[ZESTEconomics] Understanding the Bt Cotton maze

Wed, 31 May 2006 23:36:27 -0700


  Understanding the Bt Cotton maze
  The Bt Cotton debate is a vexing one. Proponents praise the
technology, while NGOs charge that it has failed farmers and is too
risky. Dr Ronald Herring teaches political economy and political
ecology at Cornell University and has been studying the transgenic
movement in India.

  By Subramaniam Vincent
  India Together : June 01, 2006
  http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/jun/ivw-herring.htm  

In January 2006, UK-based P G Economics reported that Bt cotton had
on balance performed better in India than non-Bt counterparts,
despite higher input costs. The findings were contested heavily by
NGOs, who for some years now have been vocal in showcasing failures
of Bt cotton crops - or put more accurately, cotton varieties with
the Bt trait - around the country.

The criticism was predictable; the Bt Cotton controversy (or debate
if you like) is a vexing one that increasingly wears polarised
colours. Proponents of Bt praise the benefits of the technology,
while a range of pro-sustainability NGOs charge that Bt has failed
farmers and that its environmental risks far outweigh the benefits.
But the debate itself not so simplistic. In a number of areas related
to cotton crop failures -- the science of Bt, farmers experiences on
the ground, positions taken by NGOs on transgenics and spurious
seeds -- views, research and outcomes are fiercely contested. There
isn't a clarity that gives watchful citizens the sense that they
understand what's really going on.

Ron Herring is Professor of Government at Cornell University, New
York and also Director/Convener of the Program on Nature and
Development there. He teaches political economy and political
ecology. His current work includes state property in nature and
politics of genetically engineered organisms (on which he is editing
a special issue of Journal of Development Studies, Transgenics and
the Poor). His articles have appeared in Frontline, Times of India,
Financial Express, Economic and Political Weekly, and other Indian
publications. He has also been consultant to the U.S. State
Department, World Bank, UNDP, and other international organizations.

Professor Herring has a particular interest in Bt Cotton in India. He
has been a regular visitor and has spent extended amounts of time
conducting research. He is also currently one of the advisors of
Devparna Roy, a Ph D student in Development Sociology at Cornell
University whose forthcoming dissertation is on Bt cotton. Herring is
skeptical of the NGO-led environmental movement in India. He argues
that the NGOs are out of touch with Indian farmers. Subramaniam
Vincent talked with Professor Herring for his sense of the news
reports of Bt Cotton failures in A.P. and Maharashtra in 2005 and
2006.

Was Bt technology busted?

First, the science of Bt technology and its impact on crop success
and failure have been misunderstood. Bt is a trait; it is not a
cotton crop variety. The Bt trait causes a particular protein to be
expressed; the protein kills a small class of bugs, most importantly
the American bollworm, which often devastates Indian cotton. That is
all there is to the technology: one gene, one protein. Varieties into
which the Bt gene has been inserted are as susceptible to all the
variables in cotton cultivation that non-Bt varieties are – micro-
climates, sucking pests, soil conditions, rainfall -- including human
factors such as farmers' familiarity with cotton in general and the
variety in particular, spurious seeds, adulterated pesticides, delays
in input arrival, and credit shortages. Any and all can cause
disaster.

Cotton is a very risky crop. If there is a varietal mismatch between
the agronomic conditions and variety, then independent of the Bt-pest
equation, crops may fail. Drought resistant varieties are valuable in
drier areas but may yield less; high-yield varieties often require
more water and will not do well if water is not available; some seed
varieties need early watering that farmers may not understand,
depending on where they got their seeds and whether the seed vendor
knew enough to tell them – a good example is Bollgard MECH 184, which
has wilting problems without early water but yields well with early
watering. And so on. This is why three hundred or so varieties of
cotton are planted in India; this number is necessary to adapt to
different regions with different agro-ecological conditions.

