DEBUGGING DEVELOPING-WORLD COTTON
In July 2004, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Andhra Pradesh, a state that stretches along much of the country's southeast coast. He came to offer encouragement in response to the high number of suicides -reportedly in the thousands - committed by drought-beaten farmers. Prime Minister Singh's visit came during a steep transition from conventional to genetically-modified cotton. In a recent issue of Current Anthropology, Glenn Stone of Washington University in St. Louis reported that the planting of GM cotton grew from 12% to 62% in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district in the period 2003-2005.
Beyond the seeds, or perhaps because of them, even the yield data get confusing. Matin Qaim of the University of Hoenheim in Stuttgart, Germany, and colleagues - including Gopal Naik of the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore - reported that India's GM cotton production trounced conventional cotton, providing a 34% increase in yield and increased a farmer's revenue by 69%. Those numbers look good, and they were, at least for all of India, except for Andhra Pradesh.
In reviewing the state-by state statistics for the 2002-03 season, Qaim and colleagues saw that in Maharashtram, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, GM cotton increased yields by 32%, 73%, and 43%, respectively. These states also showed increases in revenue and profits, and decreases in chemical costs. In fact, growing GM cotton in Tamil Nadu pushed up the profit by 229% in comparison to using conventional seeds. For Andhra Pradesh, though, GM cotton drove yields down by 3% and revenue dropped by 3%. This state did see a drop in chemical costs, but only 19% when the other states enjoyed 44-73% decreases. Worst of all, cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh who selected GM seeds saw 40% less profit than farmers who stuck with the traditional seeds. Qaim and colleagues thought the problem in Andhra Pradesh could have come from a lack of GM cultivars adapted specifically for that state.
The statistics could be even worse. Stephen Morse of the University of Reading and his colleagues found that the most-efficient farmers used the GM cotton the most, and that could bias the results to look better, at least on average. It turns out that unraveling the issues surrounding suicides and cotton farming in India depends on more than just numbers. Some of the questions behind GM cotton, in particular, and other biotech crops have not always submitted to clear-cut answers.
Many studies indicate benefits from planting GM crops, which should help the Indian farmers. Morse says, "I have been involved in a great deal of research on [GM] cotton in India and South Africa, and we have found economic, health, and livelihood benefits for farmers." He adds, "Our research in South Africa and India suggested that [GM] cotton reduces the use of insecticide - hence health and environment benefits - and increases yield."
But in looking at the situation in India, Stone sees the main trouble as a lack of information. He points to the Indian cotton seed market which consists of hundreds of seed brands, and the same seeds can come in boxes labeled as different brands, and some brands vary from box to box. "Farmers are in a situation where is it extremely difficult to make informed decisions about cotton cultivation, because they don't know what they are planting," he says. "Cotton seeds in much of India are hybrids - unlike the rest of the world - so farmers have to depend on the market. The indigenous technical knowledge that so many people romanticize gets swamped by the flood of misinformation and by technology changing too quickly to be successfully integrated into local management practice."
Still, Morse sees value in GM crops. "I can't say I'm particularly pro or anti GM by conviction," he says. "I just enjoy carrying out research that 'helps' and have mostly worked - for some 26 years now - within a developing-country context." He adds, "Much of the research I do comes under the broad heading of sustainable human development. If our research had highlighted problems with GM crops, we would have quite happily submitted the findings for publication."
Others also see GM cotton as good for Indian farmers in general. According to Ronald J. Herring of Cornell University, who has made an extensive study of the transgenic movement in India, "I think it's pretty clear that [GM] cotton has been good for farmers, and for pesticide loads in the soil, water, and tissues. I derive this from a lot of conversations with farmers, but also from the rapid increase in use." He adds, "Farmers know their interests, and [GM] cotton on the whole makes them money. Otherwise they wouldn't grow it."
Herring notes, though, that the world of GM cotton comes with obstacles, as well. He says there can be some variation in yield depending on the soil type, irrigation, and so on. "Some hybrids do much better than others. Moreover, the price points are quite varied, though now settling on a common price for the approved varieties."
While the data do not suggest that GM cotton triggered suicides in Andhra Pradesh, this biotech cotton does not seem to be helping most farmers in that specific state. "What I believe," says Stone, "is that farmers need to be brought back into the process of producing and testing seeds. They absolutely have to know what they are planting, which means slowing down the pace of technological change and having them be part of the process. GM cotton may be making a contribution to the killing of a cotton pest, but it may be making a more subtle contribution to the plight of farmers."
