Response to "Let biotech crops bloom"

[nosmokes]

I don't think there's anyplace on the planet that has more chops on the GMO issue than the indian subcontinent and it's universal there. The only people that push for GMOs are those in the regulatory agencies that are in the pocket of Agbiotech. Thepeople that actually make their living in agriculture, the farmers and the NGOs that aren't fronts for the AGbiotech interests oppose the takeover by Monsanto and it's subsidiary Mayhco of the agriculture of India.
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original-gmwatch

Response to "Let biotech crops bloom"

NOTE: Brilliant riposte from p v satheesh, the director of the deccan development society.

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November 14, 2007

NOTE: This is a response to an article written by Dr Gurcharan Das in the Times of India on November 4, 2007 called Let Biotech Crops Bloom. He accuses environmental activists of 'spreading disinformation and misleading the public'. The article below exposes the disinformation spread by the likes of Dr Das who have all their life been on the payroll of transnational corporations and have such an intimate knowledge of agriculture that they cannot distinguish between a cotton and a castor plant.

Farmers or FIIs? The Bt cotton question has to be framed this way

Dr Gurcharan Das in his recent article in the Times of India makes a forceful argument for cultivation of GE crops in India, particularly Bt Cotton. It is not probably coincidental that the ISAAA, the biotech industry's lobby organization, which relentlessly and aggressively mongers genetically engineered crops all over the world, held its Board Meeting in Delhi last month and decided to take some selected Indian farmers to Europe to propagate Bt Cotton to European farmers. This is urgently needed by the GE industry because European farmers are ever so regularly moving away from GE crops by declaring their farms and regions as GE Free zones. There are thousands of such GE free zones across Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and other nations of the European continent. An average European farmer is ten times more informed than the Indian farmer. S/he has access to internet, studies various reports, enters into discussion groups with fellow farmers. And hence has far more information on the development in the GE world than the Indian farmer and therefore can make a more informed decision. Therefore the ISAAA and GE industry has made a deliberate decision to focus on Asia where farmers are less suspecting and are prone to be influenced by the hype generated by a less critical media.

The ISAAA propaganda blitz through trusted lieutenants like Gurcharan Das, who have nothing to do with agriculture but are restricted to a monetary vision of the world is quite significant from all these contexts. This vision is however a purely stock market vision of agriculture and has very little relationship with a far wider and more crucial issue of the impact of this kind of agriculture can have on the well being of small farming families. It has no clue on the impacts of Bt cotton on the health of the soil, cattle and farm workers, which is the crux of the entire debate on agriculture. Or should we assume that agriculture need to become subservient to stock markets and speak the same language as the Dalal Street?

However just for the sake of picking up the argument with Dr Das, let us examine what has Bt cotton done to the economics of the small farmer in India. Let me quote from a recent study by Ashok Malkarnekar*, Hermann Waibel and Diemuth Pemsl of the Chair of Agricultural and Development Economics, School of Management and Economics, Hannover, Germany. The three distinguished researchers made a comparative study of Bt and Non Bt cotton farmers in Karnataka. The study reveals that while the Bt farmers got a marginally higher yield of 10 kgs per Ha, the economics went completely against them. While the gross margin for non Bt farmers worked out to Rs.10,880 per Ha, the margin for Bt farmers was a paltry Rs.1435 per Ha. In other words, non Bt farmers were earning 7.5 times more than Bt farmers. Where does this leave the myth of riches that Dr Das weaves for Indian farmers?

For the last five years, we in the Deccan Development Society along with our partners in the AP Coalition in Defence of Diversity, have consistently studied the performance of Bt Cotton in the Warangal District of Andhra Pradesh. These are systematic scientific studies and are open for anybody’s inspection. . Our studies carried out from 2002-2007 have the following data to offer:

* Bt cotton yields were 30% less than non Bt in 2002-2003; 3.3% higher in 2003-2004; 5.3% higher in 2004-2005.

* In terms of net returns, In 2002-2003, Bt farmers earned Rs <->1295/acre while non Bt farmers in the same year earned Rs.5368/acre, i.e. five times higher than Bt farmers. In 2003-2004, Bt farmers managed to earn 8.9% more than non-Bt farmers. But in 2004-2005 their net income once again dipped into negative with Bt farmers earning Rs.<->252/acre while their non Bt counterparts recorded an earning of Rs.592/acre.

