Plant Biotech Blog

India owes immensely to the US, for her present position as food exporter, from that of a food importer four decades ago. The edifice of the present Indian agriculture has come into being through US support. Most Indians are either ignorant of this or think that US owes it to them by some divine ordinance or too prejudiced to recognize it. If one looks into the past, the US has been very magnanimous toward India, and never broke a promise given to India. Yet, some Indians consider Americans untrustworthy. Chandrabhan Prasad (The Pioneer, New Delhi, March 12, 2006) has much to say on this.

After partition, Western Punjab, India’s wheat bowl had gone to Pakistan. A spell of successive bad monsoons added, there was a severe food crisis by 1955, reminiscent of the Bengal famine.

India had no options. Chinese were already starving. Russia, India’s quasi-ally didn’t have enough for its own people. Europe was just recovering from World War II and could not help. India didn’t have any foreign currency to buy food even if it were available. Millions of people would have to be left to starve, if the US had not came to India’s rescue. That was how the famous PL 480 wheat import deal with US was signed by India in 1956.

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During the recent visit to India by the US President George Bush, a significant outcome was the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative, which includes a major thrust on agricultural biotechnology. No sooner, the anti-tech activists trashed the deal, using outdated rhetoric like ‘Killing fields of India’ (Times of India, March 16, 2006). A farmers’ protest rally, organized in Delhi on March 21,2006 in a different context, was also exploited to criticize the deal. The main charge is that the US will exploit the Indian genetic resources and dominate Indian markets with GE products that could not be sold elsewhere and that India would be paying heavily both in kind and cash. The technological advantages that India would gain from the deal are ignored. The activists even project the agricultural deal as a recompense for the Indo-US nuclear deal.

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Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (MMB), the holders of the technology rights for Bollgard ™ I, the bollworm tolerant Bt cotton in India, have decided to reduce the technology fee on Bollgard I containing Cry 1Ac gene, in the coming cotton season of 2006. The Bollgard technology is currently sub-licensed by MMB to about 20 seed companies in India.

In the 2006 cotton season, technology fee will be Rs.900 per 450 g packet of Bollgard I cottonseed adequate to sow in an acre, about 30 per cent less than the cost in the last season. In 2005 farmers paid about Rs. 1,750 for a 450 g packet of authentic Bt cottonseed, which also contained the required quantity of non-Bt seed for planting the refugium.

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Mr. Dorab Mistry, London based Director of the Godrej group, pleaded for a level field on Indian import tariffs on edible oils (Reuters, February 24, 2006). His case in point is that the import tariff on the South American soyoil is unfairly lower than that of the Malaysian palm oil.

The scenario of import and export of edible oils in India fluctuates, being subject to variations in demand and supply, based on the quantum of indigenous production. There is the policy of ‘Seasonally variable import duty’ to control oil prices during the lean period, but this has affected the farmer and edible oil industry during the glut season (Hegde, 2002).

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The Precautionary Principle (PP) is a regulatory provision to be taken into account while Genetically Engineered Organisms (GEOs) or their products, are released into the environment or placed on the market. The PP is good in intent but has now become contentious, largely due to its repeated, rigorous and unwarranted invocation by the regulatory authority in several countries, to defer decisions on approval or rejection of GEOs, mostly under pressure from the anti-tech lobbies. Over the time, the consequences of the application PP have ramified into different contexts affecting international trade. The PP is now largely seen as a retardant of globalization, instead of being the watchdog of human and environmental safety vis a vis GEOs.

The Precautionary Principle (PP) was originally proposed in the ‘Rio Declaration on Environment and Development’ of the Earth Summit, 1992, in the context of protecting the environment, long before GEOs were on the scene. Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration states that ‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation’. The context and focus of the precautionary approach here is damage to the environment.

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