5 Indian Farmers Commit Suicide in Past Two Days Over Debts & That's Just in One District of One State
That Indian farmers have been committing suicide at depressingly shocking rates, due most often to high debts incurred when the industrial agriculture techniques and/or GM crop seeds they've been told will make them wealthy don't quite pan out as promised, is a long-running issue at the intersection of environmental and social justice—but this latest news is particularly stark.
The Times of India reports that in the past 48 hours five farmers in just one district of the state of Maharashtra have killed themselves, all over high debts. For the year, just five months and two days old, 332 farmers have chosen to end their lives because of debt.
In other words, in one state in India (albeit a big state) nearly 3 farmers each day are killing themselves because the debts they have incurred.
About this time last year, looking back at 2010 and for the whole of India, the number of farmer suicides divided out to one every 30 minutes (!!!).
What's going on? Drought reducing crop yields and reducing the amount of water available (and required) for the Bt cotton they've invested in.
"As per official admission of Maharashtra agriculture minister Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, this year cotton cultivation has jumped to more than 44 lakh hectares in dry land region of Mahrashtra covering Vidarbha, Marathwada, Khandesh and North Maharashtra, but due to drought the yield has dropped to 45 lakh bales in comparison to last year's yield of 86 lakh bales," Tiwari said. "Moreover, cost of cultivation has jumped to almost double, not to mention lack of proper irrigation facilities for rain sensitive Bt cotton crop," he added.
The latest farmer to kill himself owed Rs300,000 ($5663)—which gives you some additional insight into the precarious financial situation these farmers are in, in the first place.
Genetically Modified Eggplant an Environmental Risk
All of this becomes additionally poignant today, as a new report commissioned by Greenpeace International finds that Bt brinjal (eggplant or aubergine, depending on your nationality)—currently banned from commercial cultivation in India, but there's a push to change that—poses an environmental risk.
The gist of it is this: Much like has been the case with other genetically modified crops designed to be resistant to a particular pest or to a specific pesticide, but which are also designed so that they won't interbreed with non-GM varieties of the plant, nature always finds a way and manages to bypass the GM tinkering.
The Hindu provides more detail, saying the study finds that:
Brinjal relatives do occur in the regions where cultivation of GE Bt brinjal is proposed, and that GE Bt brinjal may mate with these relatives to spread the GE Bt gene. Spread of the GE Bt gene would have considerable ecological implications, as well as implications for future crop contamination and farmers' rights. Importantly, the spread of the GE Bt gene could result in the brinjal becoming an aggressive and problematic weed, the Greenpeace report suggests, while impressing upon the governments the need to employ the precautionary principle and not permit any authorization of the outdoor cultivation of GE Bt brinjal, including field trials.
Outdoor field trials are currently underway in the Philippines, the report notes.
GM Cotton Fails - Insect Pests Thriving on Indian Plants When They Should Be Dead
photo: Beau/Creative Commons
An article in the latest issue of the journal Current Science raises serious questions about the long-term viability of genetically-modified Bt cotton to actually do what it's intended to do, increase pest resistance. Scientists have found for the first time bollworms not only living and surviving on GM cotton, but having offspring that can complete their full lifecycle there. Looking at two varieties of Bt cotton in commercial use, containing both single and double genes intended to be toxin to the bollworms, the scientists found that the pests were able to survive.
Report co-author Aralimarad Prabhuraj told Kolkata's The Telegraph:
We saw virtually no differences between the biology of insect populations reared on the GM cotton and the non-GM cotton ... We have indeed seen a dramatic boost to India's cotton, but we had always anticipated that at some point in time, we'll encounter pests that can withstand the modified plants. No one knew when it would happen.
This particular study did not examine whether the bollworms survived because they developed a resistance the toxin or because the toxin present in the cotton was insufficient to kill them.
Back in March of this year, however, Monsanto admitted that pink bollworms had developed resistance to Bt cotton in the Indian state of Gujarat, in plots where the single gene variety (Bollgard I) of the GM crop was planted. At that time Monsanto said that resistance in the double gene variety of Bt cotton (Bollgard II) had not been observed in India.
Since GM cotton was introduced to India, agricultural stats show that cotton production has increased from 302kg per hectare in 2002 to 567kg per hectare in 2007; it has since fallen back to 512kg/ha in 2009.
Globally, cotton is cultivated on 2.5% of the world's agricultural land, with genetically modified cotton accounting for nearly half of all the cotton grown in the world. All told, cotton consumes 16% of the world's insecticides--something which genetically-modified cotton was intended to bring down. The Organic Trade Association says that Bt cotton largely did reduce insecticide use for the past ten years, however research from China done in 2006 shows that pesticide use between GM and non-GM cotton was roughly equal.
That said, from 2002 to 2009, money spent on pesticide in India increased by nearly one-third. Research from February of this year, publicized by GM Watch links this to a growing variety of pests beginning to plague Bt cotton.
Part of the problem in bollworms developing resistance to the Bt toxin is over-cultivation of the GM crop, in the sense of planting too much of it close together and not providing so-called 'refuge' space between fields and farms.
A report earlier this year to India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh warned that "Farmers are not following the recommended refugia. With about 90 percent area under Bt cotton, bollworms can develop resistance soon. The concern needs to be addressed as a priority before it's too late."
This research has implications for GM crops more broadly: Though its introduction has been halted for now by India's environment ministry, Bt brinjal (eggplant or aubergine...) depends upon the same genes to make it resistant to pests.
Here's the original research: Survival and reproduction of natural populations of Helicoverpa armigera on Bt-cotton hybrids in Raichur, India [PDF]
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More on Genetically Modified Crops:
Ireland Says Not in this Country: Bans Genetically Modified Crops
India Suspends First GM Food Crop Introduction - Environment Minister Wants More Tests
While Bill Gates Wants Africa to Embrace Industrial GM Food, Italy Fines Franken-Maize Growing Farmer
Release Of Sterile Pests May Help Eliminate Need For Genetically Modified Crops
Tamohara dasa; Recent physiology work has revealed that the food we eat carries signals to the body telling it how to digest the food! Yes, this symbiosis is that extensive and natural and complete, by God's grace. This was not even suspected to be the case until recently. Thus, our food determine how our bodies will process, to a great extent. These ignorant demonic modified foods will kill us, as they give unclear and disharmonizing corrupted messages based on gibberish.
Also, these built-in poisons to kill insects; what in hell ?? We eat the same damn food! Is this insane, or what?
Now people are killing themselves; thanks to Bill and Melinda Gates, Fidelity Investments, and Monsanto, all supporters of Iskcon Bangalore et al, the HKS etc. So long as those devotees accept control via the elitist money, they will be steered into demonic channels.
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