Mahyco Monsanto Biotech Limited had the first three Bt varieties
approved for cultivation. Most cotton breeders felt these were not
the three best possible varieties, but this was the choice, made a
decade ago. Testing and development time is quite extensive. Three
varieties (Bollgard MECH 12, 161 and 184) could not be expected to
cover the entire range of agronomic variation of India. It was a
start; some varieties did better than others, and all were costly.
Each new variety of cotton requires biosafety testing for government
approval, so there will be a time lag before the big seed companies
reproduce the diversity of Indian cottons with the Bt trait added.
Farmers and seed companies would like to see more varietal choice,
opponents of the technology would like to see it curtailed. Seed
companies would move faster if MMBL's fee were lower. In recognition,
MMBL has lowered prices to meet the competition of other seed
companies.

In Gujarat, farmers have adapted Bt varieties for their own
conditions and created hybrid concoctions. These hybrids are cheaper
and more locally adapted; many farmers believe they work better than
the approved Bt varieties, and they are spreading rapidly.

A Gujarat seed producers association has data indicating that 1.1
million packets of farmer-bred Bt seeds of various varieties shipped
from Gujarat to Punjab last year. This shows the interest in Bt in
farmers, even though this interest may not be for the licensed/legal
varieties. In fact, the Gujarat seed association folks feel that Bt
must be delicensed so that seed producers can use the working
varieties in the public domain and continually adapt and monitor them
for quality control so that they can make a legitimate business out
of them, as opposed to the sword of illegality always hovering over
their seeds.

But what puzzles me is the continuous drum-beat of "Bt cotton has
failed." If so, why do sales of MMBL's official seeds keep
increasing? Why have other seed firms licensed this very expensive
technology from MMBL? Why do farmers used saved, traded and locally-
crossed illegal varieties of Bt cotton in ever increasing numbers and
acres? Surely the NGOs don't want to argue that Indian cotton farmers
do not know cotton!

Are companies guilty of marketing seeds without approval anywhere (in
India)? This seems to be one element of opposition to Bt from NGOs.

India once had a heavily regulated official seed sector: certified
seeds came with advice and extension help in theory. During the
central planning period, seeds were central to agricultural
development. And like much in liberalization, the state's role has
declined in recent years. It is more market, caveat emptor, less
state-led and state-certified.

Seeds that spread from farmer to farmer are in any event protected by
the Seed Act of 1966 that makes it the right of farmers to exchange
or sell or save seeds. So spread of seeds from farmer to farmer
cannot be regulated unless the seeds are transgenic, and then the
GEAC (Genetic Engineering Approval Committee) gets into the act under
provisions of the Environmental Protection Act. I.e., genetically
engineered seeds are regulated much more than other kinds of seeds.
And there is good evidence that farmers are cheated by people
claiming to be selling seeds of a variety they are not, especially
when there is a shortage, and certainly Bt seeds after the rush to
obtain them in 2001. Many farmers were duped, thinking they had
bought Bt seeds but received only knock-offs.

Navbharat did register NB 151 as a hybrid with the state of Gujarat,
as required by law. And it sold well. It was only later -- when it
was discovered that this variety was transgenic -- that Navbharat was
enjoined from distribution pending biosafety tests and approval by
the GEAC. Ironically, Monsanto/Mahyco BLtd has been the most
regulated of all seed companies. I've heard no reports of their
selling spurious seeds, though spurious seeds are a huge problem
through small seed/cum/credit and pesticide wallas. It is true that
MMBL varieites were smuggled back into A.P. after the government
refused to renew the license for these varieties; farmers were
willing to pay more to get them, and they returned, but were at that
point illegal in Andhra. Farmers prefer certified seeds, but are
willing -- see Devparna Roy's work -- to take on more risk for
greater yield and lower pesticide costs of the "Navbharat variants" --
what Roy calls "loose seeds."

Lets talk about the environmental risk of Bt. You seem to agree here
that there is uncertainty in transgenics and Bt.

