Publication - January 12, 2006
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Executive summary: This story of how field trials are being conducted in India explains the huge failure of Bt Cotton (in terms of the crop performance as well as the failure of regulation) when farmers grow these crops in real life conditions. The lack of scientificity of trials and their monitoring and an utter disregard to norms and guidelines is reflected in the larger story of how Bt Cotton has actually performed in the past four years as well as the total collapse of regulatory mechanisms and accountability systems in commercial cultivation also.
In fact, the number of years of actual commercial cultivation, before the hybrid is getting rejected by the farmers, is the same as the ideal number of years of field trials. For instance, MECH 12 Bt proved to be an utter failure in many parts in the first year of its commercial cultivation. While this was withdrawn and MECH 184 Bt and MECH 162 Bt were promoted instead, they soon proved to have huge shortcomings too and farmers rejected these in places like Andhra Pradesh.
This then, is the story of how experimentation seems to be happening after approval for commercial cultivation rather than at the time of field trials, at the expense of farmers and their livelihoods!
Num. pages: 29