GE Crops, Including Cotton, Are Failing

GM crops: If it can't work, fake it
By Devinder Sharma
BioSpectrum (vol 2 Issue 2), Feb 2004

For years, they made us believe that genetically modified (GM) crops reduce
pesticide applications and thereby help in protecting the environment. For
years, they worked hard, manipulating scientific data, to justify the
increasing public investment in a risky technology. For several years now,
they have succeeded in diverting the public attention from the more pressing
problems of hunger and malnutrition for the sake of private profit.

The citadel of scientific fraud has now begun to crumble.

Amidst reports that the pesticide applications on GM crops in the United
States have actually multiplied, comes the damming indictment of the faulty
technology from the crop fields of Africa. Trials to develop a
virus-resistant sweet potato, launched in Kenya in 2001 by the US special
envoy, Dr Andrew Young, have failed. The much-hyped GM technology, that was
claimed to usher in a green revolution in Africa, has finally turned out to
be scientific crap.

The virus-resistant sweet potato, donated by Monsanto to Kenya Agricultural
Research Institute (KARI), has been found to be susceptible to viral
attacks. This is the same sweet potato that a black African woman, in her
colourful traditional dress, has used in her non-stop global sermons on
feeding the hungry in Africa. Sponsored by the US Agency for International
Development (USAID) and Monsanto, Dr Florence Wambugu of KARI, has gone
around the world telling us how the transgenic potato could raise the crop
yield from four to ten tonnes per hectare.

The media loved her. The media, in fact, adores everyone who speaks in
favour of GM crops. After all, the future of the world lies only in
increasing corporate profits, which in turn benefits the media. So whether
it was The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or the discredited Fox
TV, they all clamoured around her. Forbes magazine even went to the extent
of naming her among the 15 people from all over the world who will 'reinvent
the future'.

Reports now indicate that the transgenic sweet potato yields less than the
traditional varieties. In other words, knowing that the transgenic sweet
potato would'¹t work, Dr Florence Wambugu, had faked it.

Earlier, Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex
(UK) too had picked up on the holes in Dr Florence Wambugu's claims. In a
detailed report on GM crops in Africa, he had said: "Accounts of the
transgenic sweet potato have used low figures on average yields in Kenya to
paint a picture of stagnation. An early article stated 6 tons per hectare -
without mentioning the data source - which was then reproduced in subsequent
analyses. However, FAO statistics indicate 9.7 tons, and official statistics
report 10.4." In simple words, the transgenic sweet potato that was being
presented as the answer to Africa's food security was no improvement at all.

His warning went unheard. Meanwhile, the World Bank, USAID and Monsanto
continued to sponsor her research project - running for over 12 years now,
involving 19 researchers, 16 of them with PhDs, something unusual for
Africa. If only the US $6 million that has been incurred on her research
project had been used for fighting hunger, more than six million
impoverished Africans could have been fed adequately for as many as six
years.

No one is however keen to remove hunger. Not only the World Bank, USAID and
the private companies, but even agricultural scientists are looking forward
to any and every possibility of latching on to hunger and malnutrition.

The sweet potato debacle is the latest in the series of flops that have
tumbled out from the GM industry laboratories, and that too in the name of
ameliorating hunger and building food security. Ever since the days of the
Flavr Savr tomato, the magic bullets of this technology have failed to
enthuse the farmers and the consumers alike. The 'golden rice', the
protein-rich potato in India -- 'protato', and now the fall of the
transgenic sweet potato in Africa, are all classic examples of the great
exercise in public deception.

At the same time, the GM industry finds itself in a terrible fix over
reports that the cultivation of transgenic crops in the United States has
actually led to an increase in the application and use of pesticides. This
negates the only saving grace that the industry had so far successfully used
­ GM crops reduce the use of pesticides thereby leading not only to
sustainable farming systems but also to a safe environment. Drawing on the
official records of the US Department of Agriculture, Dr Charles Benbrook of
the Northwest Science and Environment Policy Centre at Idaho (USA),
concludes that the planting of 550 million acres of genetically engineered
(GE) corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased
pesticide use by about 50 million pounds.

Substantial increases in herbicide use on "herbicide tolerant" crops,
especially soybeans, was cited as the main reason that accounted for the
increase in pesticide use on GM crops compared to acres planted to
conventional plant varieties. 'Herbicide tolerant' plants are genetically
modified to ensure that those who grow these crops have no other option but
to also use the herbicides of the same companies. For the agribusiness
companies, 'herbicide tolerant' crops are the sure means of profit security.
That the American farmers have complied with the profit motive of the
companies is quite obvious.

Benbrook says that many farmers have had to spray incrementally more
herbicides on GM crops in order to keep up with shifts in weeds toward
tougher-to-control species, coupled with the emergence of genetic resistance
in certain weed populations. For the developing countries, the implications
of this study are enormous and of course serious. Agribusiness companies
will exploit the small farmers pushing them more into a debt trap and at the
same time do more damage to the environment and crop sustainability.

Whether it is chemical pesticides or the pest-resistant GM crops, the
effectiveness against the target pest lasts only for a couple of years. In
the case of cotton, for instance, the agribusiness industry is exhorting
farmers to adopt Bt cotton, which has the inbuilt ability to produce a toxin
that kills the pink bollworms. In India, in the very first year of
commercial planting, Mahyco-Monsanto priced the seed four times more than
the existing price, thereby earning its pound of flesh in the very first
year. The Bt gene has been further licensed to half a dozen companies from
which a substantial royalty has also been drawn.

The Bt cotton crop has, meanwhile, failed in the very first year of planting
in large parts of the country. While the farmers suffered, the company that
sold the seed has gone scot-free. By the time the farmers wake up to the
damage done by the Bt crop to the environment as well as the economy, the
seed companies will bring in the next generation of transgenics.
Agribusiness industry had done exactly the same in the past five decades,
bringing in more potent chemicals each time the insect developed resistance
to the pesticides. In the bargain, the number of problem insects in cotton
that the farmers are now confronted with has multiplied to 70. In the 1960s,
only seven crop pests worried the farmers. In three decades, the problem
pests have multiplied by ten times.

All over the world, Bt cotton is now losing its resistance to the pests as a
result of which the pesticides consumption is going up. In China, where over
7 million hectares are under Bt cotton cultivation, pesticide usage has once
again reverted back to almost what existed before its commercialization in
1999. Scientists are therefore refraining from conducting studies on
pesticides saving four years later, knowing that such an analysis would be
damming for the industry.

For India, the failure of the GM crop technology elsewhere should serve as
an eye-opener. We cannot afford to operate like the five blind men for the
simple reason that Indian agriculture is faced with a severe crisis in
sustainability. Already more than 16,000 farmers have committed suicide, and
several thousand more end up each year selling their body organs. At the
same time, 320 million continue to go hungry. The national priority should
be to feed the hungry now rather than spend the same money for producing GM
crops that feed the hunger of a handful of private companies.