Bt cotton doesn’t hike yield: experts

They trash govt claim crediting it for India’s success story, say gene merely helps keep pests at bay

NEW DELHI: Indian agriculture experts have debunked recent claims that Bt cotton has been a boon to Indian farmers.

Bt cotton was introduced in India in 2002 and has found favour with the government as well as Cotton Association of India, which attributed increased output this year to higher productivity of Bt cotton.
 
According to the latest International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) report, Bt cotton cultivation has helped India increase its production and become the second largest cotton producer, next to China. It said India, which recorded the fastest growth in genetically modified (GM) crop adoption globally, can attain food self-sufficiency once it allows commercialisation of GM crops.

However, Krishan Bir Choudhary, president of Bharatiya Krishak Samaj and former director, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed), junked the claim. “The rainfall was better. Wherever crops receive enough water, production has been good, and not just for cotton. The Bt gene is meant to prevent bollworm pest and does not boost productivity at all,” said Choudhary.

A Netherlands-based organisation, Friends of the Earth International (FEI), pointed out that most GM cotton outside US is engineered to contain an insecticide that kills selected insect pests. The insecticide is derived from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and the seed is thus called Bt cotton.

“Bt cotton has been heralded in the media as a key factor for the increase of cotton production in Indian agriculture in the past three years, and as an important contribution to the improvement of livelihoods of small farmers in the country,” said FEI.

Mentioning problems of poor performance and higher cost of Bt cotton, it cited an article in Nature Biotechnology, which notes that Bt cotton varieties used in India (which were developed for the short US growing season) lose their insecticidal properties late in India’s longer growing season, and that the Bt cotton insecticide is not expressed in 25% of the cotton balls of India’s preferred hybrid cotton varieties.

FEI said Bt cotton’s role in Indian agriculture has been greatly exaggerated by industry sources and the monsoon and weather factors are the main factors behind the productivity increase, which has boosted not only cotton production but also that of several other crops. Further, Bt cotton has not contributed to helping most small cotton farmers escape the agrarian crisis that continues to threaten their livelihoods, the FEI said.