SAVE OUR  ANDHRA PRADESH FARMERS FROM DUPLICATE FERTILISERS
DISCUSSION REGARDING PROBLEMS BEING FACED BY FARMERS
14.41 hrs.
DISCUSSION UNDER RULE 193
MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Now, the House will take up item No. 29. The subject is very much important and the whole country is concerned about it. So, I would request hon. Members to be brief and give only suggestions.
SHRI BASU DEB ACHARIA (BANKURA): Sir, after waiting for six days, today, the discussion is being allowed on a very important subject concerning millions and millions of people of our country. About 75 per cent of our population are dependent on agriculture.
Today, we are discussing the problems being faced by the farmers in the backdrop of the agitation launched by thousands and thousands of farmers of Rajasthan. When farmers demanded adequate quantum of water for irrigation for their agricultural operations and for their crop, we saw how their agitation was brutally attacked. We would have to remember today the six farmers who were killed and who lost their lives because of police firing in Rajasthan. Ultimately, the Government of Rajasthan had to agree with the representatives of kisans and had to agree to their demands, after the agitation and struggle by thousands and thousands of peasants.
We are discussing today the issue concerning 75 per cent of the population of our country in the backdrop of WTO conditionalities. We have seen how farmers have been committing suicide for the last three to four years. Thousands and thousands of farmers have committed suicide. The farmers of Andhra Pradesh are committing suicide even today. The farmers of Kerala are also committing suicide. The cotton growers of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh and the farmers of Rajasthan and a number of other States are committing suicide.

The economics of addiction can be summed up in a few words: Sell a product that makes buyers need it more. Cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh had descended into a seemingly hopeless abyss of escalating pesticide dependence and debt. Suicides were becoming common. “Non-Pesticide Management” was the tipping point that brought health and hope to the farmers in Punukula village. Thousands of villages are now embarking on the same path.


The Problem


Cotton was introduced to Khamman District, Andhra Pradesh, about 20 years ago. The farmers were already growing crops such as millet, sorghum, groundnuts, red gram (pigeon pea), green gram (mung bean), chili, and rice for home consumption and selling the surplus for cash income. Cotton was a particularly attractive new crop because it could earn much more than their other crops. However, cotton production required chemical inputs with which the great majority of these poor small-scale farmers had no previous experience. Most of them had never used chemical fertilizers or pesticides.


Middlemen (known locally as "traders") served as technical advisors for cotton production. They provided seeds, chemical fertilizers, and insecticides on credit while guaranteeing purchase of the crop. The traders provided essential services, but they had a vested interest in selling their products. Their knowledge for giving technical advice was often limited to information provided by pesticide companies and other suppliers of their products. The farmers were dependent on traders for advice, credit, and marketing because no alternatives were available.


Yields and incomes from cotton were high during the early years of cotton production. Expenses for insecticides were relatively low because cotton pests were not yet established in the area. Many farmers were so impressed with the insecticides that they started using them on their other crops as well. Unfortunately, cotton pests such as cotton bollworms, pink bollworms, army worms, red hairy caterpillars, leafhoppers, and aphids became more and more of a problem as the years passed. These pests not only increased in abundance, they also developed resistance to insecticides, making it necessary to apply a greater variety of insecticides and in increasingly larger quantities. Larger fertilizer applications also became necessary as soil fertility declined with cotton cultivation. As fertilizer and insecticide applications increased, the cost of cotton production also increased and was eventually so great that cash inputs often exceeded the value of the crop. As a consequence, farmers fell further and further into debt to the traders.


All family members, including children, participated in spraying insecticides on the fields. The fact that they often did not know how to do it properly not only limited the effectiveness for reducing crop damage but also exposed the families to toxic effects. Insecticide poisoning was common. People had health problems such as headaches, nausea, skin rashes, fatigue, disruption of vision, and sometimes acute poisoning that required hospitalization or caused permanent psychological damage. Humans were not the only ones to suffer from insecticide poisoning. Cows and goats sometimes died when they grazed near cotton fields sprayed with insecticide.


Farmers wanted to get away from insecticides, but insecticides had drastically reduced the populations of insectivorous birds, wasps, beetles, and other predatory insects that provided natural control of pest insects. Without natural control, damage to the cotton crop was severe if farmers reduced their insecticide use.

This was the "pesticide trap.” The trap was not only ecological but also social because farmers were tied to traders by debt (with interest rates of 3%-5% per month) and dependent on traders for technical advice. Some farmers resorted to illegal activities such as teak smuggling to cope with their debts. Suicide became increasingly common due to insecticide-induced depression and despair over debts, the favored method of suicide being ingestion of insecticide.

Farmer Suicides and Bt Cotton Nightmare Unfolding in India

As the cotton growing season drew to a close in the state of Andhra Pradesh, farmer suicides once again became almost daily occurrences.  Officially, the total number of suicides within a six-week period between July and August 2009 stood at 15, but opposition parties and farmers’ groups said the true total was more than 150 [1]. Opposition leader N. Chandrababu claimed in a speech that he had the names and addresses of 165 farmers who ended their lives because of the distress caused by the drought.

