ICAR should strive for an ecologically sound system of managing crop pests

Even when Punjab suffered huge losses on account of whitefly attack, I remember the bureaucracy and scientific establishments remaining conspicuously quiet on making the industry bear the crop losses. I don’t think the seed industry should be allowed to go scot-free

The inevitable has happened. The area under cotton has collapsed in north western India.

For the past few years, cotton was witnessing a subdued interest. Farmers were gradually giving up on cotton in favour of paddy and other crops, which of course was a worrying trend.

But this year, breaking all records, cotton areas in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan – constituting 16 per cent of the cotton area of the country -- has declined by six-lakh hectares, going down from 16-lakh hectares sown last year to a low of 10.23-lakh hectares this year.

The steepest fall has been in Punjab where the area under cotton has come down to less than one-lakh hectares, 97,000 hectares to be precise. Cotton was always thought to be an alternate crop to fit in the crop diversification programme that Punjab has been contemplating to replace the water guzzling paddy.

Moreover, ever since the seeds of genetically modified Bt cotton were approved for commercial cultivation in 2002, the agribusiness industry had positioned the new technologically ‘superior’ seeds as a solution for ushering in prosperity among small farmers by enhancing crop productivity, reducing the use of insecticides, and in the process ensuring climate smart and environmentally sustainable cotton farming. It was in fact promoted as a technology fix to address the productivity crisis in cotton that small farmers were confronted with. It was believed that the increased production will in the process take care of ecological and socio-economic concerns.

Approximately, 25 years after Bt cotton was introduced, the genetically modified technology in cotton seems to have bitten the dust. What was once perceived as ‘White Gold’ has now turned grey.

Persistent attacks of pink bollworm and whitefly insect pests have made farmers give up on cotton. Even before Talwinder Singh, a 40-year-old farmer from Punjawa village in Abohar, Punjab, could harvest cotton in five acres he had sown, the crop came under pink bollworm attack. The crop loss he has suffered in the bargain will only add to the general distress that prevails, much severe for him since he ploughed his field back.

“I have already ploughed my crop and on one acre, I am trying to cultivate PR-126 variety of paddy,” he told the media that was headlined ‘Area under cotton in North India drops by six lakh hectares, Punjab’s dip sharpest’.The investigative news report dwells deeper into the reasons why farmers are fed up with pest attacks, and in frustration have increasingly abandoned cotton cultivation.

Interestingly, while the multinational seed giant Bayer has sought approval for the next generation of transgenic seeds – Bollgard II Roundup Ready Flex (RRF) to bring in some kind of optimism in the GM seed market; drawing from what is clearly visible as the failure of hybrid transgenic Bt cotton in India, scientists are at the same time advocating caution for Africa, which is under tremendous industry pressure to introduce the same technology.

“The lessons gained from the ongoing market failure of hybrid Bt cotton in India are of utmost importance to its proposed introduction in Africa, where, similar to India, cotton is grown mainly in poor rainfed smallholder farms and hence similar private-corporate conflicts of interests will occur,” says Andrew Paul Gutierrez et al in a paper published in the prestigious Environmental Sciences Europe journal (November 7, 2023).

If Africa can be cautioned, there is no reason why India itself cannot seek any lessons from the subsidence of Bt cotton seeds and take appropriate preventive measures. Pink bollworm insect pest has certainly taken a heavy toll of the cotton crop.

While Bayer had earlier claimed in an email statement to the global news agency Reuters, saying: “Our efforts are aimed at enhancing crop productivity, contributing towards doubling farmer incomes, and making Indian agriculture sustainable and globally competitive.”

If despite these claims, the area under cotton has come down drastically, there must be reasons that the hyped technology hasn’t been able to answer.

Why I am saying this is because the resistance against pink bollworm has certainly reduced, and by disrupting the insect equilibrium, the GM seeds have also built secondary pests like whitefly. In 2015, whitefly attack on cotton had severely impacted the standing crop in Punjab, and resulted in suicides by a number of farmers. Protests by farmers had forced the Punjab government to provide relief to cotton workers. Subsequently, pink bollworm attack in 2020, followed by the pest damage in the past three years has made the cotton farmers move away.

I don’t think bringing in the next generation of GM seeds will help nip the pest attack in the bud. In fact, at a time when the area under cotton has slumped, the seed industry needs to be held accountable. Even when Punjab suffered huge losses on account of whitefly attack, I remember the bureaucracy and scientific establishments remaining conspicuously quiet on making the industry bear the crop losses. Going by the polluter pays principle I don’t think the seed industry should be allowed to go scot-free.

In an insightful scientific paper ‘Long-term impact of Bt cotton in India’ written by Dr K R Kranti, a former Director of the Central Institute of Cotton Research, Nagpur; and Prof Glenn Davis Stone, formerly of the Washington University, and published in Nature (March 30, 2020), the authors had clearly warned: “Bt cotton has continued to control one major cotton pest, but with Bt resistance in another pest and surging populations of non-target pests, farmers now spend more on pesticides today than before the introduction of Bt. Indications are that the situation will continue to deteriorate.”

There is enough literature available on how Bt cotton was a short-term solution, and the drop in insect resistance wouldn’t last long. Even the yield increase initially was ascribed to increased fertiliser use and expansion of area under irrigation. But bureaucratic inefficiency and scientific lethargy backed by political patronage (Punjab had officially been promoting the GM seeds) had led to a cotton fiasco. While all these players (besides the seed industry) walk away without owning any responsibility, the farmers bear the brunt.

If you ask me as to what is the solution, the answer is simple.

Learn from the KeetPathshala of Nidana in Jind district in Haryana, where farmers use beneficial insects to control the pests. I only hope the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare does not again buckle under pressure from the seed lobby, and instead shifts efforts to non-pesticide management (and that also includes GM crop seeds) by opting for an ecologically sound way of managing crop pests.

It is doable provided the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the umbrella research body for agriculture, wants to do it.

(The author is a noted food policy analyst and an expert on issues related to the agriculture sector. He writes on food, agriculture and hunger)