Experts stress the need to fall back on desi cotton varieties

With stagnant yields, climbing cost of manufacturing and resistance in pink bollworm, India now can glance again at the desi cotton types, experts say.

At a webinar on ‘Bt cotton – Myths and Reality’ held on Monday, Keshav Kranthi, who is at the moment with International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC), claimed Bt-hybrid know-how has not been delivering any tangible rewards to the cotton farmers.

Bt cotton supposedly aided in the reduction of insecticide use. But the use of pesticides only went up as pink bollworm formulated resistance to the know-how.

“Cotton yields are the lowest in the entire world in Maharashtra, for illustration, despite remaining saturated with Bt hybrids and maximum use of fertilisers,” Kranti claimed.

“Cotton yields rank thirty sixth in the entire world and have been stagnant in the earlier 15 decades. Insecticide use has been regularly raising soon after 2005 despite an boost in area beneath Bt-cotton,” he claimed.

The webinar was organised by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture. Peter Kenmore, former FAO Agent in India, claimed that Bt cotton is an ageing pest control know-how.

“It follows the very same path worn down by generations of insecticide molecules. Company and community coverage actors then declare yield will increase, but produce no a lot more than momentary pest suppression, secondary pest launch and pest resistance,” he claimed.

Andrew Paul Gutierrez, a cotton techniques ecologists, pointed out that India could have easily learnt from the problems that transpired in California in the 1960s and 70s, in which the pest outbreak was mainly insecticide-induced.

“The long season Bt cotton launched in India was incorporated into hybrids that trapped farmers into biotech and insecticide treadmills,” he claimed.