~snip~
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complete article here

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. I push for biotech crops.

I am not in any regulatory agency, nor am I in the pocket of Agbiotech.

But I'd be perfectly happy to take their money if they want to send it to me.

[nosmokes]

3. No, you're simply a tool.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Really?

I don't think I'm the one who believes everything I read on the internet.

[nosmokes]

5. You certainly spend a lot of time genuflecting at the altar of Monsanto for

a non-tool type.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. You certainly spend a lot of time...

posting conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, for a non-tool type.

[MadHound]

12. Why are you such a big fan of biotech?

It is an energy intensive, soil destructing, diversity destructing, nutrient destructing, job destructing, environment destructing abomination of technology. Do you really like the notion of fish genes in your strawberries? Do you really want to sterilize the soil from the Mississippi to the Rockies? Do you really want corporations determining what you eat? Do you really think that growing foods with less nutrient value is a good thing?

Truly, why are you behind GM foods?

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

2. Can you say BIODEATH.

[SpiralHawk]

6. Don't want no steenkin republicon mutant cloned chemo facsimile food product

Homelander food product crapola is what it is.

Twenty years from now even the regpublicon ag-corp fat cat greedheads who are shoving this shit down the planetary gullet will regret their mutant materialisic haste.

mutant food will lead to mutant people, just as now we have a crop of mutant mind-stubby entities known as republicon homelanders instead of Americans..

[Desertrose]

7. Amen, Spiral Hawk

Righteous, dude..... ;)and right on, dude!

:loveya::hug:
DR

[SpiralHawk]

9. Ahhhh, the sweetness of the fabulous Desert Rose

Soothes even my breast, made savage at the thought of republicon homelander mutant gmo chemo food-product facsimile crapola.

Meegwich, SH

[windoe]

10. Read "Seeds of Change' by Kenny Ausubel

and get back to us about the benefits of artificially hybridizing plants. These hi tech plants have many times less nutritonal value, less F2 generational yield making farmers unable to save seeds, and these plants need much more water, insecticides and fertilizers, making them more toxic to people and the Earth. Hybridized plants are reducing biodiversity and ruining the quality of the soil.
Hybridized plants are controlling food, stealing sovereignty from farmers and countries, yet another corporate abuse of power.
There is a massive rise in plant extinctions going on now from chemlawns replacing forest here in US.
I know most people at DU know these facts, but this is for people who have not been exposed to this data.
Plant endangered and rare plants and trees and don't use chemlawn anymore.

[Odin2005]

11. I am a biotech major and IMO the problem is NOT GMOs themselves, it's the ABUSE of the technology.

It saddens me that there is a lot of knee-jerk technophobia resulting from abuses of the technology by companies like Monsanto. Genetic engineering is a very powerful technology that can bring enormous benefits to society if used right. for example, if you have type 1 Diabetes I'm pretty sure you get your insulin from genetically modified E. coli. The problem is when the technology is used for BS like making a crop resistant to greater and greater amounts of pesticides dumped on it, which I think is just plain stupid. The big thing is that the technology needs to be very much regulated and there needs to be international treaties set up to make sure that a country's genetic resources are not stolen.

[windoe]

13. Genetic research has

raised vital ethical questions that need to be legally defined. It would be great to see real regulation of the biotech industry, but many companies just relocate to 3rd world countries to do what is illegal in the developed world.
Good luck in your chosen profession, sounds like you have a good conscience and intention to truly do some valuable work.

[nosmokes]

15. Thanks for your post Odin.

Those of us that oppose our basic food stuffs being contaminated are accused of being anti-science luddites when truly, I don't understand what's ant-scientific about demanding that new technology follow the precautionary principle.Especially something like GMO crops where there is absolutely no way to prevent contamination in the open and despite what PR departments at Bayer Science, Syngenta and Monsanto and the the rest of the Agbiotechs say the jury is still out on the safety of these transgenics and the environmental detriments and degradations are well known compared to organic sustainable methods of agriculture. There's no doubt that biotech has it's place, but farming isn't it.

[BringEmOn]

14. They grow biotches in India?