BT cotton Trail II

We had 5 main questions that comes to ones mind here.
Lets see each of that.
Since this BT is comparatively new in Karnataka, a first hand report should help. So this trail.
Before these investigations, one feature that made the whole trip attractive was the presence of an old traditional cotton variety called Jayadhar! This rain fed variety doesn’t need any irrigation (grows well with what ever rain is received) nor any fertilizer or pesticide. This is a proven and stabilized one in this area for ages.But with the BT coming in and the coprorate lies and lures, its on the wane. The total acreage of this Jayadhar variety has been really dwindling. Hence this trip to the prominent jayadhar belt of Harihar, Ranebennur, Dharwad.
Farmers that we met across in various villages like Savanur, Gubndura, gudigere, Samwsi, etc had heard of Jayadhar. Each of these villages still have Jayadhar planted. But the area is less. Most of them blamed the lack of labour and unseasonal rains as the main issue for moving away from Jayadhar. This variety is totally weather dependant crop meaning the yield is as good as the weather.
Rain during harvest or just after flowering screws it up. The labour comes in 2 areas- weeding and also in harvesting. The bolls of the cotton facing down in this case is tuff to harvest manually which is being weighed heavily against it. Esp with labor being rare and the cost high.

On cattle: There have been many reports from AP and other states about the various ill-effects on cattle due to BT. The AP animal husbandry ministry even had a public warning issued long back. All farmers that we met across all villages said that they wouldn’t feed BT cotton to their cattle. (n)ever! The cattle apparently developed sickness, swollen legs and becoming immobile being more common. Diarrhea being other common disease.
They also unanimously said that the animals did show clear preference for Jayadhar cotton seed oil cake. What was very striking was that many farmers who were compelled to move to BT (easy loans, tall claims of yield etc being main reasons) still grow Jayadhar in smaller areas just for the sake of their cattle. When we posed questions of if BT causes so much problem to your cattle cant you imagine what the BT cotton seed oil would be doing to us, they didn’t have any answer. The simple fact that it was not obvious (mostly BT oil comes as adulteration and hence is also a question of awareness!) lead to brushing it off.
Milk was perceived as immediate food being affected than oil!

Edible oil?? That leads us to the infamous question of how come this enters our food cycle apart from Dairy. For many years cotton seed oil has been used to be mixed in the blended oils. It’s a way of an accepted adulteration. The very fact that some of the oils like ground nut oil or packaged refined oils are cheaper than the procurement prices of the raw material should have raised doubts. But do consumers think or ask??
Also the fact that due to some skewed food & adulteration law that any branded oil can be called that particular oil, if it has 60% of the main ingredient, allows for such high adulteration tolerance.
Now that we have reasons to adulterate why think if its BT or Jayadhar?
So whose problem is it? Think..and act..
(clue: These days organic produce are not only source for chemical and pesticide free food but also adulteration free food.)

Traditional varieties? Needless to say that traditional varieties will be lost soon. There are many reasons. 90-95% of the cotton seeds available in the market today is sadly BT only. This not only due to the aggressive marketing.but also because the parental seeds have been corrupted. Such contaminations of parental lines means there can be no certification for non-BT cotton today. More problems, eh?
So if ever the Govt wakes up or the society at large wakes up, there shall be no reversibility possible.
In most states like AP,Orissa, Gujarat one can hardly get to see the traditional varieties. In this belt in Karnataka, when we enquired (farmers association and the agri department reps) we got pathetic numbers. In savanur taluk for eg, it is 600 hectares Jayadhar to 12000 hectares of BT! In Samwsi village jayadhar was 20%


Yield? That’s a big fallacy. Lotsa factors come in to play and we as a society have been letting the already sulking farmers to do the math. Firstly the Jayadhar variety is rainfed. So u save on irrigation. Seed is your own! Compare the seed cost of Rs 26 per Kg to Rs 1650/kg of BT (Rs 750/- for 450 gms). The BT2 that has come now is double. BT needs fertilizer, irrigation and 3 sprays of pesticides as per data we collected from various villages.
So where is the comparision?
But on the face of it, if u question a farmer he does say the yield is double. Many farmers who have now cultivated BT 3 times or more now say the yield keeps reducing every year. But still they claim the yield is more. Ok, even if you were to just take the total output, ignoring the input costs, there is another hue factor. The Jayadhar is always with another (companion) crop, namely chilli. Where as BT is always mono crop. This means the output per acre should also consider the tons of chilies harvested. This is largely ignored. The very fact that chilli is planted along with cotton means there is only half the area or half the number of cotton plants!
As for record: across villages the yield quoted for BT was 8-9quintals per acre (of course its dwindling as many stated)
Jayadhar was only 3-5 quintals. But 3-4 quintals of chilly is also got. The chilli also helps supporting the cotton plant from sagging after flowering! There were a couple of farmers who said there was appreciable yield from Jayadhar till year before last bcos last 2 years unseasonal rains affected its yield.
While on comparison- one issue that weighs down on Jayadhar apart from labour intensive harvesting is that with rain it becomes very tough to harvest and also loss is heavier. (both problems are due to nature’s imbalance- the boll faces down unlike the Bt where its facing up)

