I recently found this article about Haitian farmers planning on destroying Monsanto seed. It reminded me of the stories of Indian farmers doing the same, and it stunned me that people in these extremely poor countries would be willing to destroy crops; especially Haiti, which just suffered a huge disaster, and where just a few years back people were eating mud. Now, I’m personally biased, but I wanted to really know whether these farmers were really acting in their best interest, based on experience with these crops, or whether they were like the teabaggers, talked by outsiders into acting against their own interests out of ignorance and fear.
After a little bit of digging, what I discovered was a massive discrepancy between scientific papers, which claim increased yields1, as well as reduced need for pesticide use2, and the writings of NGO’s and social workers which reported increased pesticide use and increased debts accumulated by the farmers. Usually I’d just go with the scientific studies, but I was having a hard time believing that thousands of Indian farmers would commit suicide if their financial situation weren’t as bad as reported. And eventually, I came across a somewhat comprehensive article3(pdf!) that explained the discrepancy at least in part: all the scientific studies are usually done within 1-3 years of adopting the GM crop; but a few studies showed that over a longer period, pesticide use between bt and non-bt crops evens out after longer periods of time either because of increase of secondary pests, or because of resistance:
‘Bt Technology Adoption, Bounded Rationality and the Outbreak of Secondary Pest Infestation in China’ claims that after seven years of Bt cotton introduction in China (1996 to 2004), the expenditure on pesticides for Bt and nonBt was identical in 2004 at $101 per ha and the earnings from Bt cotton were lower [Mishra 2006]. Narayanamoorthy and Kalamkar (2006) reported the economical viability of Bt cotton for Indian farmers (Maharashtra). Contrary to expectations, the total quantity of pesticides used in Bt cotton variety MECH 162 was higher than nonBt cotton varieties. The average net profit from Bt cotton was Rs 31,880 per ha, about 80 per cent higher than that from nonBt cotton. There was no significant difference in pesticide use between Bt and nonBt cotton varieties. However, it is too early to generalise in India, where four million small and marginal farmers have taken up cultivation of Bt cotton with estimated adoption rate of 50 per cent by the end of 2007 [Mishra 2006]. Illegal and spurious seeds coupled with nonmaintenance of minimum 20 per cent refugia by these farmers may result in severe pest attack on Bt cotton due to selection pressure and outbreak of secondary pests like whitefly [Chari 2006]. The bollworm is expected to develop resistance in 2007/08, where it was introduced in 2002 [Kranthi 2006][ed.:and indeed, it apparently has].
The same article also notes the significantly higher fertilizer reqirements of bt-cotton:
Fertiliser use was the highest in the case of Bt cotton, followed by hybrid cotton and was the least in the nonhybrid cotton varieties. The nitrogenous fertiliser use in Bt cotton was higher by 23 and 31 per cent when compared to the other hybrid and nonhybrid varieties, respectively. The respective phosphatic fertiliser use was higher by 17 and 50 per cent and the potashic fertiliser use was higher by 104 and 413 per cent. The use of zincsulphate was also higher in Bt cotton by 25 and 10 per cent, respectively.
Note also that at least the potash is an energy-intensive fertilizer, since it’s mined and then transported; phosphate is also usually mined. This means that as oil-prices rise, so will the cost of those fertilizers.
Anyway, the term “incorrect use” shows up in that article as well as a couple others that mention less-than-expected yields of GM-plants. I’m suspicious of that term, since it seems to mean that these crops can only grow in very specific circumstances. In wealthy countries where farmers can control the environment in which their crops grow more thoroughly and consistently, this might not be too big of a problem (though, with global warming and Peak Oil looming on the horizon, even wealthy Western farmers might loose control of conditions just enough to cause problems, maybe); but in poorer countries more prone to various environmental disruptions, and where the profit margins are smaller and income and financial relief in case of drought or other possible disasters is significantly less certain, it might be too difficult to expect the maintenance of the exactly necessary conditions by a sufficiently large percentage of farmers, year after year, to prevent these problems from eventually cropping up and rendering GM-plants unprofitable.
