{"id":223012,"date":"2022-10-31T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=223012"},"modified":"2022-10-31T05:01:44","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T05:01:44","slug":"indias-gm-mustard-and-the-30-year-path-to-food-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/indias-gm-mustard-and-the-30-year-path-to-food-tyranny\/","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s GM Mustard and the 30-Year Path to Food Tyranny"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mustard<\/a>

Mustard Plant – Creative Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

27 Oct 2022 – A public interest litigation is currently before India\u2019s Supreme Court which challenges the drive to commercialise the growing of genetically modified (GM) mustard in India. On 26 October 2022, however, the country\u2019s apex regulatory body \u2013 the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee \u2013 sanctioned commercialisation of the crop.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The central government has in the past stated commercialisation will not go ahead prior to the court\u2019s decision, but this remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Approval is a significant moment for the agri biotech industry, not least because GM mustard can be regarded as a pioneering crop that could open the doors to a\u00a0range of other GM food crops<\/a>\u00a0that are in the pipeline.<\/p>\n

At this point, only one GM crop is legally cultivated in India, Bt cotton \u2013 designed to resist certain pests. Prominent policy makers and lobbyists have been claiming that, due to the success of Bt cotton, it should serve as a template for the introduction of GM food crops.<\/p>\n

But this claim is not grounded in reality. Bt cotton has been far from successful and has caused immense hardship for cotton farmers (in fact, it is a\u00a0template for a monumental catastrophe<\/a>). This is evidentially\u00a0supported by<\/a>\u00a0Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Dr Hans R Herren and Dr Peter E Kenmore, internationally renowned agricultural researchers.<\/p>\n

In India, Bt cotton is a\u00a0failing technology<\/a>\u00a0that has\u00a0severely negatively impacted<\/a>\u00a0many farmers. And before anyone says that farmers in India have consciously opted for GM cotton, they should read what researcher and academic Andrew Flachs says.<\/p>\n

Flachs conducted fieldwork on cotton cultivation in the South Indian state of Telangana. His book\u00a0Cultivating Knowledge<\/a>: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India reveals the ugly reality of \u2018choice\u2019 and cotton cultivation on the ground.<\/p>\n

Consider too that what is happening also goes against the recommendations of\u00a0four high-level reports\u00a0that have advised against the adoption of GM crops in India.<\/p>\n

The article\u00a0Agri Biotech Motivated by Monopoly Control<\/a>\u00a0(25 October 2022) lists these reports and describes how \u2013 through deception, scientific fraud, technological sleight of hand and regulatory jugglery \u2013 GM mustard is designed (once commercialised) to facilitate the process of (chemical-dependent) GM food crop cultivation in India.<\/p>\n

The premise behind GM mustard is to increase yields and reduce the import bill for edible oils. However, as the article mentioned above shows, there is actually no trait for yield and this GM mustard does not outperform conventional varieties. Moreover, the increase in edible oil imports is not due to low productivity of India\u2019s indigenous edible oils sector but the political decision to cut tarrifs on imports at the behest of global agri commodity traders.<\/p>\n

Official reports have been scathing about India\u2019s regulatory system for GMOs, highlighting its inadequacies and inherent serious conflicts of interest. One can only assume that given there is no need (the key prerequisite for introducing a GM crop) for GM mustard, there are other motives for its promotion.<\/p>\n

The GM project is not about the industry\u2019s much-touted PR slogans of \u2018feeding the world\u2019 or helping farmers\u2019. For the sake of brevity, readers can consult the online article\u00a0Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture<\/a>\u00a0which dismantles these claims.<\/p>\n

Regardless of any claimed benefits, GMOs have first and foremost been about value capture and creating market dependency. They are also about securing ownership of seed germplasm developed over centuries by farmers via acquiring intellectual property rights \u2013 corporations claim their genetic manipulation (no matter how fruitless the effect) turns a seed into a patentable product. This would restrict farmers\u2019 access to seeds and place the biotech companies in control of cultivation and breeding.<\/p>\n

Where India is concerned, the GM project must also be viewed as forming part of a wider dependency paradigm. There has been a three-decades-long plan to restructure the Indian economy and Indian agriculture. The plan stems from the country\u2019s 1991 foreign exchange crisis which was used to impose IMF-World Bank debt-related \u2018structural adjustment\u2019 conditionalities.<\/p>\n

The details of this plan appear in a 2021 article by the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy \u2013\u00a0Modi\u2019s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago in Washington\u00a0DC<\/a>. Although focusing on now-repealed (due to farmer protests) farm legislation, the article locates agricultural \u2018reforms\u2019 within a broader process of Western imperialism\u2019s increasing capture of the Indian economy.<\/p>\n

We often hear of the need to embrace technology and \u2018modern agriculture\u2019. On the surface, all well and good. But what this really means is acquiescing to the needs of global (GM) seed and agrichemical corporations and commodity traders: fitting into global supply chains that siphon value from the food system into the hands of the billionaires who own these conglomerates (we should not forget that Bt cotton enabled Monsanto to suck hundtreds of millions of dollars from poor cotton farmers).<\/p>\n

To achieve this, where India is concerned, it means destroying self-reliant, indigenous systems of production by deliberately making smallholder farming financially non-viable, dismantling public buffer food stocks and state-backed price support mechanisms and distribution systems.<\/p>\n

Having cleared the way for corporate interests to control the policy space left open by the retreat of the public sector and to amalgamate farms to entrench industrial-scale agriculture, the Indian government would then be compelled to attract \u2018foreign direct investment\u2019 by implementing further neoliberal reforms. This would build up foreign reserves which would then be used to purchase agricultural commodities on the international market.<\/p>\n

The type of \u2018food security\u2019 demanded by \u2018modern agriculture\u2019 means eradicating self-sufficiency and implementing food-import dependency on unscrupulous global conglomerates and volatile markets vulnerable to manipulation and shocks (as we are currently witnessing in 2022).<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not all. Privately owned but taxpayer subsidised \u2018modern agriculture\u2019 imposes certain costs, including nutrient-poor food contaminated by GMOs and chemical additives, the use of toxic pesticides, spiralling rates of ill health, the degradation of soil, the pollution of waterways, the eradication of thriving ecosystems and the destruction of rural communities.<\/p>\n

The GMO issue ties into the \u2018development\u2019 agenda being pushed on India. Powerful interests are being handed India\u2019s agrifood sector on a plate and both farmers and consumers will pick up the tab.<\/p>\n

The author is an independent writer. For more in-depth insight into what is described in this article, readers can access the free eBook, \u2018Food, Dispossession and Dependency: Resisting the New World Order<\/em>\u2019 by clicking on\u00a0this link.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Bangalore-based <\/em>Deccan Herald, New Indian Express and <\/em>Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in many other newspapers, journals and books. His East by Northwest site is at: http:\/\/colintodhunter.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – globalresearch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Oct 2022 – A public interest litigation is currently before India\u2019s Supreme Court which challenges the drive to commercialise the growing of genetically modified mustard in India. Yesterday, however, the country\u2019s apex regulatory body \u2013 the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee \u2013 sanctioned commercialisation of the crop.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":223013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[932,1055,931,759],"class_list":["post-223012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering","tag-genetic-engineering","tag-genetic-manipulation","tag-gmo","tag-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}