Vidarbha farmers and Widows to Mourn 10th year Bt.cotton Entry in India
Nagpur-25thMarch2012
On 26th march India will be completing 10 year of permission of US base GM seed which started in 10thousand hector now being cultivated in more than 12 million hector .since June 2005 maharashtra has given permission of commercial trials of disputed Bt.Cotton and which failed in 4 lakh hector in 2005 and now in 42 lakh hector 2012 and maharshtra has been compensating Bt.cotton failure losses since 2005 and cotton farmers suicide spirel which started since june 2005 now crossed more than 10000 mark and vidarbha has been known as farmer suicide capital of india and tom ourn these farmers death due to Bt.cotton seed ,hundreds of cotton farmers and farm widows will protest on 26th march at farm suicide hit villages in Hiwara and bothbodan to raise demand to suspension all commercial trials of Bt.cotton in dry land region of vidarbha ,Kishor Tiwari of Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti VJAS informed in press release today.
‘Vidarbha is case of wrong selection of GM technology in dry land region as Bt.cotton required irrigation where cotton farmers are deep distress and more than 10,000 farmers suicide is genocide done by the MNC and lawmakers of Indian hence this protest.our demand of complete ban of bt.cotton is pold and we will repeat on 26th march too’Tiwari
VJAS also asked for a special discussion in Parliament on cotton farmers’ crisis and 10 years of Bt cotton and a special parliamentary committee to look into the issue.
VJAS as part of the group of NGOs that came under the ‘Coalition for GM-Free India’ banner claimed in a report released on the eve of 26th march that hype around Bt cotton is wrong.They said a close examination of the government’s own data for the last 10 years negates the two important claims of dramatic yield increase and significant fall in pesticide usage.The report states that opposite to the promise of high cotton yield, Bt cotton has resulted in stagnant yields, pest resistance, new pest and disease attacks.
“The real yield gains in the past decade (from 278 kg/ha to 470 kg/ha) happened from 2000-01 to 2004-05, when Bt cotton area had reached only 5.6% of the total cotton area. From 2005-06 to 2011-12, when the Bt cotton area grew to exceed 90% of the total cotton area, there is no sustained yield gain - only going from 470 kg/ha to 481 kg/ha,” said Kiran Vissa, co-convener of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture.
“It is the pre-Bt cotton yield gains that have proved to be stable, resulting from various factors including fresh land brought under cotton cultivation, expansion of irrigation and use of high-yielding hybrids,” he said.It said rather than usage of pesticide going down due to the use of Bt Cotton, it has instead increased slowly in the last few years.
The study comes nearly a week ahead of the 10th anniversary of the introduction of Bt Cotton.
The activists said in Andhra Pradesh, state government estimates show that out of 47 lakh acres planted with Bt cotton during 2011 Kharif season, the crop failed in 33.73 lakh acres (71% of the area). The state government reported that 20.46 lakh farmerssuffered from cotton crop failure and lost Rs 3,071.6 crores.
Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, said, “The fact is that the crisis of cotton farmers in Maharashtra has only become deeper after the adoption of Bt cotton. This year, we estimate that Bt cotton farmers have lost Rs 10,000 crores due to crop failure. Even the government compensation of Rs 2,000 crores is quite small considering the loss. It is an irony that the state government is compensating for the failure of private company seeds
