NSAI asks 11 cotton seed firms to question monopoly of MMBL

With 11 seed firms opposing the government's cotton seed control order, industry body NSAI has urged these firms to question "discriminatory" actions and monopoly of the Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech Ltd (MMBL) and not to look at short term commercial gains.
Currently, the National Seed Association of India (NSAI) has a membership of 366 companies. Of that, 11 firms such as Bayer Crop Science, Dow, Sygenta India and BASF have objected to its support to the government's December 2015 order that aims to fix uniform maximum retail price on all cotton seeds including genetically modified versions.
MMBL has sub-licensed its Bt cotton technology to 49 seed companies and filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court challenging certain provisions of the order that seeks to regulate licensing of cotton seed technology.

"Over the years, we have worked closely for promoting the cause of strong seed industry for benefit of farming community in India. We hope that you would question the drastic discriminatory actions and exercise of dominance by MMBL and wouldn't look at short term commercial interest," NSAI said in a separate letter written to these 11 seed companies.
Though the seed price controls are not welcomed by the industry, a well-balanced regulation like the Cotton Seed Price Control Order 2015 would be a better option as compared to the current regime of price controls at the state level through legislations, it said.

Stating that the "monopoly" of technology licensing by MMBL is seriously distorting the composition of the cotton seed industry, NSAI said, "This can continue into other crops if the government decides to give approvals to GM traits of corn, rice and others."

NSAI said that though farmers benefitted due to supply of Bt cotton, there have been complaints about high prices.
"The seed industry had never any say in the pricing of Bt cotton technology... The trait value was always decided by MMBL arbitrarily and at high price levels without considering plight of farmers or its sub-licensees," it said.
On the other hand, several small, medium and even large cotton seed companies had to go out of cotton seed business as they could not obtain license from MMBL due to their restrictive licensing policy, it added.

"Those companies who could obtain the license from MMBL had to support them all through as they were in fear that their licenses may be terminated or there can be denial of new technology like Bollgar II or now the Roundup Ready Flex Bt technology in future," NSAI said, adding that the industry got reduced to below 50 companies from 300-400.
NSAI further said that the government started regulating Bt cotton seed prices after the MRTP commission commented about restrictive licensing agreements by MMBL. "This has further aggravated the problems of the industry as the Bt cotton seed prices were revised upwards only once between 2006 till 2015."

Bt cotton is the only GM crop allowed for commercial cultivation in the country. Over the last decade, Bt cotton technology has been adopted over 95 per cent of the cotton growing area, making India its second largest producer.