By November, similar reports were coming from another cotton growing state Maharashtra. Farmers of Katpur village in Amravati district sowed Bt cotton four years ago. Instead of the promised miracle yields, huge debts have driven many to suicide, and cattle were reported dying after feeding on the plants [2] (see [3] Mass Deaths in Sheep Grazing on Bt Cotton, SiS 30).

One ray of hope was that the 5000-odd farmers of the Maharashtra village have decided to shun Bt cotton, and are now growing soybean instead. Some have also taken to organic farming.

“We were cheated by the seed companies. We did not get the yield promised by them, not even half of it. And the expenditure involved was so high that we incurred huge debts. We have heard that the government is now planning commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal. But we do not want Bt seeds of any crop anymore,” said farmer Sahebrao Yawiliker.

Successive studies in Maharashtra have concluded that indebtedness was a major cause of suicides among farmers [4].

Within a week, two farmers in neighbouring villages in Wardha district killed themselves. Their Bt cotton crops were devastated by lalya, a disease that caused the cotton plants to redden and wilt [5]. The first farmer, 55 year old Laxman Chelpelviar in Mukutban,  consumed the pesticide Endoulfan when the first picking from his six-acre farm returned a mere five quintals and an income of Rs15 000, way below his expenses of Rs50 000.  The second farmer, 45 year old Daulat Majure in Jhamkola, was discovered by his mother hanging dead from the ceiling. The cotton yield from his seven-acre farm was a miserable one quintal, worth Rs3 000.

Agricultural scientists said lalya points to a lack of micronutrients and moisture content in the soil. Lalya develops with pest attacks, moisture stress and lack of micronutrients in the soil. The plant’s chlorophyll decreases with nitrogen deficiency, resulting in another pigment, anthocyanin, which turns the foliage red. If reddening starts before boll formation, it results in a 25 percent drop in yield, said a scientist from the Central Institute of Cotton Research at Nagpur, who wished to remain anonymous. “Lalya is here to stay.” He declared.

According to the agricultural scientists, the disease has its roots in the American Bt technology that India imported. Almost all of the 500-plus Bt seed varieties sold in India in 2009 are of the same parentage, the American variety Coker312 Bt cotton, a top CICR scientist said. They are F1 hybrids, crossed with Indian varieties.

Coker-312 (initially from Monsanto) showed high susceptibility to attacks by sucking pests like jassids and thrips. The thrips disperse within plant cells, while jassids suck the sap as they multiply under a leaf’s surface, forcing the plant to draw more nutrients from the soil, aggravating the soil’s nutritional deficiency.

Another characteristic of Bt cotton that depletes the soil is that the bolls come to fruition simultaneously, draining the soil all at once. In a region like Vidarbha, plants wilt in two or three days. “It is like drawing blood from anemic woman.”

 “If such a technology mismatch continues, soil health and farmers’ economy will take a further hit,” a top ICAR scientist with years of experience in cotton research was reported saying [5]. “The state needs to take up soil and water conservation efforts on a war footing in Vidarbha.”

India has about ten million ha under hybrids and Bt cotton, much high than in China (6.3 m ha), US (3.8 m ha) and Pakistan (3.1 m ha). Unlike India, 79 other countries use self-seeding and non-Bt hybrids.

The cotton crisis and successive crop failures due to declining soil health goes hand in hand with the imported GM (genetic modification) technology, which is energy and input intensive, the report [5] concluded.

Other effects of Bt cotton the Indian scientists could have mentioned are the resurgence of secondary pests and especially the new exotic mealy bug pest introduced with the Bt cotton, as well as the reduced yields of other crops on land cultivated with Bt cotton [6] (see Mealy Bug Plagues Bt Cotton Fields in India and Pakistan, SiS 45).

A recent scientific study carried out by Delhi-based Navdanya compared the soil of fields where Bt-cotton had been planted for three years with adjoining fields planted with non GM cotton or other crops [7]. The regions covered included Nagpur, Amravati and Wardha of Vidharbha, which account for the highest Bt cotton planting in India, and the highest rate of farmer suicides (4 000 per year).

In three years, Bt-cotton was found to reduce the population of Actinomycetes bacteria by 17 percent. Actinomycetes bacteria are vital for breaking down cellulose and creating humus.

Bacteria overall were reduced by 14 percent, while the total microbial biomass was reduced by 8.9 percent. Vital soil enzymes, which make nutrients available to plants, have also been drastically reduced. Acid phosphatase which contributes to the uptake of phosphates was lowered by 26.6 percent. Nitrogenase enzymes, which help fix nitrogen, were diminished by 22.6 percent. The study concluded [7] that a decade of planting with GM cotton, or any GM crop with Bt genes could lead to total destruction of soil organisms, “leaving dead soil unable to produce food.”

After some respite in the post loan-waiver year of 2008, farmer suicides have begun to climb again [5]. The number of suicides in the six worst-affected western Vidarbha districts in 2009 was approaching 900. November saw 24 famers take their own lives in Yavatmal alone.

“Crop survival this year is only 44 percent in some blocks,” said Sanjay Desmukh, Yavatmal collector. “Rains have been scanty.”