OPPOSITION TO ENGINEERING
Beyond yields, some scientists oppose GM cotton and other biotech crops based simply on what they are - genetically modified. The modification often comes from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a soil bacteria. It's been known for more than a century that this bacteria can kill insects. It was even used as a pesticide as early as 1920.
Bt produces a protein that, more or less, turns off the digestive system of some insects, and they soon die of starvation. A specific Bt gene - such as cry1Ac, which is used by Monsanto - can be inserted in the cotton, so that it makes the anti-insect protein. In particular, the Bt gene is used in cotton to control tobacco budworm and two forms of bollworm, pink and cotton. That toxin in general, according to GM-seed producers, proves harmless to vertebrates, including humans, and most beneficial insects. As a result, Bt cotton should produce a hardy crop even when farmers use less pesticide. In addition, this form of cotton already boasts a long track record in some countries. In the United States as early as 1998, for example, more than one-quarter of the cotton crop came from Bt seeds. According to the Cornell University-based organization International Services for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications - genetically modified crops are currently grown, albeit at widely varying levels of intensity, in 22 countries.
Nonetheless, not all scientists see that as a good thing. E. Ann Clark of the University of Guelph in Ontario, trained as a physiologist and ecologist, says, "GM crops offer linear solutions to holistic problems." She adds that they "have been released prematurely into the marketplace, with virtually no meaningful risk-assessment testing by independent analysts." She also distrusts the commercial side of the GM world, saying that, "GM crops are a great example of what happens when technology leads science, [and they are] attractive because they are proprietary, not because they work."
As one example of GM crops failing, Clark points to a study by Per Pinstrup-Andersen of Cornell, who polled 481 Bt-cotton farmers in China. There, the Bt cotton does stave off the intended pests, but other insects, such as mirids, are starting to feed on it. As a result, these farmers must spray pesticides, just as much as farmers using conventional seeds. But spraying pesticides is just what Bt cotton is supposed to obviate. If it doesn't, the benefit disappears, because farmers pay more for the Bt seeds. How much more depends on the location, but Qaim and colleagues reported that Bt seeds tend to be upward of twice as expensive as conventional seeds, and can be more than 10 times as expensive in some locations. In China, Pinstrup-Andersen found that Bt seed was about three times as expensive as conventional cotton seeds. So if a farmer pays more for the seeds and still has to buy and apply pesticide, profits decline. Pinstrup-Andersen's team found that when Chinese farmers first planted the Bt cotton, there were few pests, pesticide use declined by more than 70%, and profits were 36% higher for farmers, in comparison to those still using conventional seeds.
As pests numbers increased, though, and Bt-cotton farmers started spraying pesticides just like conventional farmers, income plummeted to an average of 8% less than conventional-cotton farmers were making. Nonetheless, Pinstrup-Andersen still believes in Bt cotton for China. He says, "Bt cotton offers tremendous benefits, but it has be to controlled." He adds, "The most important step is to develop seed with multiple resistance."
This secondary-pest problem could affect other GM crops in other countries. Farmers in the United States tackle this issue, at least in Bt cotton, by also planting a field of non-Bt cotton, which is supposed to hold back pests from becoming resistant to the GM version. Also, pesticides sprayed in the nearby non-Bt fields are supposed to keep down secondary pests in the Bt and non-Bt plantings. In addition to concerns over secondary pests being unaffected by Bt, it is also possible that the prime target, the bollworm, could turn resistant. It could be happening already. For example, Bruce Tabashnik and his colleagues at the University of Arizona reported on three recessive alleles in pink bollworm that seem to provide some level of resistance.
In general, farming technology and pests represent an ongoing battle, which will probably never end. Perhaps that is why some GM crop experts do not argue about whether or not insects will adapt to these GM crops, but rather how long it will take for that to happen. In 2005, for instance, Keshav Kranthi of India's Central Institute for Cotton Research crop protection division in Nagpur wrote the editors at Nature Biotechnology: "… our model predicts insect resistance will evolve under field conditions not for at least another 10 years. And if resistance management strategies are implemented, it will take much longer." He did add, however: "We strongly believe that the Bt technology is the best eco-friendly tool available for cotton pest management in India." That could be true today, but a different assessment might lie ahead.
SHOULD AFRICA GO GM?
The questions over the benefits and shortcomings of Bt cotton go far beyond India. In Africa, Bt cotton is in field trials in a few countries and planted commercially in one. Burkina Faso, in western Africa, started field trials in 2003, but there is still no commercial release of Bt cotton there. Kenya is also running field trials. Bt cotton is grown in South Africa, where it was accepted commercially in 1997, seven years after starting field tests.
