BUSINESS AND REGULATORY NEWS

http://biotech.nature.com • MAY 2002 • VOLUME 20 • nature biotechnology 415

India has approved the commercial plantingof its first genetically modified (GM)

crop—insect-protected hybrids of cottondeveloped by Monsanto (St. Louis, MO) andits Indian partner Maharashtra HybridCompany (Mahyco; Jalna, India)—for threeyears (April 2002–March 2005). The decisionhas been hailed by industry, which says farm-ers have been clamoring for GM cotton. Butcritics and organic farmers want the decisionreversed, alleging it was a sell out to multina-tional companies (MNCs) and is not in theinterest of small farmers.

The three cotton hybrids cleared by theGenetic Engineering Approval Committee(GEAC) under the Indian Ministry ofEnvironment and Forests (New Delhi) onFebruary 26 carry the Bacillus thuringiensis(Bt) gene that confers protection againstbollworm, a serious cotton pest in India.Although India cultivates the most cotton inthe world (nine million hectares), it producesless than China and the United States.“Farmers spend annually 12 billion Rupees(Rs.; $250 million) in controlling the boll-worms,” says T.M. Manjunath, director of theMonsanto Research Center in Bangalore. Bybacking the use of Bt cotton, India has sig-naled to the world that it is encouragingfarmers to use biotechnology to raise theircompetitiveness towards the production lev-els of China and the US, and the GEAC’sdecision could throw open the doors forgrowth of more varieties of GM crops inIndia and send a powerful signal to fence-sit-ters in Asia such as Thailand to join the GMrace, say industry watchers.

Monsanto plans to sell the GM seedsthrough its joint venture with Mahyco, whichhas stocked enough seeds to cover 150,000hectares this year and has joined up withthree more Indian firms to raise the seed pro-duction capacity to cover three millionhectares next year. At Rs. 1,200/kg, Bt-cottonseeds will be five times costlier than the non-Bt variety, but P.K. Ghosh, senior adviser inthe Indian Department of Biotechnology(DBT; New Delhi) and member of GEAC,told Nature Biotechnology that a farmerplanting Bt cotton can make a profit ofRs. 5,000 ($120) “after accounting for all thecosts” as productivity would double to about700 kg per hectare.

However, the government’s approvalcomes with conditions. To prevent or delaydevelopment of Bt resistance, farmers have toprovide refugia by planting non-Bt cotton infive rows or 20% of the area, “whichever ishigher.” Monsanto and Mahyco are to moni-tor resistance development in bollworms and

pollen migration and report to GEAC anycross-pollination with other plants. “We aregoing to make sure that Mahyco follows theseconditions and we will be checking the com-pliance at the company and dealers levels,”GEAC chair A.M. Gokhale said in a pressconference.

Small-holdings are common in India, with65–70% of cotton farmers holding between 1and 1.5 hectares, according to the ministry ofagriculture. Suman Sahai, a geneticist andconvener of nongovernmental organization(NGO) Gene Campaign, wonders whetherfarmers could afford to leave 20% of the areafor insect refuge. “Given the record of pesti-cide abuse because of the failure to educatefarmers, is it realistic to expect that the com-plex system of refuges will be implementedeven by larger farmers?” she asks.

However, Ghosh says compliance is notreally an issue, admitting that the refugiamandate was included as a condition mainlyto pacify NGOs. He says many small cottonfarmers will continue to use the local variety,as Bt-hybrids are too demanding in terms offertlizers and costs. “If you ask me, we expectonly 50% of the farmers to go for Bt cotton,and the other 50% will act as refugia. It doesnot really matter if small farmers do notcomply.”

Channapatna Prakash, director of theCenter for Plant Biotechnology Research atTuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL), is anadvocate of GM technology and agrees withGhosh. “In India, even in the densest cottongrowing areas, farmers have not adopted amonoculture cropping pattern. Other cropssuch as vegetables are always grown alongwith cotton,” he told the Financial Express.“Therefore, less than 100% compliance is nota big deal. It’s only a few years down the line,when the proportion of Bt cotton increases,that this problem can emerge, but by then weshould have different varieties of GM cotton,which will help tackle the resistance prob-lem.”

Nevertheless, on April 4, some 12 farmers’organizations and a group representingorganic farmers demanded that the Indiangovernment reverse GEAC’s decision, charg-ing that it was a move “to dislodge small

farmers” and a sell out to MNCs.Devinder Sharma, president of the Forum

for Biotechnology and Food Security (NewDelhi), says the government succumbed toMonsanto’s lobby. “Otherwise tell me why itfailed to promote the integrated pest man-agement (IPM) approach recommended byits own scientists?” Two years ago, theNational Centre for IPM (New Delhi) carriedout a major experiment in 200 hectares offarmers’ land in Maharashtra, where it pro-duced 1,000 kg of cotton per hectare—threetimes the national average—without the useof pesticides or GM crops. But the govern-ment is not following it up on a large scale.“Such technologies will not be promotedsimply because there is no industry behindit,” says Sharma.

Some, such as K.P. Prabhakaran Nair, agri-cultural scientist and a senior fellow of theAlexander von Humboldt Foundation(Munich), say Bt cotton will benefit only bigfarmers who can comply with the refugiamandate and afford the fertilizers. But “noth-ing can be farther from the truth,” arguesGurunurti Natarajan, a US-trained consul-tant on GM crops and an agricultural advi-sor. “Bt technology is scale-neutral becausethe benefit to the farmer is embedded in everyseed. Therefore, any farmer that uses thistechnology would benefit from it just asequally, regardless of the number of acresthat he were to plant. This has been amplyproved in China where land holdings aresmall and small farmers have benefitedimmensely from adopting the Bt technolo-gy.”

However, Sahai says that Bt cotton, devel-oped for cold countries where the predomi-nant pest is the bollworm, is unlikely to workfor more than a few years in hot, tropicalIndia where the pest load is high, because “itis fundamentally at odds with the agricultur-al and climatic conditions here” and “willquickly become resistant to Bt toxin and thecrop will fail.” She points out that the Bt-cot-ton crop has failed in South Sulawesi,Indonesia, because the pests have becomeresistant to the Bt toxin. Sahai is concernedthat when this happens in India, small farm-ers who have invested in the GM seeds will beworse off than they were before. Unlike theUS farmer who is fully protected by subsi-dies, says Sahai, “there is nobody to protectIndian farmers should Bt cotton fail.” Sahaialso notes Monsanto’s record of prosecutingfarmers for technology infringement andharassing them with lawsuits, and adds thatthe government is being naïve in entrustingthe post-monitoring job to Monsanto.

Summing up, Prakash agrees that the resis-tance problem is real but says:“You don’t stopusing a knife just because it gets blunt.”

K.S. Jayaraman, New Delhi

India approves GM cotton

The Bt cotton is fundamentally atodds with the agricultural andclimatic conditions in India.

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