Seed? When a corporate esp one like Monsanto comes to the scene where is the question of sovereignty? They are not any noble hearts to help increase farmers’ yield or to help solve the food sufficiency. Seeds is their business, simple. Now the farmer has the seeds in his hand. In fact for 10000 years that was the scene. Now with such goliath corporates eyeing seeds as a business, we will lose our culture and sovereignty. The cost comparison of the cotton seeds was seen above. Nothing will stop the corporates from increasing it multifold once the traditional seeds are wiped out! So more reason to be cautious about GM. But will the govts understand that? long term or short term? What should one go for? Season after season we need to depend on them. The jayadhar seed can last years as against this! So in time, the corporates will decide what crop, what seed and what price we will get them all at.
No use crying over spilt milk, then.

BT cotton trail

BT cotton - the first GM crop to be cultivated commercially in India was introduced under the pretext of being a non-food crop!
There were many questions raised about the safety and ethics of the Genetically Modified technology across the globe. The most important and urgently to be addressed issue being that of long term adverse impact to health . From an activists angle though health of the environment, other species and humans could have been the order. Still there were many unanswered questions what ever ones perspective was.
The corporates conveniently (obviously hand in hand with the govt agencies) gave a suitable twist. If GM becomes a question of health, ethics and safety there will be no end, they understood. Hence to hasten up the introduction of GM crop they took a very ‘intelligent’ actually a skewed and perverse stand. That cotton was a non-food crop. So while the debate on health etc continues, they can introduce cotton, supposedly non food crop!
Of course, needless to say their will prevailed. So BT cotton was introduced in India in 2002.
Now firstly, it’s a traditional practice to feed the stalks to cattle after harvest. Secondly the cotton seed oil has been in to our food cycle ever since packaged oil industry started flourishing.
So on both these counts the GM industry lied. Our Govt / regulation agencies went with them.

Now that it is 8 years since BT has come in to the field and the industry is now pushing very hard for GM in to food crops.
BT is Bacillus thurengiensis, a soil bacteria which is supposed to have pest repelling intrinsic property.
Though there has been loads of proof of BT affecting soil, cattle, humans and the ecology in toto, the Govt agencies have been soft pedaling and the industry has been looking the other way. Yeah, we know its only business and nothing else for them.

Just one name – Monsanto shud give us all the doubts. But somehow all villains have prevailed.

Dont some questions come foremost to any thinking individual?

1/ Has the BT cotton affected the cattle which fed on them? If so hasn’t this already come in to human food cycle in the form of milk and other dairy produce?

2/ If cotton seed oil was used as an edible oil (either directly or as adulterated/mixed produce along with other packaged/ blended oil?) what is its status today?

3/ What happens to the traditional varieties? What if this BT fallacy is conclusively proven, is there a path to retrace?

4/ Has this technology helped in increasing the yield as promised by the industry? Has the economics been done at all?

5/ What happens to the seed sovereignty? Farmers cannot have their own seeds. Season after season they have to go back to these corporates for seeds. That means price and availability will be the corporates will in the coming years aint?

Hmm.. so last week, yours truly (accompanied by KK & W) went on a cotton trail in Karnataka – Harihar, Haveri, Dharwad, to check on all these issues.

KK should be coming out with a better report or even a published paper for sure. But still I go ahead and pen my points n views out here.

But Wait..for the 2nd part.

Jaggery

That 1000km and Rishi valley trip was more than educative in many ways.
But one of the main agendas was to see the jaggery extraction at RV.
Its such a simple and sweet process!
For the uninitiated, sugarcane is a perennial (grass) crop. If left behind after harvest it can fetch u canes for next 10 years even. It is a long duration crop (10-18 months). It needs lotsa water (flood irrigation) and its yield is generally high (100 tonnes per hectare).
Sugarcane is crushed to yield juice, which is then boiled in huge wooden (or iron) containers for 2-3 hours and then cooled in big wooden flat pan. While the juice is being heated small quantity of Chunna (lime – in powder form) is added. This is then made in to balls or beaten with wooden hammers in to powders as it cools.
Efficiency is close to 10% 10-11 kgs of jaggery is produced from 100kg of sugarcane.
The sugarcane needs to be fresh. The canes shud be used within (maximum) of 2 days from cutting. With one man, 3 levels of boilers and one flat pan 1.5 to 2 tones can be produced in a day. (typical 8-10 hours of work a day)




