You’re
a small-scale farmer in India.
For the small scale farmer, debt is a huge problem |
You
used to combine growing cotton with growing food crops, but then the
government started telling you about a new wonder cotton which would
make you rich. Ads appeared on TV...happy farmers, like you, only
with plenty of money for daughters‘ weddings and for parents
healthcare crops. The ads, from companies like Monsanto - American,
‘modern‘ and therefore good in your eyes - promised a better,
more successful farming life if you used their special genetically
modified (GM) Bt cotton seeds. You trusted them, turned over your
entire crop production to cotton....and, then, as the years
progressed, like tens of thousands of small scale farmers, you started
to wonder what you’d let yourself in for.
The
ads hadn’t explained how costly the new Bt seeds would be and that
producing chemical cotton is an expensive process, with no guarantee
of success.
According
to a farmer in the 2007 documentary Cotton for my Shroud,
seeds used to be 30 rs per kg. Then hybrid seeds went on the market
at around 200 rs per kg, then Bt seeds cost 4-5000 rs per kg. This
huge increase in the cost of basic seeds is out of all proportion to
an increase in yield. And with one kg of seeds needed to sow one
acre, farmers are facing a substantial outlay. Fertilizer, which used
to cost 30 rs per pack is now rs 200.
Most
shocking is the increase in the cost of pesticide. Previously
pesticide was around 30 rs per litre. But with the advent of Bt GM
cotton, the average cost of pesticide produced by transnational
agrichemical giants like Bayer, Dupont, and Monsanto, is around rs
8000 to 15,000 per litre.
Simultaneously,
the output and fertility of the land has decreased, as the soil is
weakened by continual sowing and resowing with the same, chemically
dependent cotton crops. Soil has no chance to replenish itself as it
is not possible to plant alternative crops due to high outlays.
Overuse and over-reliance on scarce water supplies means that
irrigation becomes increasingly difficult.
As
one farmer observes, ‘You keep sowing an unprofitable crop and
your loss keeps growing. Those who accumulate heavy losses, when the
banks shut their doors, go to moneylenders. If the debt is unpaid the
moneylenders take their land, and house.’
And
if the cotton crop survives and the market price is reasonable, the
corporate lobby applies pressure to government, and cotton is
imported. Local rates crash again and more farmers die. A
report submitted to the Indian parliament suggested that there
were around
291,000 farmer suicides from 1995 till Aug 2011... about one suicide
every 30 mins.
Countries
like the US, which gives $4 billion subsidy to its cotton farmers,
are constantly scouting for new markets. Under pressure from the WTO
(World Trade Organisation), the Indian government removed all
quantitative restrictions on imports. Cheap cotton from rich
countries benefitting from substantial subsidies, made cotton
production even less profitable for Indian farmers.
The local cotton market...competing with US$ 4 billion subsidies |
And
the trend of expensive Bt cotton continues to this day. Vivekananda
Nemana of the blog India Ink
reports that at a recent UN summit on GMOs in Hyderabad, south
India, organised by the pro-biotechnology International Service for
the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), representatives
from the group said GM cotton was a success. Farmers no longer
suffered from bollworms, which once ruined large sections of their
crop, and saved time and money.
The
farmers themselves told a different story. According to one, T
Venkatesh, ‘We’re getting higher yields, but we’re not
better off. Our costs have gone up much faster than the price of
cotton.’
Another
farmer, Srinivas Reddy agreed. ‘We buy our seeds on the black
market and we pay three, sometimes five times as much as we did for
normal seeds. But nobody is selling non Bt seeds anymore.’
Costs for farmhands and pesticides had also gone up, he said.
In
June 2013, the news magazine India Today reported
that Andhra Pradesh faced an acute shortage of Bt cotton seeds,
driving up black market prices to as high as 2,000 rupees per packet
and leading to a profusion of bootlegged seeds.
Though
proponents of GM agriculture, as well as some independent
studies,
say that higher yields offset the costs of the seeds, farmers have
seen other costs rise as well. The Andhra farmers said their crops
were now affected by aphids, which replaced the bollworms that Bt
cotton was designed to resist. The new pesticides require fewer
applications, they said, but are far more expensive.
‘The
old pesticide used to cost us 200 rupees per litre,’
said one farmer, who has been planting Bt cotton for six years. ‘Now
I have to pay between 2,000 to 3,000 rupees. And I need to apply it
more and more every year.’
Some
critics of GM seeds see a never-ending cycle of rising costs – and
debts – for farmers.
‘Farmers
buy the seeds, and the costs of the pesticides, which they buy from
the same companies, are probably tenfold what they used to pay,’
said Shivani Shah, a campaigner for Greenpeace in India. ‘So
it’s creating a system of dependency. It is a deliberate idea of
increasing costs and increasing royalties – there is no intention
of reducing those costs through economies of scale.’
Lim
Li Ching, a researcher with the Third World Network, a nonprofit
devoted to developmental issues, said the increased costs from the
rise of aphids was an expected turn of events. ‘As
ecologists have pointed out from the start, you take out a target
pest, you’re likely to have secondary pests coming because that’s
how ecology works: you vacate one niche, you’ll have another niche
take its place,’she
said.
Higher
seed and pesticide costs have left small farmers in India – and
other developing countries – more vulnerable to failed monsoons and
other climate change-related dangers.
For
small farmers, the consequences can be tragic. When weak monsoon
rains led to crop failures in 2005, hundreds of debt-ridden Bt cotton
farmers in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra committed
suicide by drinking pesticide. A PBS
documentary
on the suicides by Chad Heeter reported that the indebtedness was
largely due to expensive GM seeds and pesticides. And each growing
season, the suicides of indebted cotton farmers continue.
As
a small business, trying to carve a niche in the competitive fashion
industry, Nukleus understands the plight of small scale farmers. We
acknowledge and honour the persistence of farmers who switch from
chemically-dependent GM/Bt cotton to organic cotton...a process that
takes three years, in which they will have little or no income. These
farmers, like Nukleus and our fans have a vision of a better, more
sustainable world, in which cotton does not cost the earth.
We
salute and support the organic cotton farmers of India, who are
struggling so valiantly to make a decent living for themselves and
their families...and we salute our fans who make this possible.
Buying organic cotton items may cost a little more, and we are all
financially challenged. But spending a little more cash is an
investment in our health, and the future, for ourselves and the
planet...because we’re worth it.
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