All about Genetically Modified food

Three common arguments are advanced to the citizens of India as justifying the need for genetically modified crops. None of these owe their intellectual genesis to the present NDA government (which is employing them nonetheless), and can be found as theses in both UPA2 and UPA1. They are: Genetically engineered seed and crop are necessary in order that India find lasting food security; that good science and particularly good crop science in India can only be fostered — in the public interest — by our immediate adoption of agricultural biotechnology; that India’s agricultural exports (and their contribution to GDP growth and farmers’ livelihoods) require the adoption of such technology.

Examining these uncovers a skein of untruths and imputations, which have been seized upon by advocates and proponents of GM technology and broadcast through media and industry channels. First, the food security meme, which has assumed an oracular gravity but which has not been supported by serious enquiry. On this aspect, the facts are as follows. Our country grows about 241 million tonnes of cereals (rice, wheat and coarse cereals), just under 20 million tonnes of pulses and between 160 and 170 million tonnes of vegetables (leafy and others together). This has been the trend of the last triennium.

Concerning current and future need, based on the recommendations of the Indian Council of Medical Research and the National Institute of Nutrition, an adult’s annual consumption of these staples ought to be 15 kg of pulses, 37 kg of vegetables and 168 kg of cereals. Using Census 2011 population data and the projections based on current population growth rates, we find that the current 2014 level of production of cereals will supply our population in 2028, that the current level of production of vegetables will be more than three times the basic demand in 2030, and that the current level of production of pulses will fall short of the basic demand in 2020. In short, India has been comfortably supplied with food staples for the last decade and will continue to be so for the next 15 years at least. Why then are the GM advocates and proponents (including unfortunately the Minister of Environment, Prakash Javadekar) in a cyclonic hurry to bring the technology and its manifold risks to India by citing food security as a reason?

Second, the aspect of ‘good science’ that GM research embodies and the caricaturing of those who oppose GM as being “against science” and “against development”. The standard-bearers of scientific method have shied away from explaining why elementary honesty and transparency, which are cornerstones in the progress of all inquiry including scientific, have not been followed when it comes to GM technology sought to be implanted in India. Even before the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee on July 18, 2014, stated that it had permitted field trials of GM crops, the committee had fallen afoul of its own earlier decision to be transparent.

There are no records in the public domain of its last four meetings, nor their agendas, nor any information about what field trials were approved, for which crops, during which growing seasons, the states so encumbered, and the applicants so favoured. Good science cannot emerge from concealment and skulduggery, and it is this aspect that had infuriated the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Bharatiya Kisan Union, when they demanded from the BJP government that the field trials approval be reversed.

A decade of subterfuge and misinformation by the GM advocates has succeeded in denying our country of the robust, and transparent regulatory system desired by the first agri-biotechnology task force appointed by the government of India (headed by Dr M.S. Swaminathan, report submitted in 2004). This task force had recommended that transgenics should be considered only when other viable options have been exhausted, an over-arching warning that has been ignored by the GM evangelists. The same approach  was further reflected in the reports by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture (2012) and the SC-appointed Technical Expert Committee (2013).

All these inquiries — including the public hearings campaign of Jairam Ramesh (February 2010) which imposed an indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal, and the Sopory Committee Report (August 2012) — have roundly criticised the existing bio safety regulatory system for its weaknesses and the absence of protocols by which we deserve such risk to be assessed. Why should it be otherwise, when India is one of the world centres of crop origin and diversity, which under no circumstances do we want contaminated by transgenic crops?

Third is the clumsy concatenation of India’s agricultural exports being boosted by the adoption of GM technology while simultaneously raising farmers’ livelihood. For the last three years, India’s exports of agricultural products have risen from Rs 1,87,000 crore to Rs 2,32,000 crore to Rs 2,68,469 crore in 2013-14 (the numbers supplied by the department of agriculture and cooperation, ministry of agriculture).

If this is a macro-economic pillar valued by the NDA government then it is one that has been achieved without GM crop and food exports. There are examples of both China and Russia which have halted purchases of soya and grain from the USA and grown using GM methods, and have banned genetically modified organism products while banning GM cultivation at home. Given India’s newfound inspiration with BRICS, we must hope their better sense on GM is contagious.

It is our cultivating households which have 85 per cent of the total holdings and which account for 44.5 per cent of the land area under agriculture that must come first. This large section of our people, the providers of India’s food on that 85 per cent of all farm holdings, have protested policy impacts that have caused their displacement because of impoverishment by the agency of what are called ‘market forces’, or because their farms are swallowed up by racing urbanisation; they have been demanding a minimum living income as a guarantee to all farm households, which must be their due as food growers.

The fantasy economics of GM is stacked against them, which we know from the dreadful roll-call of suicides, 12 years long and over 200,000 lost lives. The arguments bordering on perjury of the GM advocates stand dashed, for the opposition to this technology is grounded in the recognition that India’s immense biodiversity of seeds, plants and life forms is our collective heritage, which has evolved through the cumulative innovations, adaptations and selections of many generations of indigenous farming communities, in whose eyes they are sacred.

(The author studies agriculture practices, food policy and their impacts on costs and prices. He has written extensively on the subject and has worked for the National Agriculture Innovation Project).