Prime Minister ignores the facts. Openly bats for dangerously risky GM crop technology.

In the 20 years since the first GM crops was introduced in US, there is a spurt in diseases. There is certainly no evidence of a direct link but there is also no evidence that this may not be somehow linked. Why not have a scientific investigation? 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stirred a hornet's nest when he warned against succumbing to ‘unscientific prejudices’ against genetically modified (GM) crops. Speaking at the 101^st Indian Science Congress at Jammu. He claimed that biotechnology has great potential to improve yields and his government remains committed ‘to promoting the use of these new technologies for agricultural development’.

Prime Minister’s statement lauding the controversial GM technology has not come as any surprise. Two environment ministers – Jairam Ramesh and Jayanthi Natarajan – have been eased out in the recent past essentially because of their opposition to GM crops. Jairam Ramesh was responsible for imposing a moratorium on Bt brinjal which if approved for cultivation would have opened up flood gates for the introduction of many more GM food crops; and his successor Jayanthi Natarajan who is generally believed to have resisted industry pressures to allow field trials of GM crops.

The day after Prime Minister openly came out in support of the dangerously risky GM technology, Monsanto stocks rose by 5.45 per cent. 

The stakes are therefore very high. For the multi-billion dollar industry, India’s refusal to accept GM crops can spell a death knell. Considering that many State governments have refused permission for holding field trials of GM crops, and the swelling opposition from Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and subsequently the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) the industry has been mounting pressure through the back channels. But let's first understand how true the so-called ‘scientific’ claims of the industry are; and whether GM crops are actually safe for human health and environment.

Prime Minister says that GM technology has great potential to improve yields. This has been claimed by the industry too. But the fact is that it is now 20 years since the first GM crop was introduced in the United States, and there is still no GM crop that increases crop productivity. US Department of Agriculture’s own studies show that the yields of GM corn and Soybean are less than that of conventional varieties.  Even in India, the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) Nagpur, which monitors the cotton crop, has admitted: “No significant yield advantage has been observed between 2004-2011 when area under Bt cotton increased from 5.4 to 96 per cent.”

The argument that the world needs to produce more for the growing population by the year 2050, and therefore it needs GM crops therefore does not hold true. But let’s look at it. Is there a shortage of food in the world? According to the USDA estimate for 2013, the world produced food good enough to feed 14 billion people. In other words, the world produces food for twice the existing population. The real problem lies in food wastage. Nearly 40 per cent of the food produced is wasted. In the US alone $ 165 billion worth of food is wasted, enough to meet the food requirement of the entire sub-Saharan Africa.

In India, which has close to 250 million people going to bed empty stomach, appalling hunger is not because of any shortfall in food production. In June 2013, India had a record food surplus of 82.3 million tones. It has already exported 20 million tonnes out if it, and there are plans to export another 20 million tones so as to reduce the carrying cost of stored food. Instead of increasing food production, the Food Ministry is planning to reduce food procurement and also use the huge stocks with the Food Corporation of India for commodity trading.

The promise of reduction in pesticides usage has also fallen flat. According to Washington State University researcher Charles Benbrook, between 1996 and 2011, farmers in US are applying an additional 181million litres of chemical pesticides. In 2012, on an average 20 per cent more pesticides were applied by GM farmers. This is now expected to go up by 25 per cent with the introduction of the next range of GM crops which will use a cocktail of herbicides including the deadly broad-spectrum chemicals.

In Argentina, the application of chemical pesticides has risen from 34 million litres in the mid-1990s when the GM soybean crops were first introduced to more than 317 million litres in 2012, roughly a ten times increase. On an average, Argentine farmers use twice the quantity of pesticides per acre than their American counterparts. In Brazil, which has recently taken over Argentina as far as the spread of GM crops is concerned, pesticides use has gone up by 190 per cent in the past decade. 

The Chinese farmers are spraying 20 times more pesticides to control pests. In India, the story is no different. Regardless of what the industry claims, the fact remains that the usage of pesticides too has gone up in India. In 2005, Rs 649-crore worth of chemical pesticides was used on cotton in India. In 2010, when roughly 92 per cent area under cotton shifted to Bt cotton varieties, the pesticides usage in terms of value increased to Rs 880.40 crore. 