There were other reports of GM-plants failing (or not succeeding enough to be worth implementing): GM sweet potatoes in Africa and bt-cotton in Indonesia4; bt-cotton on small South African farms5 (their conclusion is especially noteworthy, since a lot of agriculture in developed countries consists of small farms, and any shift away from that has always resulted in massive misery, starvation, homelessness, etc. for the suddenly landless). There’s suspicion that GM-plants are toxic when consumed6. GM-companies are prone to stealing traditionally developed/discovered traits, patenting them, and therefore potentially depriving the original developers of the free use of those traits7. And lastly, the development of GM-plants is just another step in the arms-race that has, over the last 50 years or so, led to an explosive growth in use of herbicides and pesticides, which has impoverished and bankrupted many farmers, disrupted many ecosystems with its poisons, and even poisoned people themselves, while only modestly improving yields for short periods of time, while at the same time destroying top-soil and demanding increased fertilizer (which I already mentioned will be more and more of a problem in the future).
So, overall, I have to come to the conclusion that GMO’s are indeed not a good thing for farmers in developed countries; alternatives such as organic farming with local, non-patented seeds seems more promising than the participation in a race that makes agriculture more expensive, more fuel-intensive, more toxic to humans and the environment, more sensitive to any and all imperfections in implementation, and robs farmers of the freedom to use their seeds as they see fit. And sometimes, it robs them of their livelihood altogether.
I’ve learned a lot. Ref. 6 in particular was news to me… I think you’ll teach your professors a thing or three when you’ll study.
Nitrogen fertilizers are usually made from air and hydrogen. This requires high temperatures, thus energy that is becoming more expensive; and the hydrogen usually comes from natural gas, sometimes from coal — usually not from electrolysis of water, because that requires too much energy.
The alternative is mining and transporting of guano and the like, mostly from Chile. That’s what used to be done before the Haber-Bosch process was invented.
Check out the “economic and environmental aspects” section of the Wikipedia article.
yeah, seems pretty much the only low-energy fertilizer there is, is nitrogen-fixing crops + compost + letting a bunch of cows/goats/sheep/chickens shit on your fields for a season…
And/or use your own shit. That’s the TCM (traditional Chinese method).
OT: please check your e-mail before you board the plane to Copenhagen.
Here in the SE US, SC in particular, our cotton crop has seen almost zero increase in pressure from other insects after introduction of Bt cotton. The second generation of Bollguard cotton has allowed us to be spray free for the last four years or so. We are starting to see some resistance from some weeds in Roundup Ready crops. And maybe seeing a rise in herbicide costs overall.
Jadehawk – the article you link (3) doesn’t appear to tell the story you’re telling – table 10 in particular is pretty telling – particularly in terms of the economic impact leading to alleged increases in Indian farmer suicides – the cost of cultivation for each type looked at is:-
Bt Hybrids 22,431
Other Hybrids 24,259
Non-Hybrids 21,713
Which to me essentially says that Bt and non-hybrids cost the same, with other hybrids being marginally more expensive (although whether this difference is statistically significant is not indicated – how this would drive an increase in suicide rates is beyond me, particularly when you look at the changes in profitability of each system with net income being:-
Bt Hybrids – 21,558
Other hybrids – 18,311
Non-Hybrids – 11,975
So for a 3% change in upfront investment you stand to gain an approximate 90% increase in end of year profit
Further, if you look at the data on fertilizer use it is immediately apparent that the significant difference is driven by a single location, rather than being ubiquitous – Forezepur shows an approximate 1,000Rs/Ha increase in fertilizer for Bt hybrids compared to non-Bt Hybrids, but in the other two regions the difference is borderline significant (although in all cases hybrids utilize more fertilizer than non-hybrids) – this may be because up until the time of the study this region hadn’t used hybrids before and therefore weren’t quite as well versed in their useage. It also seems pretty surprising to me that pesticide use is exactly the same in hybrid vs non-hybrid, and that irrigation is the same across all types within a given region – I may be missing an explanation in the text, but given a sample size of ~70 (which appears in another table, and I’m assuming is constant) you’d never expect such precise repitition across the different varieties used (not that you’d necessarily expect it to vary signficantly, but zero variance is suspect)
Furthermore the increase in farmer suicides is entirely an invention – I’m sure you can see that the economics of the situation, as laid out above, and in the paper you link, do not support this from a logical point of view – particularly as the increase in suicides was claimed to have happened shortly after adoption, not years later – thus falling perfectly into the period looked at in the various research papers. When you look at farmer suicide rates in India over the period discussed it is also immediately apparent that they do not change, whatsoever in synch with the introduction of Bt cotton – if Bt cotton caused suicides then one would expect a concurrent increase in farmer suicides, and presumably an increase in line with increased adoption – what you see however is a relatively flat rate of farmer suicides at somewhat higher than the average rate of suicide in the Indian population as a whole – this makes sense as the difference in production costs is ~3% and I think anyone can admit that a 3% increase in costs is very unlikely to be the difference between taking your life, and not taking your life – crop failures happen to any crop, and that 3%, imo, isn’t going to be the tipping point – being 21,000 in the hole, or 22,000 in the hole, isn’t going to drastically change your outlook. However 10,000Rs extra at the end of the season might be something drastically lifechanging.
