GM Mustard will have "serious" health and environmental impact, a farmers body today claimed and demanded a ban on the mustard hybrid.
In its resolution, Kisan Ekta, which claimed to be the largest farmers organisation representing 400 million farmers also reminded Prime Minister Narendra Modi that GM Mustard is a "negative" value crop and will "endanger" not only farmers but also trade, exports and environment as well.
The farmers body also decided to re-launch "Yellow Revolution" with a focus on organic and agro-ecological approaches, higher assured prices and increased protection from cheap imported oil.
"We resolve categorically to demand to the government that GM Mustard has to be banned. We want the state governments also to reject GM mustard.
"It is high time that we address the real issues that farmers face, vis-a vis farmer suicides, increasing cost of production, near stagnant prices, decreased import tariffs, massive crop losses, increasing debt of the farmers, and depleting natural resources including a healthy and organic soil," the body said in a statement.
The farmers body said that Indian agriculture has a strong "No GMO" brand value and is moving to a high value "Organic" brand, with very impressive growth rates while GM Mustard will destroy this trade advantage and the long-pending shift to organic farming and agro-ecological agriculture.
"We have also clearly understood that globally, there is massive opposition to any GM crop and any attempt to release more GM crops in India will endanger not only our farmers, but also our trade, exports and environment as well.
"We wish to remind the PM that GM Mustard is a negative value crop, while organic mustard will have huge value appreciation. This is advantageous for the farmer, trader and consumer. No sensible nation will destroy this advantage," they said.
Other Anti GM activists have raised concerns on the process currently being undertaken by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) under the Environment Ministry for GM mustard which they have termed as "meaningless and unscientific".
GEAC had constituted a sub-committee of scientific experts to examine the bio-safety data on GM mustard. The report was placed on the Environment Ministry's website, inviting comments. Activists have alleged that the committee did not have any health expert and three of its members have conflict of interest.
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The body claimed that the present GM Mustard like any other GM crop, will have serious health and environmental impact and the herbicide tolerance technology used in developing it will have "far reaching implications".
It also referred to the recommendations of a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture (2012) and Supreme Court Technical Expert Committee (2013) that such technology should not be introduced in India.
"Farmers are already reeling under increasing weed problem and use of hazardous herbicides, and this crop would force us to use more and more herbicides to combat "superweeds"," it said.
They said that India's unfortunate tryst with GM Crops is today clearly visible amongst the Bt cotton-farmers in Punjab, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
"In the last two years, their Bt Cotton farms were destroyed by the same bollworm that Monsanto's Bt Cotton technology was supposed to destroy and by other pests like whitefly.
"This much hyped technology has failed in such a short time, Monsanto and its subsidiaries and frachisees have made crores of profit and farmers are being forced to carry the burden of the failure of this technology. We farmers strongly believe that this technology, inherent with unnatural processes and risky manipulations, cannot be deployed anymore in our farms," they said.
They said that the GM Hybrid Mustard is less productive than at least five different varieties already in the market, and yet the productivity of GM Mustard was deceptively compared to low yielding varieties.
"We also call for a re-launching of the Yellow Revolution with a focus on organic and agro-ecological approaches, higher assured prices and increased protection from cheap imported oil," they said.
