Farmers in Pakistan protest against Monsanto's GM trials
ActionAid, Hunger-Free Campaign
http://www.hungerfreeplanet.org/update-from-actionaid-staff/farmers-in-pakistan-protest-against-monsatos-gm-trials

[image caption: Farmers protesting in Sindh province]

This August, ActionAid Pakistan and thousands of farmers mobilized in a series of rallies across the Sindh and Punjab provinces of southern and central Pakistan to voice their concern about the government's decision to allow the Agri Food giant, Monsanto, start BT cotton* trials in the country. The aim is to sell the seeds on a commercial basis the following year.

In Pakistan 77 million people do not have enough to eat. Yet the government is actively offering incentives to Multinational Companies (MNCs) to grow these genetically modified crops which, far from uplifting the rural poor, will have devastating effects on both food security and the environment.

Why BT cotton is unsustainable:

* BT Cotton is expensive. The total input cost is higher and recent BT cotton has been proven to have NO increase in yield.
    
* Many farmers in poor countries are unaware that they can't save genetically modified seed from one harvest to the next. This could jeopardise the rights of 1.4billion people who depend on farm saved seed worldwide ˆ and could lead many into a spiral of debt.
    
* It has an adverse effect on land, health, livestock and the environment.
    
* It needs double the water (and Pakistan is a water stressed country).
    
* This type of large scale "mono-cropping" stops the century old practice of rotating crops to preserve the resources of the land and, if the crop fails, the results are devastating as farmers have no other crops to rely on.
    
* Civil society and farmers have been given no say in any part of the monitoring system.

What ActionAid Pakistan are demmanding:

* That civil society and farmers be given a voice in the debate about genetically modified crops in Pakistan.
    
* That BT cotton is banned in order to protect land, livestock, humans and the enviroment.

Backround

Many governments and and Transnational corporations (such as Monsato, Cargill, Nestle, and Wall-Mart) are promoting Genetically Modified (GM) crops as a response to world hunger. However, ActionAid believes this approach seeks only to increase profits for biotech companies and ignores the real causes of hunger.

The real causes of hunger are political and economic: poverty, inequality, and poor access to land, food, markets and resources - GM crops do nothing to address these issues.

*What is BT cotton?

BT cotton is created by inserting a synthetic version of the naturally onaturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, into the seed. This induces the plant to produce its own BT toxin to destroy the bollworm, a major cotton pest. The gene causes the production of Bt toxin in all parts of the cotton plant throughout its entire life span. When the bollworm ingests the plant, the toxin pierces its small intestine and kills the insect.

However, in time, the ballworm develops resistance to the toxin and farmers have to use more pesticides, and then even more, forcing them onto    a treadmill of ever increasing pesticide use in order to kill the insect as it consistently developed resistance to whatever they were using.
The toxin has no affect on other pests.