Cotton GM Industry Must Be Made Accountable For Successive Crop Failures

There was no reason to let the private seed companies and also the agri-cultural scientific and the extension machinery which promoted these seeds, to get away without owning the responsibility

There are hardly any lessons learnt from the cotton debacle in the north-western regions, comprising Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

In Punjab alone, from a little over eight lakh hectares under cotton cultivation in the 1980s, the area under cotton had dropped to its lowest ever – 98,490 hectares sown in 2024. In the region as such, cotton area had collapsed by six lakh hectares the same year. Sliding below one lakh hectares of the overall six lakh was also Punjab’s first.

This year, cotton area may show a slight increase – rising by 15 per cent in Punjab, for instance, but all together it shows that the farmers’ confidence in ‘white gold’ as it was referred to in 1980s and 1990s, and even later, is now subsumed. Farmers disinterest is being blamed on recurring pest threats and market uncertainties.

We will talk about market uncertainties in a future column, but let’s try the un-derstand how pests’ recurrence against the claims being made by the private seed industry has ended up doing the damage.

Only a few days back, Punjab’s Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian was confronted near Mukarsar by a group of farmers owing alliance to Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union and Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan). Among the issues raised was a very pertinent question regarding the failure of cotton crop in 2021-22, be-cause of pest attack, and how long would it take for the state government to pay compensation, that is still pending.

This wasn’t an isolated event where Punjab’s Ministers have been asked to re-spond to queries about cotton crop failure. But it saddens me to add that instead of drawing any lesson from what led to the repeated failure of the crop, the state gov-ernment has already announced a subsidy support for the next generation of GM seeds – some call it Bt-3seeds.

Why the faith on GM seeds still continues to hold is because at no stage after the cotton crop was devastated by whitefly outbreak in 2015, the Punjab government found it appropriate to hold a public audit on how to handle recurring pest failures arising from the failure of GM seeds, and the possible mechanism to move towards a more reliable sustainable farming approach.

Punjab government goes by what scientists at the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) advice but exceptional breakdown of genetic resistance in a crop species re-quires equally exceptional approaches to fix the reasons that led to the repeated pest devastations. Not realising that crisis management cannot limit itself to the analysis of the exceptional circumstances, and one must look beyond to address the crisis in a manner that it does not happen again; the scientific establishment has a lot to answer.

The collapse happened not in a year but over the period. Punjab was confronted by a severe outbreak of whitefly in 2015. It led to massive failure of the standing crop in 3.25-lakh hectares. If I remember correctly, policy makers unfortunately sug-gested more potent chemicals to control the outbreak. That’s the best they could do. The SAD-BJP government at that time wasn’t moved to a crisis situation where they could have looked for viable alternatives. On its part, they announced a compensation of Rs 8,000 per acre. Failure to fix accountability at the research and development stage meant that the companies, which pushed the GM seeds that led to the fiasco didn’t have to bear the cost that the farmers had suffered.

The ‘polluters pay’ principle therefore was deliberately pushed under the carpet. The loss farmers incurred was borne instead by tax payers.

Because no accountability was fixed, another pest attack a few years later struck a still severe blow to cotton farmers. This time it was the failure of pink bollworm resistance that Bt cotton seeds came packed with. Despite the claim, and consider-ing that the state government had sworn by it, there was no reason to let the pri-vate seed companies and also the agricultural scientific and the extension machin-ery which promoted these seeds, to get away without owning the responsibility.

In 2021, when pink bollworm struck, the Punjab government ended up promising another Rs 17,000 per acre relief package. And that is the question its Agriculture Minister was confronted with by agitated farmers the other day.

The strong GM lobby, however, continues to persist. Only a few days back, a media report expressed dismay at the dramatic collapse in cotton exports.

From a peak of $4.3 billion and a continuing hike of $3.7 billion in 2012-13, India has turned into a net exporter in 2023-24. This sharp decline in exports can be eas-ily attributed to the failure in productivity that is clearly the outcome of the failure of GM seeds – Bt-1 and Bollgard-II, in this case.

Not even acknowledging it, the dominant media finds it equally persuasive by en-dorsing more of GM cotton seeds. With no significant technological improvements on the horizon, after that too after the GM cotton seeds had done the damage, the effort is still to call for more of the same, which means more GM crops, like Bt-3 in cotton.

I wish that these media seniors had read through an excellent research the paper co-authored by Dr Kranthi, a former director of the Central Institute of Cotton Re-search (CICR) and an anthropologist from the Washington University, Glenn Stone, published in the scientific journal Nature, some years back. Just because advertisements help sustain the newspaper revenues does not mean that the reali-ties can that easily be buried.

I am keenly looking forward to a renewed focus on cotton. But this time learn from the traditional farmers who have not only saved the traditional seeds but al-so the accompanying appropriate technology. Let our universities be engaged in perfecting the time tested technologies rather than falling prey to the next genera-tion of GM crop varieties.

The tall scientific claims of the GM industry have failed time and again. This can-not be allowed to go unaccounted. Pesticides usage, for instance, has multiplied over the years against the claims that GM crops will eclipse the use and abuse of chemical pesticides.

Tens of thousands of farmers have paid the price, and many of them are still wait-ing for compensation for the crop losses suffered.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)