POOR Indian farmers are not driven to suicide by the pressures of growing genetically modified cotton, concludes a comprehensive review published last month – if anything, suicides among farmers have fallen since Bt cotton was introduced by Monsanto in 2002, quite steeply in some states.
“It is not only inaccurate, but simply wrong to blame the use of Bt cotton as the primary cause of farmer suicides in India,” says the report by independent think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Groups opposed to GM crops, such as Gene Campaign and Navdanya, both based in New Delhi, have long argued that introducing GM cotton has been a disaster. Navdanya, for example, claims that the high cost and poor performance of the earliest varieties drove farmers into heavy debt from which suicide was seen as the only honourable release.
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Just before the report’s publication, Prince Charles, the famously anti-GM heir to the British throne, delivered a lecture to Navdanya by video link repeating the allegation. He talked of the “truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming in part from the failure of many GM crop varieties”.
The report concedes that early varieties were so ill-suited to Indian conditions that they may have caused catastrophic failures for some farmers. But droughts at the time – particularly in states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra – meant that conventional cotton failed too. Not only that, says the report, but rogue dealers sold farmers fake or sub-standard Bt cotton seeds.
Although the Bt crop now accounts for an estimated 85 per cent of all cotton grown in India (see graph) suicide rates haven’t soared. If anything, they’ve been falling nationally since 2002. In Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, suicide rates have plunged, suggesting that the success of newer varieties may actually help avert deaths.
The report says that a key driver of suicide in Indian farmers is local and federal governments’ failure to provide practical and financial support to poor farmers. This has forced them to rely on loan sharks and moneylenders who charge exorbitant rates of interest of up to 36 per cent.
“Suicide in Indian farmers has been driven by the failure of the government to provide practical and financial support”
“The moneylenders have been the primary reason for the situation getting out of hand,” says Debdatta Sengupta of IFPRI. “What we argue is that it’s far more complex than simply adopting a technology,” says lead author Guillaume Gruère, also of IFPRI.
The absence of any kind of safety net or insurance, combined with ineffective irrigation and corrupt banking systems, means that suicide may seem like the only way out for poor farmers, say the authors.
The IFPRI report concludes that overall, the introduction of the cotton has been a huge success, doubling yields in five years and turning India from a net importer of cotton to the world’s second largest exporter. Contrary to claims from opponents, the cotton has also cut pesticide use by up to 40 per cent because the plants are engineered to make their own pesticide. And, while Bt cotton is more expensive than non-GM, which raises total costs by 15 per cent, this is made up for by higher yields which have sent net returns soaring by up to 71 per cent extra.
However, while Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign agrees that suicides have levelled off, she says Bt cotton was initially “disastrous”: “Many farmers made a huge outlay that wasn’t recovered,” she says. Prince Charles would not comment on the IFPRI paper, but a spokeswoman said that the prince had visited India recently and “talked directly to farmers about their difficulties on this issue”.