You are however right in your assertions about fertilizers etc and peak oil – this is something global ag is going to have to deal with – the issue here lies with high performance hybrids in general – they’re designed to operate under ideal, or close to ideal, conditions (generally) – one would hope that the focus would shift towards high yielding plants under low(er) input conditions – the team I work for is looking to reduce the nitrogen requirement of corn by a significant amount by utilizing transgenic technology, so this shift has occured at least partially, although from what I hear the same shift in breeding is incredibly hard to do due to increasing variability of plants when under N stress. I’d also hope that once Bt goes off patent there is some scope to develop non-hybrid forms that utilize Bt – preferably by govt organizations in India etc – here you’d get a lower yielding plant that required lower inputs – particularly insecticides – there is nothing inherent about Bt that requires higher fertilizer rates, there is however something inherent about hybrids (at least those used) that does.
There’s also a suspicion that homeopathic remedies work. Seralini’s reanalysis of the Monsanto data really says nothing about toxicity – the studies looked at hundreds of parameters – nothing toxicologically significant was found, no dose dependant significant increases, no biologically meaningful sig differences – it is not surprising that when looking at 100′s of parameters that a handful will be statistically significant at p of less than 0.05 – you’d essentially be shocked if some weren’t, and when you compare the GM line not only to the isoline, but also to other lines of (corn or soy… I forget which) the significant differences look even less meaningful. The scientific consensus remains that there is no evidence of toxicity in commercially available GM products – you can cherry pick the couple of studies which erroneously suggest otherwise (the couple I’m thinking of are both Seralini’s interpretation of the same data set – both of which have been picked apart by non-industry scientists), but this isn’t being scientific about things, this is picking your stance and then picking only those articles which back up your arguement while ignoring the rest.
The arms race you’re talking about has increased yields year on year in the order of 1-5% per year since approximately 1950. In crops where GM technology has not been adopted this increase has flatlined of late (notably wheat) whereas in crops where the technology has been adopted yield increases continue year on year – the introduction of GM crops reduced the overall environmental impact of pesticides and herbicides utilized (reduced actual quantity of insecticides whichever way you look at it – herbicides are a tad bit more complex than that, both sides can spin it so it looks good for their arguement)
One other interesting article on the misconception that Bt doesn’t work:-
http://www.agbioforum.org/v12n1/v12n1a02-herring.pdf
Apologies for coming to this a tad late (or at all) – missed it the last few weeks due to increasing business… also seems like a more focused area to debate the facts of the matter than on the thread or whatever.
epically shitty timing, Ewan. I’m on vacation for another month without any sources, nor the desire to get into this right now, and that post alone took me the better part of a month to put together. So if ever, expect an answer in September or so :-p
but you can try to get SC over here to argue for me, in the meantime ;-)
I look forward to September then. Although I’ll be elbow deep in crap around that time, which may mean you have to wait a couple months for me to respond… although that probably isn’t likely.
True. That’s an important point that gets overlooked relatively often in statistics.
As I have no experience with GMO products outside about four counties in South Carolina, my comments may not have much impact on the overall discussion. I do have the experience of consulting on roughly 10,000 acres per year for the last 29 years.
Bt and RR (Roundup Ready) completely changed the way cotton is grown for the better. From an environmental impact point alone the change has had a tremendous benefit. We’ve gone from the most toxic chemical cocktails being sprayed on five-seven day schedules to literally spraying no pesticides in many situations.
