The remarkable success of the transgenic Bt cotton – which carries an alien insect-killer gene borrowed from soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt – and the pace at which it has spread in India are unparalleled in the world. Nearly 95 per cent of the cotton planting is now done with Bt-cotton seeds. The production of cotton has swelled from around 13 million bales (of 170 kg each) at the time of its introduction in 2002-03 to 34.5 million bales in 2011-12. Annual cotton exports have surged from 1.5 million bales to 8.5 million bales. Its other benefits include a reduction in the use of pesticides that are harmful to the environment, decline in the cost of cultivation and rise in net returns for farmers, besides expansion of cotton-based commerce and industry.
Most of this is, of course, well known and documented. But what is not fully appreciated is that the Bt hybrids-based cotton revolution has not been an unmixed blessing. It has caused certain distortions in the availability of cottons of different staple lengths and in the pest regime. Besides, it has denied farmers their legitimate right to retain and use self-produced seeds.
Indeed these problems cannot be attributed to the transgenic technology that has truly proved to be a boon for growers. The blame lies with the way in which this technology has been deployed to produce only Bt hybrids and the virtual mono-propping of these hybrids in the absence of equally valuable alternatives. These and several other pros and cons of Bt-cotton cultivation have been analysed by the New Delhi-based National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP) in its Policy Brief (No 37) issued recently.
The paper recommends investing in public sector research to evolve true-breeding varieties (non-hybrids) of cotton that have genes capable of providing broader resistance to several pests and other traits like drought tolerance, greater nutrient-use efficiency and shorter crop duration. Since the seeds of such varieties will be usable for replanting, these will benefit farmers and provide the much-needed competition to Bt hybrids that bind farmers to buy fresh seeds every year.
A major drawback of the 200-odd cotton hybrids being marketed by around 35 seed companies is their slim Bt-gene base that basically comprises three genes governing limited traits. This lends the cotton plants the resilience to fight against bollworms and other caterpillars belonging to the insect Order Lepidoptera. As a result, while bollworms have more or less been tamed, some other pests, notably sap-sucking pests, mealy bugs, thrips, jassids and others have become a menace in some places.
This apart, the Bt gene has been incorporated by private companies only in hybrids yielding medium- to long-staple fibre. The near saturation of cropland with these hybrids has, thus, caused an oversupply of medium- and long-staple cotton. However, there’s a scarcity of extra-long staple cotton needed for making premier and special fabrics and short-staple cotton used in hospitals for surgical purposes, and making quilts and mattresses. Prior to the introduction of Bt cotton, short-staple cotton (desi or Asiatic cotton) constituted a sizable part of the cotton production and exports since such cotton was hardly grown in countries other than India and Pakistan.
Interestingly, as pointed out in the NCAP paper, India is practically the only major cotton-producing country to cultivate commercial cotton hybrids on such a scale. The desired new genes have mostly been inducted in non-hybrid cotton varieties by private and public sector seed companies and research organisations. This may be partly because farmers in other countries anyway buy fresh seeds for every crop owing to either liberal government subsidies, as in the US, or the supply of cheaper genetically-modified seeds by the public sector, as in China.
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It is worth noting that given the choice between hybrids and non-hybrid varieties, farmers would invariably prefer the latter. That explains why cotton hybrids, first developed in India in 1967 with conventional technology, could not command substantial acreage.
Most farmers continued to grow non-hybrid varieties. The government should, therefore, revisit its policies regarding genetically-modified and transgenic seeds and lift the moratorium on the approval of new biotech seeds to facilitate the evolution of non-hybrid Bt cotton in the public sector. This will take care of many of the ills plaguing the cotton sector.