Equally more worrisome is the emergence of hard-to-kill weeds, called ‘super weeds’. Estimates show that in US over 100 million acres is now infested with super weeds. Besides using a cocktail of chemical pesticides to control it, some US States are going in for hand weeding since chemicals are no longer effective. In neighbouring Canada, more than 1 million acre is infested with super weeds. Studies show that 21 weeds have now developed resistance after GM crops came. Insects too are now developing immunity against GM crops. In India, Monsanto has already accepted that bollworm pest is becoming resistant.

With no benefits accruing as far as increasing crop yields is concerned or reducing pesticides applications and thereby protecting the human health and environment, I don’t know what promise the Prime Minister sees in GM crops. In fact, all evidence now points to an end of the era in industrial agriculture. With soils poisoned, underground water mined ruthlessly, and with the entire food chain contaminated by chemical pesticides and fertilizers leading to more greenhouse gas emissions, the focus is now shifting to ecological agriculture. 

In Andhra Pradesh, nearly 3.5 million acres today is being cultivated without the use of any chemical pesticides. Out of which, farmers do not use even fertilisers in 2.0 million acres. Production is steadily rising, pollution has come down, soil fertility is rising, farmer’s income has gone up and there are no suicides. Isn’t it a model of farming that the Prime Minister should be advocating? If it can be done in 3.5 million acres I see no reason why it cannot be practiced in 35.0 million acres? That’s where the future lies. #

Further reading: 

1. Time to sow the seeds of sustainable farming. Hindustan Times, Feb 10, 2014. http://bit.ly/1bDlyG8

2. Shifting to organic breeding. Deccan Herald. Feb 7, 2014. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/385133/shifting-organic-breeding.html

Food Security bill: Why it is an opportunity lost

Several years ago I and Dr M S Swaminathan were speaking at a conference on hunger at Rome. Also speaking at one of the session was the Brazilian Minister for Zero Hunger Programme, the dream programme of ex-President LuizInácio Lula da Silva. After he had listened to us, he sat down with us to know of how India was battling hunger, specially the way India was managing its food self-sufficiency and the massive food procurement programme.

It was therefore so heartening to read a news report saying No hunger in Brazil by 2015. This only shows the ability of the Brazilian leadership to learn from others, and draw up a programme to fight hunger based on the central premise: supporting family farms – which currently provide 70 percent of the food eaten by Brazilians. The entire programme to fight hunger was designed on the basis of what the country required. 

Ever since Brazil launched the Zero Hunger programme in 2001, it has pulled out 30-40 million people from poverty. While Brazil promises to remove hunger by 2015, there is no such clarity and promise being doled out under the ambitious National Food Security bill in India. To me it seems that while Brazil's Zero Hunger was time-bound and aimed at making hunger history, India's food security bill is simply targeted at the 2014 elections, and is for posterity.

India's proposed food security bill therefore is a lost opportunity. Sonia Gandhi did provide a historic opportunity for the National Advisory Council (NAC) to come up with a proposal to fight hunger in such a meaningful way that makes hunger history. But the opportunity was squandered. I would have been keenly looking for a policy programme which could have spelled out how much hunger would go away in the next five years, in the next 10 years, in the next 15 years and so on. The proposed law could have been easily designed in a manner that aims to remove hunger once for all rather than keep the majority population dependent on food doles for all times to come. An economically viable and sustainable agriculture should have been at the centre of the food security programme. With nearly 2,500 farmers quitting agriculture every day, and nowhere to go, the scourge of hunger is only going to multiply.

The United Nations meanwhile has complimented 38 countries, including Brazil, for beating a UN deadline of 2015 to remove half their hunger. It was in the year 2000 when the UN established the Millennium Development Goals for countries, the first target being to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half by the year 2015. These 38 countries are: Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Maldives, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam.

While I agree that 91 per cent reduction in global hunger since 1991-92 has come from the efforts made by just two countries – China and Vietnam, it is significant that some other countries are fast racing to eradicate hunger. Even if these countries have relatively smaller populations (except Indonesia and Bangladesh) hunger is a scourge that blots development everywhere including tiny nations. A hungry nation can never be economically strong howsoever it may try to paint a rosy picture based on statistical jugglery.

The proposed National Food Security bill therefore was an excellent opportunity to plan a time-bound programme – that cuts into several related ministries. Besides agriculture, rural development, science& technology, the law should have also corrected many distortions coming through international trade, industry and land acquisitions.

Take the case of the dairy sector. It is generally believed that most farmers who have not committed suicide are the ones who are also keeping dairy animals. But under the proposed Indo-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that is about to be signed, India has agreed to drastically reduce the import duties on the import of milk and dairy products. This will bring in a flood of cheaper imports which the European Union is saddled with. These highly subsidised imports will hit not only the cooperative dairy sector but also render small farmers uneconomical. 

