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India: Bt cotton devastated by secondary pests
http://www.infochangeindia.org/features441.jsp
"
style="font-weight: bold;">Making a meal of BT cotton
Bhaskar Goswami, InfoChange News & Features,
India
01.09.2007
Bhaskar Goswami is with the New
Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food
Security
In the Malwa belt of
rural Punjab, mile after mile of Bt cotton fields are under
attack by the mealy bug pest. Bathinda, Muktsar, Faridkot
and Ferozepur, Punjab's four major cotton-growing districts,
have been badly affected. The so-called "magic
bullet", Bt cotton has turned into a bitter pill for
farmers who were promised profits but who are now faced with
huge losses
Anyone overhearing Hartej Singh on
his cell phone would find the conversation strange.
"Dho ditta ji Bt nu safed chichra ne,"
("mealy bugs have devastated the Bt cotton") he
bellows at the caller. Standing in his field in the mid-July
sun, Hartej is busy fielding numerous calls of a similar
nature. He is an exception -- the sole cotton farmer in
Mehtawali village in Bathinda whose crop has not been
affected by the dreaded mealy bug.
These days,
travelling across the Malwa belt of rural Punjab is a
revelation. Mile after mile of unending Bt cotton fields,
which appear healthy from a distance, are facing
unprecedented attack by the mealy bug. Bathinda, Muktsar,
Faridkot and Ferozepur, Punjab's four major cotton-growing
districts, have all been badly affected.
The crisis
While Bt cotton made an
official entry into Punjab in 2005, enterprising farmers
here began cultivating bootlegged varieties from Gujarat a
year earlier. According to official statistics, around 60%
of farmers in the state are growing Bt cotton this year. In
the four cotton-producing districts, Bt cotton coverage is
almost 100%.
Unlike in Andhra Pradesh, Bt cotton
in Punjab lived up to its promise of protecting against the
dreaded American bollworm, and the number of sprays needed
dropped from a high 30 to less than five. This is the main
reason why farmers switched to these varieties.
However, Bt cotton protects the crop only against one
pest; cotton is attacked by no less than 165 pests. This
raises the chances of a resurgence of secondary pests and
farmers end up spraying the same quantity of pesticide (if
not more) on their crop as they did earlier. In Andhra
Pradesh, the number of attacks by aphids, thrips, jassids,
etc, has risen since the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002.
Tobacco leaf streak virus, tobacco caterpillars, etc, have
emerged as new diseases and pests of Bt cotton in the state.
This year, reports of fungal root rot in Bt cotton are
beginning to pour in from Warangal district in Andhra
Pradesh. The emergence of the mealy bug as a Bt cotton pest
in Punjab also appears to be a case of secondary pest
resurgence, and no amount or type of pesticide has been able
to control it.
Scientists at Punjab Agriculture
University (PAU) are yet to figure out an effective way of
tackling the pest, or, for that matter, what is causing it
to assume such epidemic proportions. On July 9, Dr N S
Butter, head of the department of entomology told the press
that the attack was mainly due to a reduction in pesticide
sprays on Bt cotton, and also the proliferation of weeds
like Congress grass (Parthenium hysterophorus), which is a
major host of the pest.
This is bizarre,
considering the fact that Congress grass has been growing in
the state for decades. What's more, the reduced number of
sprays was against American bollworm, not the mealy bug, and
the type of pesticide used against the two is quite
different. Also, American bollworm attacks during the
monsoon while the mealy bug is mostly active during
summer.
The mealy bug feeds on around 300 crops
on the subcontinent. Attacks are generally intense during
summer; they subside when the temperature drops. Bt cotton
crop in Punjab was attacked by the mealy bug last year as
well, but the damage was not substantial as the crop was
close to maturity. This year, however, the attack was
intense during the second month of sowing.
The devastation
Unlike the Doaba and
Majha regions of Punjab, the four cotton-growing districts
in the Malwa belt have poorer soil and fewer irrigation
canals. Cotton is the major cash crop, while wheat is the
staple crop that meets the food requirements of relatively
less well-off farmers in this belt. Bathinda district alone
accounts for a quarter of the cotton produced in Punjab.
Destruction of the cotton crop in this district therefore
affects thousands of farmers.
According to the
state agriculture department, over 2,000 acres of cotton
crop were destroyed by the mealy bug by July 10. This
appears to be a conservative estimate. During my trip to the
region in mid-July, every village reported having uprooted
at least five acres of Bt cotton crop every day. In the
village of Raike-Kalan, in Bathinda, over 100 acres of mealy
bug-infested Bt cotton had already been uprooted when I
visited the area. It's the same story across hundreds of
neighbouring villages.
That pesticides are not
working against this pest is evident from the farmers'
accounts. Balwant Singh, a farmer in Mehtawali village in
Bathinda, consulted scientists at both the PAU and the state
agriculture department. He was advised to rotate sprays of
the carbamate and organophosphate pesticide groups. Balwant
understands how this is done, for he is the insecticide
retailer in the village. Four rounds of sprays later, he has
given up.
