The Use of GM Crops in Developing Countries
Case study 1: Non-food crops – Bt cotton in China and South Africa continued
3.33 Despite these benefits, the use of Bt cotton carries a number of risks. Concern has been expressed with regard to a perceived undue influence of multinational agrochemical and seed companies. Companies can decide to levy ‘technology fees’ from users of newly developed GM crops such as Bt cotton. Such fees may be acceptable to large-scale farmers in developed countries, but they could exclude small-scale farmers in developing countries from using GM crops.38 There are fears that some farmers might try to avoid these costs by reusing seed saved from previous seasons, or by purchasing seeds illegally, both options usually resulting in significantly reduced yields. Such incidents have recently been reported in India.39 Thus, corporate control of seed markets and ownership of technologies are important issues. For example, the company Monsanto has made 90% of the patent applications for genes relating to the improvement of cotton.40 In the case of agrochemicals, 10 companies control approximately 85% of the global market.41 We consider issues relating to intellectual property rights in more detail in Chapter 6.
3.34 Reductions in the use of pesticides arising from the cultivation of Bt cotton might lead to less employment for farm workers. However, recent data from the Makhathini Flats have shown that, overall, this can be compensated for by increased demand for farm workers during the harvest, because of increased yields.42 While this issue of labour is not relevant for small-scale farmers who do not employ labourers, it may require consideration in the case of larger farms. Problems could arise if farm workers are not able to obtain employment on other farms during the growing period of the crop.3.35 It is uncertain whether the concept behind Bt crops will prove to be robust over the medium to long term. It is known that pests may eventually acquire resistance to toxins.43 However, the cotton bollworm has been monitored for Bt resistance in China since 1997, and resistant mutants have not yet been reported.44 Nonetheless, resistance is likely to develop if the first generation of plants remains in cultivation for long enough. The use of refuges is one way of addressing this issue. To slow down the emergence of resistance, many regulatory schemes require that sufficient acreage of non-Bt crops are grown close to the Bt crops, to allow refuges for insects which can mate with potentially Bt-resistant insects. There is disagreement about the theoretical and practical effectiveness of refuges. Their success depends on factors such as size, spatial proximity relative to GM crops, the inheritance patterns of the trait that confers resistance to the toxin in pests, and the synchronous emergence of resistant and non-resistant pests.45 The efficacy of refuges is well documented for Bt cotton farms in Australia, where regulatory requirements have been successfully implemented.46 However, while the monitoring of refuges seems feasible for large-scale commercial farms, it may be much more difficult to achieve for numerous small-scale farms in developing countries.47 Other approaches to avoid resistance might be to use two or more Bt genes,48 or to carry out research into new insecticidal genes that could eventually take the place of Bt.49 However, at present Bt varieties have remained resistant to pest infestation for considerably longer than had initially been anticipated.
Footnotes38 However, as the example of China showed, higher prices for seed can be offset by overall savings in other areas (see Table 3.1).
39 India approved the growing of Bt cotton in April 2002. However there are reports that illegal plantings of Bt cotton has already taken place over the past three years. Unlicensed seeds have been produced by crossing Monsanto’s varieties with other previously used conventional varieties. In Gujarat about one half of the Bt cotton seeds sold are estimated to be illegal ‘pirate’ seeds, which are considerably less expensive than commercial seeds. Several thousand acres had been sown illegally with second and third generation seeds, which had very low yields. Jayaraman KS (2002) Poor crop management plagues Bt cotton experiment in India, Nat Biotechnol 20: 1069. While some favour this practice as a democratisation of plant breeding, others point to losses in quality. Monsanto is concerned that its technology is being used without payment of royalties and the company is said to have lodged an official complaint to the Indian Government, requesting an end to the illegal use of its cotton variety. Ghosh P (2003) India’s GM seed piracy. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2998150.stm. Accessed on: 14 Oct 2003.
40 GeneWatch (2001) Briefing No. 13 Genetic Engineering: A Review of Developments in 2000 (Derbyshire, UK: GeneWatch).
41 AEBC (2002) Looking Ahead - An AEBC Horizon Scan (London: Department of Trade and Industry).
42 Shankar B and Thirtle C (2003) Pesticide Productivity and Transgenic Cotton Technology: The South African Smallholder Case, Working Paper, Dept. of Agricultural & Food Economics, University of Reading.
43 We note that this is a problem that is not unique to GM crops. It is equally applicable to conventionally applied pesticides.
44 Wu K (2002) Agricultural and biological factors impacting on the long term effectiveness of Bt Cotton, Conference on Resistance Management for Bt crops in China: Economic and Biological Considerations, 28 April 2002, North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
45 Liu Y-B, Tabashnik BE, Dennehy TJ, Patin AL and Bartlett AC (1999) Development time and resistance to Bt crops, Nature 400: 519; Gould F (1998) Sustainability of transgenic insecticidal cultivars: Integrating Pest Genetics and Ecology, Annu Rev Entomol 43: 701–26; Tabashnik BE (1994) Delaying Insect Adaptation to Transgenic Plants: Seed mixtures and refugia reconsidered, Proc R Soc Lond B Bio 255: 7–12.
46 Peacock J (2003) Presentation at conference Towards Sustainable Agriculture for Developing Countries: options from life sciences and biotechnologies, 30-31 Jan 2003, Brussels. For a critical account on the effectiveness of refuges see Liu Y-B, Tabashnik BE, Dennehy TJ, Patin AL and Bartlett AC (1999) Development time and resistance to Bt crops, Nature 400: 519.
47 It has also been reported that poor crop management frequently occurred in India when Bt varieties were planted legally. Farmers were said to have failed to provide refuges of non-Bt cotton. It has been suggested that the crops were introduced too hastily and that farmers had not been made aware that more intense irrigation would be required. Farmers had also paid four times the price of traditional varieties for Bt crops Qaim M (2002) Bt Cotton in India: Field-Trial Results and Economic Projections, Dept of Agriculture and Resource Economics, University of California. However, there is also anecdotal evidence that professionally managed Bt cotton has led to reductions of 70% in the amount of pesticides used in and yield gains of up to 80% comparison to conventionally planted cotton. These developments suggest that is too soon to draw conclusions as to whether the use of Bt cotton in India is likely to be beneficial. Jayaraman KS (2002) Poor crop management plagues Bt cotton experiment in India, Nat Biotechnol 20: 1069.
48 Peacock J (2003) presentation at conference Towards Sustainable Agriculture for Developing Countries: options from life sciences and biotechnologies, 30-31 Jan 2003, Brussels; Gould F (1998) Sustainability of transgenic insecticidal cultivars: Integrating Pest Genetics and Ecology, Annu Rev Entomol 43: 701–26.
49 Bowen D et al. (1998) Insecticidal toxins from the bacterium Photorhabdus luminescens, Science 280: 2129–32.