1.German study on Bt cotton untrue and misleading – VJAS
2.Response to latest Qaim and Zilberman "fairytale"
3.Farm suicides rise in Maharashtra, State still leads the list
NOTE: There seems to be a complete disconnect between the positive findings of a new study on Bt cotton in India by Matin Qaim, and the ground realities in an Indian State like Maharashtra where Bt cotton is the predominant crop and farm suicides continue to climb (items 1 and 3). And this is not the first time that a study by Qaim has attracted incredulity (item 2).
For more on Qain's new study: http://bit.ly/LuQWun
For more on the impact of Bt cotton in Maharashtra: http://bit.ly/NfnXLT
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1.German study on Bt cotton benefits in India is untrue and misleading – VJAS
Vidarbha Times, 3 July 2012 [edited]
http://vidarbhatimes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/german-study-on-bt-cotton-benefits-in.html
Nagpur – The so called German study of 533 farming households in four cotton growing states including Karnataka between 2002 and 2008 done by Agricultural Economist Matin Qaim at Germany's University of Goettingen, published in the July 2 issue of Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, claims that Bt cotton has economically benefited not merely the big farmers. Small farmers are also smiling as their profit margin shot up by 50 per cent in the last decade. This is untrue and misleading as the ground reality is too gloomy to explain...
...Bt cotton seed is one main reason for triggering cotton farmers' suicides and has been the main cause of the Vidarbha agrarian crisis...
Hence 3 million distressed and debt trapped dry land cotton farmers demand from the Indian Govt. clarification over such hyped surveys and study reports taking micro sample of select cotton farmers, says the Vidarbha cotton farmers' advocacy group Vidarbha Jannadolan Samiti (VJAS) convener Kishore Tiwari, who is demanding the complete ban of genetically modified Bt cotton seed in Vidarbha, and documenting cotton farmers' suicides since 2002.
With the recent move of Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR) and the Maharashtra government to implement a pilot project, titled as the Brazilian model of Non-Bt cotton promotion, in eight districts of Vidarbha region to start cultivation of straight varieties of cotton in place of hybrid or Bt (Genetically-Modified) ones, the government appears to be doing a rethink over its policy of promoting Bt cotton, which confirms the complete failure of Bt cotton seed technology...
"The German study... says cotton yields and profits increased by 24 and 50 per cent respectively among Bt cotton farmers as against non-Bt crops, whereas in Vidarbha there is an agrarian crisis directly linked to the farmer-suicide-prone district... predominantly cultivating Bt.cotton... and union agriculture minister Mr Sharad Pawar's own admission that Vidarbha dry land farmers are losing more than Rs.2000 crore per year since introduction of Bt cotton seed in Vidarbha... it's a classic example of promoting the wrong technology to the wrong class of agrarian community as this rain sensitive crop has proven a killer seed in West Vidarbha, as 95% of farmers who opted for this technology are dry land farmers," Tiwari added.
"We urged Matin Qaim, professor of agricultural economics and rural development at Georg-August-University of Goettingen, and all other authors of the study, to come to the dying fields of Vidarbha where more than 9000 cotton farmers committed suicide, and 100% of farmers who opted for Bt cotton seed are in distress and debt. And the study also contradicts the official report of the Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR) Director Keshav Kranthi that the cost of seeds of straight varieties is much lower than Bt varieties, besides which these varieties become ready for plucking in just 150-160 days (whereas Bt varieties take around 180-200 days), which reduces the need for fertilizers, pesticides and other nutrients substantially, and unlike Bt cotton varieties, seeds derived from straight cotton varieties can be used during the next season. These ground realities are totally ignored...," Tiwari added.
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2.Response to latest Qaim and Zilberman "fairytale"
GMWatch, 27 April 2005
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/1465
...One of the industry's principal doctrinal myths is the overwhelming success of GM crops in the Third World. You can imagine the embarrassment, therefore, when farmers in the first country to approve Monsanto's Bt cotton in Asia – Indonesia – experienced such bad results that the company was actually forced to abandon selling GM seeds in Indonesia.
It became essential that Bt cotton prove beneficial in India. Unfortunately for Monsanto, Bt cotton commercialisation was instead dogged by a whole series of bad reports from farmers, NGOs, independent scientists and even State governments.
Monsanto via its own surveys and via industry-friendly scientists has done its best to paint an entirely different picture. One of the most notorious pieces of research was a paper by Matin Qaim (University of Bonn) and David Zilberman (University of California, Berkeley) published in SCIENCE ("Yield effects of genetically modified crops in developing countries." Science Vol 299, No. 5608, pp. 900-902).