The crux of the issue is the opposition to the transgene in cotton.
Many plants produce their own insecticides. Among plants there is a
lot of gene flow. There are examples of "super-weeds" from
conventional breeding: "Johnson grass" is a good example, and one
that burdened my teenage years with a hoe. This is a perfectly
natural cross between jowar and prairie grass, but it is a very
destructive weed. (I would stress that superweeds need no genetic
engineering to arise. Traditional plant breeding results in
characteristics that can be shared with wild relatives, just as
genetic engineering does. One difference is that there is more
ecological monitoring of transgenes than products of other forms of
plant genetic modification in breeding.)

Transgenic flow involves implanting a gene from one species into
another to alter the crop species. The primary unknown with
transgenics is how much horizontal gene flow from the transgenic
variety into a wild relative of the agricultural crop will occur. And
if gene flow does occur, will the offspring be viable and will they
have some fitness advantage which makes them outcompete species?

What is the risk for cotton? Cotton pollen does not travel very far,
and there is evidence that wild relatives do not become transformed
to superweeds, but it is conceivable that wild relatives of cotton
could obtain the Bt gene and thus be less susceptible to bollworms
and similar pests. (See references)

What about a moratorium on GE crops/Bt Cotton then?

If there were no other existing externalities, (like pesticides),
then that would be all right. But we already use pesticides heavily,
so a moratorium on Bt Cotton is hard to justify. There is no doubt
that in India, as in many other countries, Bt cotton is typically
sprayed (with pesticides) much less than conventional cotton. Farmers
are adopting Bt cotton at such a rapid rate mostly for reduction of
pesticide cost and pollution of their fields, water and bodies.
Virtually all conversations with farmers indicate this to be a major
consideration; the forthcoming Ph D dissertation of Devparna Roy
covers these issues systematically for Gujarati cotton farmers, based
on extensive field interviews.

Think about a bio safety regime this way. They are expensive.
Continuous monitoring of any ecosystem is expensive. The greater
threat comes from invasive species. If I have a dollar, I would spend
it to monitor invasive species and pathogens. The US says invasive
species cost it 138 Billion Dollars in 2004. If you are a state
concerned about welfare, then at the margin, where is the regulatory
dollar best spent? The threat of transgenic contamination from cotton
is relatively small compared to other threats. It is not that there
may not be bad effects. But development policy is always about the
utility of the marginal dollar: where should it go? Clean water?
Nutrition? Orphan drugs? Rural clinics? Or biosafety regimes unlikely
to work?

Other transgenics may be a different story. The transgenics debate
must not put all plants in the same category. Each transgenic must be
looked at separately. For Bt Cotton, the results that say Bt Cotton
has failed have not compared isogenic varieties in their studies. The
studies need to look at identical varieties of cotton with and
without the Bt trait. I know of only one study that has done this for
India, and it concludes that the best results in cotton come from a
Bt variety (MECH 162 in this case) using integrated pest management.
(See references)

The technology works, in India as in other countries; it's a question
of fitting the technology into the right varieties, and on this score
the creative work of farmers themselves seem to come up with good
solutions – the "illegal" varieties of Bt cotton (Luxmi, Rakshak,
Vasatch, etc.) – all many Navbharat variants. These "variants" are
illegal offspring of the original Navbharat 151, a tremendously
successful Bt variety bred by Dr D B Desai and his colleagues at
Navbharat Seeds in Ahmedabad. The male plant is Bt, the female a
local variety; the hybrid is made by techniques farmers in Gujarat
have been using for a long time: the world's first hybrid cotton H 4
came from Gujarat. Farmers find re-crossing the variants to retain
the Bt trait to be both profitable and useful for fitting varieties
to local agronomic requirements. Vikas Chandak and Anil Gupta have
done a pioneering study of how farmers engage in this participatory
plant breeding of useful (albeit illegal) transgenic cottons. (See
references)

One reads a lot about "the failure of Bt cotton". The question has to
be disaggregated and treated empirically. There are certainly
spurious seeds in the industry: some "failure" may be due to fake
seeds pretending to be Bt. Farmers may believe they used Bt, but has
anyone tested their seeds? Second, if farmers believe the government
is going to give compensation for crop failure, you can safely
predict more reports of crop failure. I haven't seen any evidence
that the technology has failed, but there are many reports of crop
failure in specific locations of specific varieties.