The same story is being repeated in
Badal village in Muktsar district, the birthplace of Punjab
Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. During my visit,
pesticides were being feverishly sprayed on Bt cotton fields
in the village, but to no avail. The bug subsides and
re-emerges within a week of spraying.
"We
used to cuff our children if they touched even one sapling
of cotton. Now we use our own hands to uproot what we
planted," says Nachhatar Singh of Raike-Kalan.
Nachhatar owns two acres of land and has leased-in five more
to grow Bt cotton. Each leased acre of land costs him Rs
16,000, while the cost of cultivating Bt cotton on the land
is around Rs 5,000. All this is now lost. Since his land is
irrigated and he could also source some paddy seedlings,
Nachhatar uprooted the damaged Bt cotton crop and replaced
it with paddy, thereby incurring an additional expenditure
of Rs 5,000 per acre. As a result his total expenditure has
now shot up to Rs 26,000 per acre -- for paddy! This is a
far cry from the Rs 4,000 per acre profits promised by
Mahyco-Monsanto while marketing Bt cotton seed!
Sharecropping is practised quite routinely all over the
Malwa belt. Since the introduction of Bt cotton in Punjab,
the practice of leasing-in land to cultivate cotton has
increased among marginal and small farmers. Due to the mealy
bug attack, these sharecroppers are now uprooting Bt cotton
and replacing it with paddy. This is being done to somehow
reduce the huge losses arising out of Bt cotton cultivation.
?But unless farmers sell their paddy at a minimum of Rs
1,600 per quintal, they will not recover even their
cultivation costs this year. The minimum support price was a
mere Rs 650 per quintal last year.
The writing on
the wall is therefore quite clear for small farmers. Like
neighbouring Sangrur, the four cotton-growing districts of
Punjab may soon begin reporting increasing numbers of farmer
suicides.
The response
While the state agriculture department and PAU are groping
in the dark for a solution, the response from the Centre is
a not-so-surprising dead silence. According to the
International Seed Federation, this year the estimated size
of India's seed market is around $ 1.3 billion
(approximately Rs 5,200 crore) -- the sixth highest in the
world. By opening up the seed sector to biotech seed
manufacturers, the Centre had signalled, a long time ago,
that profits to these corporations weigh higher than the
concerns of farmers.
When asked by local
journalists about the steps being taken to stem the mealy
bug epidemic in Punjab, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA)
passed the buck back saying that agriculture was a state
subject.
This is ironical. After all, it wasn't
the Punjab government that approved 135 varieties of Bt
cotton in the last five years but the Genetic Engineering
Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Union government, of which
the MoA is a member. The fact remains that the GEAC has
permitted cultivation of Bt cotton varieties without
carrying out adequate testing for the resurgence of
secondary pests and diseases. As has now become the
established norm with respect to genetically modified crops,
farmers are being made to pay a steep price for the
incompetence of the regulatory body and the greed of biotech
companies.
Not only has the introduction of Bt
cotton brought disaster in the form of the mealy bug, it is
also affecting yields of the subsequent crop -- wheat.
Farmers reported an up to 30% drop in wheat productivity on
land that had previously been cultivated with Bt cotton.
This is similar to reports from Andhra Pradesh where the
Kisan Call Centre in Hyderabad received a number of
complaints from farmers about declining yields of subsequent
crops.
According to Vyavsaya Panchangam -- a
farmers' almanac -- published by the Acharya N G Ranga
Agriculture University, Hyderabad, Bt cotton uses more
fertiliser than its non-Bt counterparts. If adequate amounts
of fertiliser are not applied, the subsequent crop receives
fewer nutrients. Further, the Bt toxin also expresses itself
in the root zone of the plant and can affect soil
biodiversity and ecosystem function, as reported in a
research study by the Australian government. These may
partly explain why yields of subsequent crops are declining,
although nobody is paying much attention to this aspect.
The alternative
This brings
the story back to Hartej Singh, an organic farmer associated
with the Kheti Virasat Mission. Singh grows cotton
intercropped with rows of pigeon pea, sorghum, maize,
soybean, cluster bean, etc. Some of these are leguminous
crops that are uprooted and used as green manure. He grows
F-1378, an early-maturing American cotton variety and LD
327, a high-yielding desi variety that is also tolerant to
Fusarium wilt. His yields are slightly lower than those of
the Bt cotton in neighbouring fields.
But while
the neighbouring fields are heavily infested by the mealy
bug, Singh's cotton crop is completely unaffected. Likewise
for the 100-odd farmers of the Malwa belt who, as part of
the Kheti Virasat Mission, are growing non-Bt cotton
following the principles of organic farming. Intercropping
with several different crops stops pests from migrating to
the next row of cotton, and since these crops have never
been sprayed with pesticide, predators like beetle larvae
can be seen feeding on the mealy bugs. Whenever the pest
concentration goes up, a combination of neemleaves and pods,
along with Datura, etc, mixed with cow urine, is sprayed on
the crop. The attack subsides and damage to the cotton crop
is negligible.