Qaim and Zilberman are 2 of the authors now trying to critique the studies showing problems with GM cotton. Their original claimed outstanding (80%!) yield increases from Monsanto's GM cotton – results they projected as relevant to farmers throughout the developing world.
Qaim and Zilberman's paper derived all of its data from Monsanto and its findings were so at odds with the reports coming from Indian farmers that its publication caused a storm of protest.
Devinder Sharma called Qaim and Zilberman's paper a "scientific fairytale" while Dr Vandana Shiva – pointing out that Qaim and Zilberman based their findings entirely on data drawn from Monsanto's trials and "not on the basis of the harvest from farmers' fields" – dismissed it as "fabricated data that presents a failure of Bt Cotton as a miracle."
http://www.countercurrents.org/en-shiva260603.htm
The paper proved an embarrassment even to India's pro-GM lobby. In a piece posted on CS Prakash's AgBioView list, former Syngenta man, Dr Shantu Shantharam, complained that, "This kind of shoddy publication based on meagre and questionable field data in reputed journals like SCIENCE do more harm to science and technology development, perhaps set GMO technology backwards."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=85
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3.Farm suicides rise in Maharashtra, State still leads the list
P. Sainath
The Hindu, 3 July 2012
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/article3595351.ece
With a figure of at least 14,027 in 2011, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the total number of farm suicides since 1995 has touched 2,70, 940. The State of Maharashtra shows a rise in numbers yet again, logging 3,337 against 3,141 farmers’ suicides the previous year (and 2,872 in 2009). This, despite heavy massaging of data at the State level for years now, even re-defining of the term “farmer” itself. And despite an orchestrated (and expensive) campaign in the media and other forums by governments and major seed corporations to show that their efforts had made things a lot better. Maharashtra remains the worst single State for farm suicides for over a decade now.
The total number of farmers who have taken their own lives in Maharashtra since 1995 is closing in on 54,000. Of these 33,752 have occurred in nine years since 2003, at an annual average of 3,750. The figure for 1995-2002 was 20,066 at an average of 2,508. Significantly, the rise is occurring even as the farm population is shrinking a fact broadly true across the country. And more so in Maharashtra which has been urbanising more rapidly than most. The rising-suicides-shrinking-population equation suggests a major intensification of the pressures on the community. A better understanding of that, though, awaits the new farm population figures of the 2011 Census not expected for many months from now. At present both national and State-wise farm suicide ratios (the number of farmers committing suicide per 100,000 farmers) are based on very outdated 2001 Census numbers.
Big five States
The 2011 total gets dicey with Chhattisgarh’s posting a figure of zero farm suicides. A zero figure should be great news. Except that Chhattisgarh had 7,777 farm suicides in the preceding five years, including 1,126 in 2010. It has been amongst the very worst States for such deaths for several years. The share of the worst (Big 5) states (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh) as a percentage of total farm suicides, is now around 64 per cent. Even with Chhattisgarh showing a ‘zero’ figure, that is not much lower than the preceding five-year average for the Big 5 of close to 66 per cent. It could be that Chhattisgarh’s figures have simply not made it to the NCRB in time. Otherwise, it means that the State is in fact a late entrant to the numbers massage parlour. Others have been doing it for years. Maharashtra since 2007, following the Prime Minister’s visit to Vidarbha. Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar has strictly avoided using NCRB farm data in Parliament since 2008 because the data are unpleasant. (The union government however quotes the NCRB for all other categories). Now, governments are deep into fiddling the data that goes from the States to the NCRB.
With the Big 5 also staring drought in the face, what numbers the coming season will throw up is most worrying. Within Maharashtra, Vidarbha and Marathwada have already been under great stress (which in turn pushes officials to step up data fiddles). If the numbers are re-calculated using the annual average of Chhattisgarh in the past five years, the national total of farm suicides for 2011 would be 15,582. And the share of the Big 5 (at 10,524) would be nearly 68 per cent. That’s higher than the five-year average for those States, too. In 1995, the first time the NCRB tabulated farm suicide data, the Big 5 accounted for 56.04 per cent of all farm suicides.
In 2011, five States showed increases of over 50 farm suicides compared to 2010. These included Gujarat (55), Haryana (87), Madhya Pradesh (89), Tamil Nadu (82). Maharashtra alone showed a rise of 196. Nine States showed declines exceeding 50 farm suicides, of which Karnataka (485) and Andhra Pradesh (319) and West Bengal (186) claimed the biggest falls. That, of course, after Chhattisgarh, which claimed a decline of 1,126, with its zero farm suicides figure in 2011.
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