Study Explores the Effect of Genetically Modified Crops on Developing Countries
Source:EurekAlert
Author:n/a

A new multi-year study by Glenn Davis Stone of Washington University in the U.S. identifies a previously undocumented pattern of localized fads as being a main determinant of cotton seed choices among farmers in the Warangal District of India's Andhra Pradesh state. Stone's study is published in the February edition of Current Anthropology. The market share of Bt cotton seeds rose from 12 to 62 percent in Warangal between 2003 and 2005. Stone says that Monsanto has interpreted the rapid spread of genetically modified (GM) cotton as being the result of farmer experimentation and management skill. But interviews indicated that farmers in Warangal generally lacked recognition of what was actually being planted, in contrast to highly strategic seed selection processes in areas where technological change is learned and gradual. Stone says there has been a breakdown in the process of "environmental learning" in Warangal, leaving farmers to rely purely on "social learning." He finds that the localized fads and a desire for novelty in Warangal began not with Bt cotton but with reliance on hybrid seeds and a chaotic seed market in which products come and go at a furious pace. Stone notes, however, that there has been a very different history of Bt cotton in India's Gujarat state, where a "loss of corporate control" over Bt technology has led to increased involvement of farmers in local breeding, and an apparent increase in knowledge-based innovation. The article can be viewed online at the link below.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/uocp-set012507.php