Umendra Dutt, Executive Director
of the Kheti Virasat Mission, sums it up thus: "Farmers
were promised a magic bullet in the form of Bt cotton which
has turned into a bitter pill." Meanwhile, the PAU and
state agriculture department are now consulting Dutt to work
out a way to tackle the mealy bug. Speaking to the media on
August 9, the head of the department of entomology
recommended using traditional methods to destroy the mealy
bug -- remove the weed hosts and use neem-based
insecticides
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Agricultur
e/Bug_makes_meal_of_Punjab_cotton_whither_Bt_magic/articlesh
ow/msid-2330585,curpg-1.cms
">Bug makes meal of Punjab Cotton,
Whither Bt magic?
Indio-Asian
News Agency, India
The Economic Times, India
02.09.2007
CHANDIGARH: The magic of Bt
cotton in southern Punjab has vanished. Weary and stressed
farmers - who are said to have sprayed pesticides worth
over Rs 500 crore (over $120 million) this season to save
their cotton crop from the mealy bug - are headed for major
losses this time around.
Just a few months ago,
in the February assembly elections in Punjab, the victory
of the Congress in assembly seats from the once Akali Dal
stronghold of Malwa - the cotton growing belt of south
Punjab - was credited to the two years of success of the
genetically modified Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton
crop with its bumper yields and returns.
But in
the first cotton season after the Akalis took over in
Punjab, the mealy bug - a kind of insect - has wreaked
devastation in Malwa's fields.
"Nobody
knows clearly about this insect that is destroying our
crops. After two bumper seasons, we are heading straight
for a major loss. The farmers are in a crisis," stated
Bachan Singh showing his "mealy bug"-infested
cotton crop in his fields near Sardulgarh, 250 km from
here.
Farmers refer to the mealy bug as
"chitti bhoondi" (white insect) in local
parlance.
Hundreds of farmers in this belt of
Punjab and even in neighbouring Pakistan could have never
imagined that Bt cotton could be hit by a virus. The
white-colour bug, considered deadlier than the American
bollworm, is now threatening the cotton crop in Punjab and
elsewhere. At least 25 per cent of the crop is already
destroyed.
The concern is genuine. Based on the
success of Bt cotton in the last two years, the area under
cotton cultivation increased from 570,000 hectares to
648,000 hectares.
Companies that helped farmers
introduce Bt cotton are themselves at a loss over the turn
of events.
Global crop protection chemicals
major, Dupont, has admitted that there is currently
"no perfect solution" to deal with the new bugs
attacking Bt cotton crops across the country.
"The introduction of Bt cotton was a technological
advancement and has benefited Indian farmers in a big way.
The shift from conventional cotton varieties has saved
farmers an estimated Rs 400 crore on pesticide sprays. But
it is true that new technologies give rise to a new set of
problems, including pest shifts," Dupont's South Asia
business manager Ram Mudholkar said here.
Mudholkar said though there were insecticides, including
Dupont's own Methomyl, that could be used to tackle the
problem, farmers needed to be adequately educated on how to
apply these products.
"There is currently
no very good solution to the mealy bug affecting Bt cotton
crops in Punjab and elsewhere," he said.
Environmental NGO Kheti Virasat Mission, which advocates
natural farming, environmental health and conservation of
natural resources, is already concerned over pesticides
worth Rs 500 crore being sprayed in the Malwa belt.
"There are already abundant stories of cancer
cases being rampant due to the excessive use of pesticides.
Spraying more pesticides to control the mealy bug will make
matters worse," one activist said.
The
NGO's executive director Umendra Dutt has expressed concern
about the fate of Bt cotton in a recent article.
"A major portion of the profit which the farmer
hoped to reap from his cotton crop has already gone into
pockets of pesticide companies, making the farmer once
again the ultimate loser," he wrote.
"First, he purchased expensive Bollgard Bt seeds,
believing in their resistance towards pests, and after the
mealy bug made a meal of the Bt cotton, the farmer made a
huge investment in pesticides.
"The seed
companies had already cornered the lion's share of the
cotton crop by selling the farmers expensive seed and now
it is the turn of pesticide companies to squeeze the
farmers. Our farmer is surrounded by merchants of Venice;
there are Shylocks all around him," Dutt wrote.
Dutt added that mobile vans carrying big banners of
pesticide companies were criss-crossing villages to educate
farmers about the mealy bug attack. "But educating
farmers is a money minting exercise for the pesticide
companies," he added.
Agriculture officials
in Bathinda say that pesticides sprayed in recent weeks
have not rid the crop of the mealy bug. The Punjab
government has sent a report to the central govenrment
saying the mealy bug problem was there but was "under
control".
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