Brazil is the biggest exporter of Indian breeds of cows. Gir cow now records over 62 litres/day in Brazil..

This majestic cow is from Brazil. Belonging to the Gir breed of Gujarat, this cow -- named She-ra -- clocked 62.033 litres of milk in a 3-day milk competition at the 40th Expaja in Brazil, beating her own record of 59.947 litres. While Indian cattle breeds are doing exceptionally fine abroad, the fascination of our own policy makers for exotic breeds seems to be never ending. Meanwhile, Brazil has emerged as the biggest exporter of Indian breeds of cows. Recently I wrote: "newspapers in Punjab reported that an American company -- World Wide Sires Ltd -- is planning to provide high quality semen to dairy farmers. Some days back, I had heard that the Kerala minister for Animal Husbandry was thinking of importing some improved cattle breeds from Denmark for cross breeding with local cows." [See my blog post: Holy Cows -- acclaimed abroad, despised at home. http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.in/2010/09/holy-cows-acclaimed-abroad-despised-at.html].

A few weeks back, Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal announced the setting up of an advanced institute for dairy farming in Mohali. This will be a joint collaboration with an Israeli firm -- Dairy Farming Solutions -- and will impart latest technology to farmers to improve the milch cattle [Punjab to have advanced institute of dairy farming, http://post.jagran.com/punjab-to-have-advanced-institute-of-dairy-farming-1341507876].

Not only in Brazil, Indian cattle breeds have also been improved upon in the United States and Australia. In the US, the breed is called Brahman. Recently, after a study visit to Malaysia, Sagari Ramdas, the co-director of Anthra in Andhra Pradesh, wrote in the Down to Earth magazine: "On our visit to Malaysia, we were intrigued when we came across a cattle breed, which the farmers kept referring to as “the Brahman”. This was a complete mystery to us. Which Brahman came to Malaysia and named these cattle the Brahman?"

"On our visit to the government’s Department of Veterinary Services in the state of Selangor we saw photographs of the Grey Brahman, the Red Brahman and the Nellore—all part of a poster on cattle breeds of Malaysia. Not to mention that the Jamunapari goat also featured in the poster as a goat breed of the country. This intrigued us even further, but none of the veterinary officers could explain how the Nellore from Andhra Pradesh and the Jamunapari from Uttar Pradesh happened to figure in a poster on the breeds of Malaysia."

She came back and researched. "Brahman breed is a product of biopiracy of several Indian breeds, which occurred over 100 years ago, when India was a colony of the British Empire, when “pirates” of today’s “Empire”—and modern day “Brahman”, the US—spirited out a nucleus of approximately 266 bulls and 22 females of several Bos indicus (Indian cattle), imported them to the US between 1854 and 1926, and developed the breed.

According to the literature, the Brahman is the progeny of four Indian cattle breeds: the Kankrej and Gir from Gujarat, the Ongole (earlier known as the Nellore) from Andhra Pradesh, with the fourth breed being the “Gujarat”. But no such breed exists in the list of Indian cattle breeds.

The Brahman has become the most popular beef cattle breed in the southern parts of the US and in South America, Asia, and Australia because of its excellent adaptability to sub-tropical climates and its production abilities.

Brahman-type cattle were, in fact, imported to Australia from the US, and today the Australian Brahman is the mainstay of the northern beef industry of Australia. The Brahman in Malaysia has primarily been imported from Australia, which has a virtual monopoly in exporting the breed to several south-east Asian countries. So much so that Malaysia’s beef cattle industry is completely dependent on continued import of the Brahman from Australia [You can read the full article The loss of our breeds, Down to Earth, 2012-7-15. http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/loss-our-breeds]."

This brings me back to the question I have been asking again and again. When will we begin to recognise our desi breeds of cows? Why is it that planners are averse to our own domestic breeds?

What is also little know is the fact that Indian cows and buffaloes produce a more nutritious milk than the exotic breeds like Jersey and Holstein-Friesian. A recent study by Karnal-based National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR) showed Indian cows have a rich A2 allele gene which helps them produce healthier milk. The frequency of this A2 allele in Indian breeds is 100 per cent whereas in exotic cattle breeds it is less than 60 per cent. Imported breeds posses A1 allele, which is considered to be associated with diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases [Indian Cow, Buffalo breeds give healthier milk. http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=725938]. Why do we want the future generations to be sick with lifestyle diseases?