagued by repeated pest attacks, farmers were desperate for a solution that would save their farms and help them feed their families.
Freedom to Farm
Barun Mitra of the Liberty Institute in New Delhi had been following the entire Bt cotton contoversy as it emerged in the Indian media over several years.
The more he researched the topic, the more he was troubled by the apparent contradictions between what some vocal public figures and activists were saying and the real needs and aspirations of the cotton farmers.
According to opponents of Bt cotton, the Indian farmers were suffering economic hardship because of price fluctuations. Furthermore, activists charged greedy corporations with selling farmers poor quality seeds, chemicals, and pesticides.
Mitra learned from the farmers that the price of cotton was far more stable than that of grain and that farmers had switched to growing cotton for that reason.
And he learned that farmers were prevented from using the better quality Bt cotton seeds not because of corporations, but because of government regulations.
Mitra became convinced no one was willing to give the largest and most important stakeholders--the farmers--a hearing.
So, he organized a press conference in March, 2002, in New Delhi, to give these farmers an opportunity to speak for themselves.
One after another, farmers stood up to say that they wanted legal access to the very Bt cotton that intellectuals and activists wanted the government to stop in their name.
The press conference was an enormous success, generating so much outcry that for two days the issue of Bt cotton was in the headlines of print and electronic media.
The farmers recently scored a major victory against the bollworm. Even as the national government ordered Bt cotton crops be burned, the state government of Gujarat refused to destroy the crop.
Consequently, much of the crop was allowed to be harvested and sold.
In July, 2002, following approval by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committe, the state government of Andhra Pradesh (the same place where farmers in Warangal had been committing suicide by the hundreds) approved Bt cotton for commercial cultivation.
For now, it looks like the bollworm may meet its match after all, but only as long as government does not get in the way.
-------------------------------------------------
Ishmael
