The flawed spin to India’s cotton story (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level : Bt cotton
Mains level : Role of Bt cotton in India’s cotton production

Context:

• Genetically Modified (GM) pest resistant Bt cotton hybrids have captured the Indian market since their introduction in 2002.
• These now cover over 95% of the area under cotton, with the seeds produced entirely by the private sector.

Role of Bt cotton in India’s cotton production:

• India’s cotton production in 2019 is projected as the highest ever: 354 lakh bales.
• Bt cotton’s role in increasing India’s cotton production, which GM proponents have highlighted as being instrumental, has also been used to argue for extending GM technology to increase food crop yield.
• Bt cotton hybrids have negatively impacted livelihoods and contributed to agrarian distress, particularly among resource-poor farmers.

The Indian experience

• This year, India is expected to be the world’s largest cotton producer, surpassing China in output. However, India’s productivity (yield per unit area), is much lower than other major cotton-producing countries, meaning a much larger area is used for cotton production.
• India’s productivity has been only a third of these countries for over four decades.
• It cannot be explained by agronomic or socio-economic differences because these countries include both developed and developing countries, and different geographies.

Feature of the cotton cultivation in India differs from other countries:

• India is the only country that grows cotton as hybrids and the first to develop hybrid cotton back in 1970.
• Hybrids are made by crossing two parent strains having different genetic characters.
• These plants have more biomass than both parents, and capacity for greater yields. They also require more inputs, including fertilizer and water.
• Though hybrid cotton seed production is expensive, requiring manual crossing, India’s low cost of manual labour make it economically viable.
• All other cotton-producing countries grow cotton not as hybrids but varieties for which seeds are produced by self-fertilization.

Difference between hybrids and varieties:

• Varieties is that varieties can be propagated over successive generations by collecting seeds from one planting and using them for the next planting;
• Hybrid seeds have to be remade for each planting by crossing the parents. So for hybrids, farmers must purchase seed for each planting, but not for varieties.
• Using hybrids gives pricing control to the seed company and also ensures a continuous market. Increased yield from a hybrid is supposed to justify the high cost of hybrid seeds.

Cotton planting strategies:

• For over three decades, most countries have been growing cotton varieties that are compact and short duration.
• These varieties are planted at high density (5 kg seeds/acre), whereas hybrids in India are bushy, long duration and planted at ten-fold lower density (0.5 kg seeds/acre).
• The lower boll production by compact varieties (5-10 bolls per plant) compared to hybrids (20-100 bolls/plant) is more than compensated by the ten-fold greater planting density.
• The steep increase in productivity for Brazil, from 400 to 1,000 kg/hectare lint between 1994 and 2000 coincides with the large-scale shift to a non-GM compact variety.
• Cotton is a dryland crop and 65% of area under cotton in India is rain-fed.
• Farmers with insufficient access to groundwater in these areas are entirely dependent on rain.
• Here, the shorter duration variety has a major advantage as it reduces dependence on irrigation and risk, particularly late in the growing season when soil moisture drops following the monsoon’s withdrawal.
• This period is when bolls develop and water requirement is the highest.
• The advantages of compact varieties over hybrids are considerable: more than twice the productivity, half the fertilizer (200 kg/ha for hybrids versus 100 kg/ha for varieties), reduced water requirement, and less vulnerability to damage from insect pests due to a shorter field duration.
• Yet, India has persisted with long-duration hybrids, many years after benefits of compact varieties became clear from global experience.

Impact of policy:

• The first is before GM cotton, when India persisted with hybrids from 1980-2002, while other countries shifted to HDP.
• The second phase where the question of hybrids versus compact varieties could have been considered, was at the stage of GM regulation when Bt cotton was being evaluated for introduction into India.
• It would not have been out of place to have evaluated the international experience, including the context of introduction of this new technology.
• Information should have been considered on the form in which it would be deployed (hybrids versus varieties).
• Importantly, agro-economic conditions where it would be used should have been a guiding factor.
• However, the scope of evaluation by the GM regulatory process in India was narrow, and did not take this into account.
• Consequently, commercial Bt hybrids have completely taken over the market, accompanied by withdrawal of public sector cotton seed production.
• The Indian cotton farmer today is left with little choice but to use Bt hybrid seed produced by private seed companies.

Farmer distress:

• The current annual value of cotton seed used for planting is about ₹2,500 crore, and that of lint cotton produced is ₹68,000 crore.
• Therefore, it appears that the interests of the cotton seed industry have constrained the very much larger value of cotton production and the overall cotton industry.
• It is likely that production levels could have been much higher, with considerably lower risk and input costs, had compact varieties been developed and used in India.
• Agricultural distress is extremely high among cotton farmers and the combination of high input and high risk has likely been a contributing factor.
• Compact varieties would have significantly reduced distress as well as increased yield.
• The hybrid seed model for cotton that India, and India alone, has followed for over three decades,
• It is inferior to the HDP model being used in other countries on three important counts: much lower productivity; higher input costs; and increased risk particularly for low resource farmers in rain-fed areas.

Way forward:

• There are several takeaways from the experience of Bt cotton worldwide, and in the context of hybrids in India.
• We must be clear that the outcome of using a technology such as Bt is determined by the context in which it is deployed, and not just by the technology itself.
• If the context is suboptimal and does not prioritise the needs of the principal stakeholders (farmers), it can have significant negative fallouts, especially in India with a high proportion being marginal and subsistence farmers.
• There is a need for better consultation in policy, be it agriculture as a whole or crop-wise.
• India is a signatory to international treaties on GMO regulation (the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety), which specifically provide for inclusion of socioeconomic considerations in GMO risk assessment.
• However, socioeconomic and need-based considerations have not been a part of GMO regulatory process in India.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the TrueNat TB test, consider the following statements:
1. It is a new molecular test that can diagnosis TB in one hour as well as testing for resistance to the drug rifampicin.
2. The test works by the rapid detection of TB bacteria using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: C
Mains Questions:
Q.1) What do you mean by the hybrid seed model in cotton production? What are the differences between hybrid seed model and varieties seed model?