Monsanto pulled every trick in the book to hype bt cotton to these farmers.

http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5741

http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6455

---

Destitute and dying on India's farms
By Amelia Gentleman
International Herald Tribune, APRIL 18, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/18/news/farmers.php

SUNNA, India Discussing the effectiveness of pesticides as a human poison is not a very cheerful topic for a wedding, but Radika Mamidwar's wedding was not an entirely cheerful occasion.

Four months ago, her father, Subhash, drank a quantity of monocrotophos - a highly toxic organophosphate used to kill insects, long since banned in the United States - and died alone in his cotton field near their home.

The cotton harvest had failed and debts to money lenders and the bank were mounting.

The impending costs of the imminent wedding made a dire financial situation impossible, and he picked the chemical he hoped would kill him fastest. He was the third farmer in the village to commit suicide this season.

In the Vidarbha cotton belt, which stretches across central India, to the eastern part of the state of Maharashtra, 451 cotton farmers have killed themselves since the beginning of this harvest; about 2,300 have committed suicide since 2000.

Of the 3.4 million cotton farmers in this region, 95 percent are believed to be struggling with heavy debt, according to the local farmers' support network, the Vidarbha Jan Aandolan Samiti.

The farmers who commit suicide represent a tiny minority who abandon the battle for survival, but thousands more are living on the brink.

The deaths are symbolic of a greater malaise in Indian agriculture. The country has 120 million farmers, and agriculture accounts for the livelihood of two-thirds of the Indian population, but as new wealth is flaunted in the cities, most small farmers are still living in conditions of profound deprivation.

This year, in addition to the problems in Maharashtra, crop failures in Punjab, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have prompted hundreds of farmers to kill themselves. Some groups of bankrupt farmers have erected signs on the highway offering up their village for sale as a way to raise money.

Supervising a small, subdued wedding party in his absence, Subhash's widow, Suverna Mamidwar, said she knew her husband had been concerned about the unexpected costs involved with planting a new genetically modified cotton seed this year. It had been heavily advertised by the state Agricultural Ministry, but it had not delivered the promised high yield.

Subhash owed 40,000 rupees, or $890, to the bank, and about 100,000 rupees more to private lenders in the village - with no way of repaying the loans.

"I could see that he was worried, but I had no idea he would commit suicide," she said.

Her house, with its carved wooden doors and tiled roofs, arranged around a generous central courtyard, is a reminder of a time when cotton was profitable.

One of the guests, Kishar Sikkalwar, the leader of a neighboring village, spoke more angrily.

"He should have told us about his problems, and not done such a foolish thing," he said.

It is not clear that Sikkalwar would have been able to offer much help. He is himself owes the bank about 100,000 rupees, which he cannot repay because of crop failure.

Plunging the wedding party into deeper desolation, he rattled off the names of seven farmers he knew who have killed themselves this season as a result of the poor harvest.

"One man drowned himself, but the others took the quickest route. If they didn't drink monocrotophos, they drank endosulfan" - also an insecticide.

Once known as white gold because it was such a profitable crop, cotton is no longer a money-making venture in India.

The growing sophistication of agricultural methods has made cotton farming more and more expensive over the decades, and the Indian government has gradually moved away from subsidizing farmers' production. Cotton is more vulnerable to pests than wheat or rice, and farmers are forced to invest heavily in pesticides and fertilizer.

Two years ago a new genetically modified seed, Bt, was introduced into India, and enthusiastically endorsed by the local government. Its manufacturer, Monsanto, said it was resistant to boll weevil - the main cotton pest - and required just two sprays of insecticide for every crop, instead of the usual eight.

The modified seed sold for about four and a half times the cost of normal seed, but many farmers opted to buy it because they believed it was indestructible and would give a higher yield.

They were devastated when many of the Bt cotton plants were afflicted in November with a reddening that destroyed much of the crop. Rain at the wrong time was considered part of the problem, and that left the farmers with unusually high debts.

Since most of these farmers have historic debts to the banks on which they have long since defaulted, they are forced to borrow from local money- lenders at exorbitant rates of interest. Some of the rates may go as high as 100 percent a year.

A few houses away from the wedding party, sitting in the hot shade beneath the corrugated iron roof of her home, Jyoti Jeddyar said her husband, Sanjay, was always telling her not to worry about the 50,000 rupees he owed the bank and the extra 40,000 he owed to private money lenders.

"But with two small children, I was always worrying about how he would pay, anyway. Nothing he said could stop me worrying," she said.

He committed suicide in November - another dose of monocrotophos - and she has been forced to take out new loans of her own.

Sanjay Mahadeorao Todase, senior medical officer in the small hospital in the nearby town of Pandnarkawada, said that treating farmers who have poisoned themselves with insecticides had become so routine that he barely had the emotion left to feel shocked by it.

"They are brought in by bullock cart, on the back of bicycles or on three-wheeler trucks," he said.

He knows instantly that most of them have drunk some kind of organophosphate because of their pinpoint pupils and the smell of noxious poisons from their mouth. "I've seen between 50 and 100 this year," he said.

Activists blame the liberalization of agriculture and the move away from traditional farming methods for the farmers' difficulties.

Devinder Sharma, a campaigner on agricultural problems in India with the Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, is preparing a detailed study into farmer suicides in India.

He claims the total was 28,000 between 1995 and 2005, although the figures are imprecise because there is no central monitoring organization.

He said it was striking that most suicides occurred in parts of the country practicing intensive farming of cash crops, and least in impoverished regions like Bihar and Orissa, where farmers tend to rely on subsistence agriculture.

Last week the National Commission on Farmers called for a nationwide survey on farmer suicides to help track the true scale of the problem.

Yogesh Chand Nanda, a member of the commission, said: "There is a problem in Indian agriculture right now. During the 1990s, profitability went down - the cost of farming rose, wages increased, the price of seeds and fertilizers went up, but the returns were lower. A large number of people who used to be subsistence farmers have moved towards commercial farming - exposing themselves to much greater risks."

The Congress party government was swept to power in 2004 on promises to share the newfound wealth in the cities with the rural hinterland - but it is a slow process. "Per capita incomes in farming areas are less than one-sixth of those in nonfarming areas," Nanda said.

For those dealing with the tragedies close up, the unfolding crisis inspires only profound gloom.

In his office in Pandnarkawada, the agrarian activist Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Aandolan Samiti compiles a daily suicide update, which he illustrates by sticking a large skull and crossbones on a map of the region.

"The government should not be allowing the farmers to do such aggressive and expensive farming," he said. "There is no longer any state protection for the farmers, and suddenly this crop has become hugely loss-making. People are selling their cotton at throwaway prices.

"There will be more deaths. May God save the farmers who are next in line."

Todase, the physician, has become skilled at pumping the stomachs of the local farmers, but their survival depends largely on how close they live to the hospital.

Farmers in remote areas usually succumb to the poison before treatment can begin.

"Pesticides act on the nervous system - first they have convulsions, then the chemicals start eroding the stomach, and bleeding in the stomach begins, then there is aspiration pneumonia - they have difficulty in breathing - then they suffer from cardiac arrest," he said. "I don't feel angry but when one sees someone with such symptoms, it is a sad moment for a doctor as a person."