RR is a little harder to determine. As I said before, this is an area where cultural practices may be changing due to resistance from some weeds, which has, in my opinion, more to do with application problems than possibly early resistance.
GMO has been so effective that it has basically eliminated the need for cotton pest consulting in this area.
I really can’t find a negative from a farming standpoint from GMOs.
Another scientific tidbit which directly addresses the question in the title:-
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v28/n4/full/nbt0410-319.html
Note that in developing countries farmers actually stand to benefit the most from GMOs
When looking at studies done in developing countries the numbers break down as follows:-
Positive yield – 88
Neutral yield – 13
Negative yield – 6
Interestingly all 6 of these negative studies come from the first year of adoption in India – adoption of new technologies is always a risky business as farmers get used to them (and the germplasm in which they occur, which is what I suspect to be the major driver here) – in agronomic terms a 88:13:6 ratio of win:draw:loss is astonishingly good.
This doesn’t just fall out in terms of yield, but also economics:-
71:11:16 ratio of win:tie:loss in economic terms – again impressive, although clearly not without risk (brings up the arguement as to whether you reject a technology which is predominantly beneficial but may be detrimental in a minority of cases – in which case you’d clearly have to look at the magnitude of ecomomic win and loss.
On the particulars of Indian farmer suicides etc – graphs at the end of the monster document best illustrate the non-effect of Bt at time of adoption (and a correlation between adoption and reduction in suicide rate in 2 regions) – there is a graph (fig 7 I think… don’t have time to check at the mo) which does show an apparent correlation between increase in suicide rate and Bt adoption, although this doesn’t correlate too well with acreage adopted, nor with a decreased adoption rate – something else going on in pretty much all cases imo (although I’d love it if the Bt negative correlation was real, it doesn’t appear to be in all cases and therefore my guess is that something else is going on here too)
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf
(I’ll try and hold back from posting too much more – I’m hoping that I’m somewhat more caught up on the whole topic now than I was a couple weeks ago – just hoping that the actual data will win out over ideological bias)
Back… again… sorry! Just wanted to add a touch more perspective, particularly to Haiti rather than harping on about India any more (I have apparently done that to death) – recent article about the Monsanto donation in Le Nouvelliste (which I’m presuming is a Haitian newspaper) had the following rather sobering quote from Mr. Prophète, an agronomist and Director of the National Seed Department, Ministry of Agriculture:-
Which is scary on two levels. First – a half billion dollars of food needs to be imported to Haiti every year – and you still have people apparently eating mud. Second a $4M investment in seed equates to an $80M reduction in food deficeit – which to me suggests that an investment of probably $25M p/a in Haitian agriculture would have the potential to completely change the face of Haitian ag and sever them completely from reliance on external food.
One other minor point of contention also, which you’re probably fully aware of anyway – the Haitian seed donation had absolutely nothing to do with GMOs – it was GMO free, what we’re talking about in Haiti is rejection of modern hybrid seed because of the perceived danger of hooking Haitian farmers on hybrids owned by evil multinationals thus destroying the (to all intents and purposes) non-existant Haitian seed industry. Although it begs the question somewhat – would it be so bad that Haitian agriculture in a “worst case” scenario was hooked on big-ag seeds to the tune of $25M p/a if that relieved the country of a $500M p/a addiction to imported food (which represents an enormous amount of food insecurity and to me is way more of an indication that someone is “controlling” food than the IP issues surrounding either GMOs or to a lesser extent hybrids – particularly as the donation from Monsanto is no strings attached with the capacity to save seeds if wanted (albeit that the offspring of hybrids won’t be as productive as the hybrids themsevles, but given that they should still be at the same level or better than the inbreds from whence they sprang probably still represent a significant improvement over varieties currently utilized (which goes back to the abject lack of a seed production industry in Haiti))
I understand why there would be no real hybrid seed development in Haiti. I don’t understand the rejection of it.
[...] is putting already poor farmers further into debt and producing an illogical and unethical forced reliance on terminator seeds, which are seeds that [...]
[...] is putting already poor farmers further into debt and producing an illogical and unethical forced reliance on terminator seeds, which are seeds that [...]