Towards the end of 2005, reports from NGOs showed that small farmers
have violated the refuge requirements for Bt Cotton. The refuges that
needed to be there were not there. Isn't this an example of
regulations for transgenic failing to work?

Refuges with a non-Bt crop are felt to be necessary so that a
population of bollworms not exposed to Bt can continue to breed,
slowing development of resistance to the Bt toxin. There are lots of
reports of farmers ignoring this advice. Refuges are costly,
especially for small farmers.

So, will resistance develop quickly? Perhaps, but there is so far no
evidence of it. One advantage of India is that great biodiversity and
small size of fields together make for a wide variety of alternative
hosts for bollworms, even if no one plants refuges. Refuges are a
burden especially for small farmers; there are variable reports of
compliance, but if I had to guess I would not expect much compliance
over time. But I'm not sure that's a huge problem; I'm also not a
biologist. Again, the science on this is incomplete. Moreover, a lot
of money is made in proliferating biosafety regimes globally, and
public opinion supports caution. So we will have a lot of regulations
formulated for transgenics that may or may not be necessary, and many
will be ignored by farmers: just as the testing process for the first
Bt cottons was ignored by farmers growing Navbharat 151 under the
radar screen of government.

Again, the problem with regulation of transgenics in general is that
it is expensive and likely to fail – like controls on software,
pornography, drugs, etc. Governmental institutions in India – and in
other countries as well – seem incapable of policing seeds, even if
the costs were justifiable. The number of illegal Bt varieties under
cultivation already exceeds the legal varieties.

In 2001, the GEAC issued a burn order in Gujarat for illegal Bt
cotton crops, but could not enforce it. State governments, other
ministries in Delhi, and farmers in villages are all outside the
control of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee. For example,
some years back, the Government of Maharashtra announced release of
Bt Seeds in the state even before the GEAC approved Mahyco-Monsanto's
Bt varieties, just as the Government of Gujarat had refused to defy
its farmers by uprooting and burning the Bt cotton crops. ⊕

o o o o o o o

Ronald Herring has also been Chair of the Department of Government at
Cornell University and Director of the Mario Einaudi Center for
International Studies.

o o o o o o
Subramaniam Vincent is an editor and co-founder of India Together.

o o o o o o
References/Reading

Risks of transgenic cotton, low-income farmers, developing countries


Genetically modified crops: the ethical and social issues. Nuffield
Council on Bioethics, London, 2004.

The Use of Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries.
Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London.

Second report of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. 1999.

Human Development Report: Making Technologies Work for Human
Development, United Nations Development Programme, 2001, New York,
Oxford University Press.

Critique of 4: Smitu Kothari and Michelle Chawla, ed., 2002, U N
DeePer in the Techno-Corporate Mire, Kalpavriksh, Lokayan et al. New
Delhi.

UNFAO Annual Report for 2003-04, State of Food and Agriculture 2003-
04, Rome, Italy.
Forthcoming Ph D dissertation on Bt Cotton, Devparna Roy, Cornell
University.

Pesticides usage in Bt cotton


Clive James, 2002, Global Review of Transgenic Crops: 2001 Feature:
Bt Cotton. ISAAA Briefs No. 26. ISAAA: Ithaca, NY.

Bambawale, O.M., A. Singh, O.P. Sharma, B.B. Bhosle, R.C. Lavekar,
A.Dhandhapani, V. Kanwar, R.K. Tanwar, K. S. Rathod, N.Patange, and
V.M. Pawar. 2004. "Performance of Bt cotton (MECH-162) under
Integrated Pest Management in farmers' participatory field trial in
Nanded district, Central India" Current Science, 86 (12), 25 June.
3. Forthcoming paper, Devparna Roy, Charles Geisler, Ronald Herring.

Farmer bred (illegal) varieties
Anil K Gupta and Vikas Chandak, 2005, Agricultural biotechnology in
India: ethics, business and politics International Journal of
Biotechnology, Vol. 7, Nos. 1/2/3, 2005







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