Letter to Chief Minister on impending Bt Cotton regularisation
05.03.2009
There is the possibility Bt Cotton will be regularised without full attention to risks involved and without considering the dismal performance in cotton growing districts.
Respected Sir,
Namaskar. We offer our sincere condolences at your recent bereavement.
We are happy that you have taken a decision to discourage Bt Cotton in the state and you have stuck to that stance.However we would like to draw your kind attention to the fact that a full season of illegal cultivation of Bt Cotton is over in the state. We have visited the Bt Cotton growing areas of Kalahandi and Bolangir to know the experience of the farmers with this controversial crop. The experience, as we found out, has not been good.
In Kalahandi which has conditions most conducive to the growth of cotton, Bt Cotton has given a yield of 3.5 to 4 quintals per acre, as per farmers of Haldi village in Karlapada GP. This is against the 8 to 9, even ten quintals per acre that seed dealers had promised to sell Bt seeds. Farmers who have been cautious and cultivated the non Bt hybrid variety of Super Bunny have reaped 5 to 6 quintals per acre. According to the farmers who have cultivated Bt Cotton the bolls are very small in size and pest attacks are more in the crop, resulting in loss of yield. We met a farmer, Pabitra Majhi, Village/GP Palsijharan, who has cultivated Bt Cotton in 2 acres of land and did not harvest the crop as the yield was only 1 quintal per acre. He has spent as much as the other Bt Cotton farmers and taken good care of his crop. This farmer is at loss to explain what his future plans are. He said he feels helpless and cheated.
The officials in this area have requested the farmers to adopt Non Pesticidal Pest Control Methods (NPM) in the next season of illegal Bt Cotton cultivation. They have requested the farmers to visit the Bt Cotton field trials of KBK in the region where NPM techniques are being tried. We too visited the trial area, which is the plot just adjacent to the plot where your good self has laid the foundation stone of the OUAT College of Agriculture. The day being a Sunday only two labourers were working in the field gathering cotton bolls. They revealed that there were substantial pest attacks which were being controlled by NPM. However they pointed out a new pest that resembled red ladybirds which were both eating the leaves as well as destroying the bolls. They were also sucking the seeds within the bolls. We observed that this new pest had also infested the weeds in adjacent plots, a fact confirmed by the workers. The workers acknowledged that they suffered skin rashes and itching while working in the trial plot.
In Bolangir district, we have met farmers in the Bt Cotton growing area of Khaprakhol district. The performance of Bt Cotton here has been disastrous with yields ranging from 2 to 3.5 quintals per acre with the majority reporting a range around 2.5 quintals per acre. The farmers report that some of them have cultivated Bt Cotton even in the years before and when, experiencing a fall in yield, they have tried to switch over to their traditional crops, those crops have not fared well either. Now these fields are lying fallow. Here too the complaint is of smaller bolls and pest attacks. The farmers also say that they have observed goats die after eating Bt Cotton leaves which is unusual considering that in other places animals have died after grazing on harvested Bt Cotton fields or after being fed cotton seed cakes. The farmers have realised that something is wrong but they have no means of knowing why their crops failed. All of them admit they suffer skin problems when they handle the crop. They all reveal that there has been no attempt by the administration to instruct them on biosafety aspects.
The cotton farmers are used to failed crops. They persist and go further into debt hoping that the next crop will be good enough to write off all their debts and bring in profits. Though they realise they were better off with their traditional food crops, they say that seed dealers and the officials goad them in search of the elusive pot of gold. We realise that with Bt Cotton many of them have reached the edge of the precipice. The play of genes has rendered the crop more risky, more so as no one seems interested to study, observe and report the risks. It seems that the farmers have been left at the mercy of wolves.
We have learnt that the official stance of discouraging Bt Cotton has not changed. However we are apprehensive that this crop may be pushed based upon field trials conducted by institutions, rather than studying the situation on the ground, the experiences of farmers and the socio-economic or health and environmental fallout. We do not know why the administration failed to study and monitor the crop and take corrective measures so that the farmers would not have suffered, despite knowing fully well that it was being cultivated in 70% of the total land under cotton in the state and despite getting one full year to do so. In whose interest was this apathy and silence encouraged?
If Bt Cotton is regularised in the state it would send a clear signal to the elements that have played with the lives and health of the people of the state by encouraging and actively promoting the unsafe genetically modified crop, akin to the act of bioterrorism that they can get away with anything. We are very sure that in the next season the illegal cultivation of Bt food crops would be taken up with the officials again pleading helplessness and then rushing in to regularise the illegal cultivation. We have no reason to think otherwise.
We would request your good self to kindly break your silence on the matter of illegal cultivation of Bt Cotton and give a public statement on Bt Brinjal as well, as has been requested of you by the people of the state whose demand has been echoed by the eminent newspapers and publications of the state. It is not that the higher officials are not aware of the hazards associated with genetically modified crops. The lectures of Dr Michael Hansen and Jeffrey Smith have been well attended. The associated literature has been demanded of us, delivered by us and devoured anxiously. Till date we are yet to come across any doctor or scientist in the state who has disputed what Dr Hansen and Mr Smith has said based upon strong scientific peer reviewed studies.
Once again Sir, kindly let us know what the state government has in mind with regard to Bt Cotton and other genetically modified food and crops.