As some ask whether Bt cotton benefits India, a recent working paper asks the same of Francophone West Africa. It is being prepared by José Falck-Zepeda, Daniela Horna, and Melinda Smale, at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in Washington, DC. Established in 1975 as part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a global network of institutes focused on tackling food insecurity, IFPRI is neither an advocate nor an opponent of genetically modified crops. Its technical analyses are intended to support the decision-making processes around agriculture and development.
This forthcoming paper models five different adoption scenarios across Burkina Faso (the likely leader in adopting Bt cotton), Benin, Mali, Senegal, and Togo, including a baseline scenario in which adoption does not take place at all. The authors' overall conclusion is that the five states would be worse off by not adopting the technology. However, the net benefits accruing to farmers - even when the additional costs associated with Bt cotton seeds are discounted - would be modest. The authors attribute this in part to the conservative assumptions included in their economic model. But they also factor in the likely downward pressure on the price of cotton due to widespread adoption of genetically modified varieties elsewhere. "The issue of how and where to set the price (and particularly setting the level of technology premium for using the technology) becomes crucial to the appropriate deployment of the technology. This fact cannot be overstated," they argue.
Whether farmers in the five countries are able to successfully incorporate new genetically modified varieties into their farming methods remains an open question. Agricultural innovation in sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind that of other low-income regions, such as Southern Asia, because of a whole host of historical, institutional, environmental, and demographic factors.
In South Africa, Stephen Morse sees GM crops working well, and he saw only one drawback to biotech crops. He says, "The only significant threat posed by GM crops we found in South Africa was related to the issue of dependency. Farmers were reliant upon one supplier for their credit and inputs as well as sale of their produce." He adds, "In fairness, this was not just an issue for GM. The same would apply for any cotton variety - GM or not." In the end, Morse says, "We found no other threats posed by Bt cotton during our research, but this is not to say that problems won't occur."
PROVIDING SEEDS FOR AFRICA
Most of the biotech-based crops that are commercially available have limited application to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa at present, particularly to the subsistence agriculture performed by many households. IFPRI's Smale says that there is a "sustained demand for improved seeds from African farmers only in a few crops." Typically, this centers on export commodities, such as tea and cotton, as well as maize, which is important in many countries both as a staple crop and as a source of income. "Efforts to increase commercial demand [for other seeds] have tended to meet with short-lived success." IFPRI senior scientist Stanley Wood notes, "There's not a whole lot of delivered product out there." Maize apart, other important staples such as cassava, sorghum, sweet potato, and yams have received minimal attention to date, although several initiatives are underway at present that are focused on improving the nutritional or agronomic performance of these crops.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded projects that aim to improve the nutritional profile of bananas, cassava, rice, and sorghum under its Grand Challenges Program. The CGIAR system has launched two major initiatives, Harvest Plus and the Generation Challenge Program, which aim, respectively, to improve the nutritional profile and the drought tolerance of major staple crops. Last year, the $150 million Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) - funded jointly by the Gates Foundation and the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation - set out an ambitious plan for boosting small-farmer productivity in Africa, which will address a wide range of issues, including seed availability and variety, crop management, soil fertility and irrigation, access to markets, and financing.
CONTINENTAL CONTENTION
South Africa remains the only country in Africa that has engaged in widespread planting of GM crops. In 2006, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, South Africa grew 1.4 million hectares of transgenic soy bean, cotton, and maize. However, its experiences are not "generalizable" to other regions, says Smale, because of the "dualism" that is prevalent in South African agriculture, meaning it has a sizeable number of large-scale, well-resourced farmers unlike other regions in Africa. In addition, farmer-support services, which are lacking in other parts of Africa, are actually present in South Africa. The lessons from India on some GM crops varying in yields and profits between states could also extend to other areas. So GM success in South Africa does not ensure it for Africa in general, even in nearby countries.
Issues over GM crops, though, are not limited to developing countries. In fact, one of the great paradoxes within the plant biotechnology field is that much of the original, enabling science came from European laboratories, yet biotech-based innovation in commercial crop science in Europe has all but ground to a halt because of the hostile market and regulatory environment within the European Union (EU). Although the EU put a comprehensive regulatory system in place several years ago, this has done little to shift public opinion. Moreover, Marc Van Montagu - emeritus professor at the University of Ghent in Belgium, chairman of the Institute of Plant Biotechnology for Developing Countries, and a key researcher in the technology that made it possible to insert foreign DNA into a plant's genome - believes that Europe's disavowal of the technology is having a damaging influence on low-income countries. "The message they receive is Europe should be GM-free," says Van Montagu.