Polluters?
If one were to consider the chemically grown and sinned sugarcanes..lets see few of the chemicals used in sugarcane cultivation and ofcourse jaggery production!
Firstly there is so much chemical (poison) added in the form of fertilizers and pesticides. Some 50 different pesticides are being used right from Chloropyrifos to endosulfan (yes, the same endosulfan that’s banned world wide and known for so many after effects!) to
What more? Even the Institute of sugarcane research website endorses use of endosulfan even today!
Sodium hydro sulphite is used to whiten (lighten the color) the jaggery! The packet that is sold in the agri chemicals shop is not for agri use; only for textile industry as a bleaching agent.Infact those packets ironically will have a sugarcane picture with an "X" mark to convey this:-) and still this is highly used to bleach jaggery during the production.
But do you know why? Simply to make the jaggery white! Yes to address our ‘white disease’..like rice, wheat(maida), teeth and what not? Here too our white paranoia is addressed and hence these bleaching agents are used. Infact P&G benefits highly from chemical (non-organic) jaggery manufacture! To make it ‘whiter than white’, Ariel (the washing powder!) is extensively used!
Now you know what you consume, esp if you are seeking for the pale yellow jaggery.

So go organic! it is the best bet.

Wait! We only discussed Jaggery here. If Jaggery which is so simply produced organically with just an ounce of lime(chunna – natural calcium source), is being raided with so many chemicals, one knows what to expect out of sugar.

Jaggery Vs Sugar:

Sugar is always produced with chemically grown sugarcanes (bcos they just don’t care!) for which we know the huge list of chemicals – ferti & pesticides used. So once the environment is screwed enough they focus on us- the consumers.
Then what? if the brown (dark) looking sugarcane juice has to become white crystals!!

Jaggery, esp if you were to source the organic ones, is a big winner. It retains all the minerals that sugarcane was born with. As we saw only water was lost to evaporation.
Jaggery has many minerals and is such a nutrition packed natural product that it needs quite some perverse brain to ‘refine’ and make sugar out of it. Jaggery is a good source of iron and proteins and has many minerals like calcium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, manganese, carotene, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin.

Against this sugar has 99% carbohydrate and nothing else! So with only sucrose and hence so much energy what are we going to do to expend it? Esp in these days of sedentary life style? Obviously the excess is converted to triglycerates and stays as fat. So more health hazards.

In Ayurveda, Jaggery was a source to treat lung and throat infections.

All nutrients and life (like in refined oil or in maida) is extracted to get this hopeless white crystal. In the process many chemicals like sulphur (sulphides too) and ofcourse Bone char is used. so it fails to be a vegetarian too! Crystallisation happens with aid of lots of chemicals.

Another stealer is that Jaggery aids digestion where as Sugar is tough to digest and takes longer. Normally it’s the last to digest. Jaggery breaks down finally to alkaline where as sugar becomes acidic.

Oh yeah! Jaggery absorbs moisture and too much bacterial and enzyme activity thrives then on. Ofcourse add benzene (and such like) and u avoid this problem:-(
Hmm, what a sweet mess we keep creating, hmm?
Most times these are problems only for big players who want to process in huge quantities, pack, store, burn fossil fuel and transport and so hold a big market share. But why shud we care? Simple solution is try and identify local source and keep buying in smaller quantities. This way the moisture, shelf life etc is no more a problem. Here just take care you don’t give in to that white mania and so buy the dark looking ones.

Jaggery, due its rustic manufacturing process and the fact that it’s a small cottage industry most times, can have dirt or mud. That’s the only flaw I can think of..
Navadarshanam’s tip: To eliminate any mud or dirt that may be a part of it: it is recommended that the jaggery be made into syrup. The syrup should be made every 2 / 3 days as it will get spoilt if left unused thereafter unless refrigerated. To make a syrup, mix 1 cup of water with 500g of Jaggery. Dissolve and heat gently till the solution boils. Strain and cool. If refrigerated, the syrup will last weeks.

so rush to restore! the best source for organic Jaggery in Chennai and for lotsa other organic produce too.
(whats life without some marketing for restore, eh?)

PS: There are some quiet rules that persist around India..some just out of dadagiri and some others - enforced dadagiri by industries. One such regarding jaggery making is: In some parts of TN, farmers weren’t allowed to extract without license/permission. Police come to raid if they do extract on their own! I was surprised to note that. This is prevalent in areas where sugar industries are prominent. So it could be that the police is just foisted by the corporates/industries so that the farmers give the sugarcane to them and don’t process themselves. This way these farmers are also forced to buy sugar from them.

Update: for photos on RV farm and the jaggery extraction see here.

update2: thanks to Meera for pointing out. The powdered jaggery is not different from Jaggery balls. Just that the extraction is at a different heat level and time. While the jaggery sap(juice) is poured out on flat pans to cool, its made in to balls (by hand, with gloves ofcourse) or beaten to powder with huge wooden hammer.