Profile of an Indian GM farmer: high-tech seeds on a traditional farm

[HuckleB]

https://medium.com/the-odd-pantry-spillover/high-tech-seeds-in-a-traditional-farm-profile-of-an-indian-gm-farmer-d573a9043e11#.98p0bsand

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However, Ganesh sounds pragmatic as he describes his history with this crop. “The year I started to grow GM cotton is etched in my mind because that is the same year my son was born — 2003. He is now twelve, in the seventh standard at school, and that is how old my GM crop is”, he says. “I was the first farmer in my local area to try it out. The first year, I grew it in two acres as an experiment. The next, I expanded that to ten acres. The third year onwards I went up to a hundred percent. Other farmers have looked at my example and now most (you could say all) are growing GM cotton.”

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Many people imagine that Indian farmers were growing native cotton using thousands-of-years-old traditions before GM cotton dragged modernity in. This is not the case. Most farmers had moved beyond native cotton because its short fiber length and low yield makes it unsuitable for what the market demands — raw cotton that can feed high-volume mechanized production of fabric. Most were already growing modern hybrids, with high yields and large bolls — that were also unfortunately more susceptible to pests. In the 1990s, before GM cotton came into the market, farmers all over the country were fighting a serious infestation of cotton bollworms. Sometimes, Ganesh told me, especially given long stretches of cloudy weather, farmers would lose more than half their cotton to it, and could not harvest enough to cover their costs.

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“The thing about Bt cotton is, it has guaranteed production,” he says. “If you grow more of it, you get more of it. The more you feed it, the more you get. I don’t over-feed my soil though — I limit the NPK I add to the soil. Still I get about 12–13 quintals per acre. Before Bt cotton, the hybrids I was growing were longer duration crops. For ten months of the year my farms were occupied by cotton. Bt seeds grow a crop that is ready to harvest in six months. I can then plant a different crop for the Rabi (winter) crop after Diwali, permitting me to rotate my crops.”

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The only way to make people understand, he says, is to include Indian farmers in the conversation. While Indian and international media has been preoccupied by tales of their distress and suicides, no one, he claims, actually asks them what they think. “I feel good that someone like you is bothering to talk to me,” he says, “I feel like I have a sister all the way in America. No one usually bothers us for our opinions, not even the Indian press. They just write anything they want. If farmers didn’t like Bt cotton, why would 99% of farmers seek them out in the market?”

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A good piece that shows the vacancy that inhabits the vast majority of the anti-GMO movement.

Farmers are not stupid.

Period.