New Study- GM Crops Cause 'Breakdown' In Indian Farming Systems

[Jcrowley]

GM crops cause 'breakdown' in Indian farming systems
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 25 March 2007

Genetically modified crops have helped cause a "complete breakdown" in farming systems in India, an authoritative new study suggests. The study threatens to deal a fatal blow to probably the most powerful argument left in the biotech industry's armoury, that it can help to bring prosperity to the Third World.

Professor Glenn Davis Stone, professor of anthropology and environmental studies at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, has spent more than 40 weeks on the ground in the biotech industry's prime Developing World showcase, the Warangal district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

The industry claims that local farmers have adopted GM cotton faster than any other agriculture technology in history. It argued at the prestigious Biovision conference in Lyon this month that the rapid spread proves that the technology is working for farmers.

Professor Stone's study, published in the February issue of the journal Current Anthropology, demolishes this argument. Extensive interviews with the farmers proved that they are plumping for the GM seeds because they are new, hyped and locally fashionable, without having time to see if they produce better crops.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2390920.ece

Here is the abstract:
Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal

by Glenn Davis Stone

Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh, India, is a key cotton-growing area in one of the most closely watched arenas of the global struggle over genetically modified crops. In 2005 farmers adopted India's first genetically modified crop, Bt cotton, in numbers that resemble a fad. Various parties, including the biotechnology firm behind the new technology, interpret the spread as the result of farmer experimentation and management skill, alluding to orthodox innovation-diffusion theory. However, a multiyear ethnography of Warangal cotton farmers shows a striking pattern of localized, ephemeral cotton seed fads preceding the spread of the genetically modified seeds. The Bt cotton fad is symptomatic of systematic disruption of the process of experimentation and development of management skill. In fact, Warangal cotton farming offers a case study in agricultural deskilling, a process that differs in fundamental ways from the better-known process of industrial deskilling. In terms of cultural evolutionary theory, deskilling severs a vital link between environmental and social learning, leaving social learning to propagate practices with little or no environmental basis. However, crop genetic modification is not inherently deskilling and, ironically, has played a role in reinvolving farmers in Gujarat in the process of breeding.
Glenn Davis Stone is Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130, U.S.A. ).

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/journal/issues/v48n1/480102/brief/480102.abstract.html

Here is the full text:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/journal/issues/v48n1/480102/480102.html

[Gabi Hayes]

1. Luddite!

why do you hate science so much?

that was a fun thread on the bees, wasn't it?

just move along, and DON'T dare use any of that GM seed that the wind blew onto your land, or we'll sue you for every pig and chicken you have

[Jcrowley]

2. You can't

Because I invented the pig. Monsanto rules the world!

And there is no such thing as bad science and I will not examine the dirty details. Now I must get back to my lab. Soon we will not even need soil, except the soil I patent. Nor labor. Except for yours, definitely not mine.

Where's thar sarcasm thingie?

Biotechnology? It's more like biological denial.