Glenn Davis Stone: Genetically Modified Crops in India
The debate over biotechnology is probably more intense in India today than in any other country. In June 2002, Indian farmers began to plant a legal genetically modified crop -- Bollgard cotton -- for the first time (after several years of illegal cultivation). Biotechnology companies and anti-GMO activists alike make diametrically opposed claims on how GM crops will affect India, but most of the important questions remain unanswered. Prof. Glenn Stone has recently begun research in Warangal District, a troubled cotton-growing area in southern India, on ecological and political aspects of the coming wave of genetically modified crops.
Beneath an image of Gandhi, Dr. Pushpa Bhargava, one of the leading biologists in India, speaks against genetically modified cotton at a farmer meeting. Bhargava does not oppose biotechnology in general, but has been highly critical of the way the technology has developed in India.

 

Farmers in Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh, with the first box of genetically modified cotton bought in the village. The cost was 4x the cost of a normal box of hybrid cotton seed. Wife of the man who bought that first box, hand-watering the young plants when the rains failed.

 

Normally posing little threat to cotton, these whiteflies are a hallmark of the "pesticide treadmill:" pesticides kill off the pest's natural predators and cause whitefly populations to explode. Meanwhile, the target pests are developing resistance to the chemicals. The pesticide treadmill leads to increasingly desperate search new pesticides. Whether or not the new cotton, modified to produce its own Bt-derived insecticide, will provide a sustainable solution is the question of the hour.