What makes crop biotechnology find its roots? The technological culture of Bt cotton in Gujarat, India

Abstract

This paper challenges the framing of debates on crop biotechnology in terms of ‘impact assessment’ or ‘success or failure’. To evaluate the social desirability of technological choice, the paper socio-anthropologically examines the cultural, productive, environmental, and cognitive contexts within which the cotton-growing farmers in Gujarat adopt, develop and diffuse genetically engineered crop biotechnology. The paper shows that crop biotechnology represents a technological culture with a specific value framework which is endorsed commonly by both multinational companies and certain cotton-growing farmers in Gujarat. The cultivation and multiplication of Bt seeds owe their popularity to the fact that genetically modified seed technology did not make any paradigmatic change in the agricultural practices and agrarian relations shaped by the Green Revolution, which has privileged and consolidated the social power of resource-rich farmers. Bt cotton's success is thus part of the successful reproduction of these cotton-growing farmers' historically acquired and culturally consolidated ability to perform with the technology.

Cet article questionne le cadrage des débats sur les biotechnologies en termes d'évaluation d'impact, de succès ou d'échec. Afin d'évaluer les avantages sociaux de choix technologiques, cet article d'ordre socio-anthropologique s'intéresse au contexte culturel, productif, environnemental et cognitif dans lequel les producteurs de coton du Gujarat adoptent, développent et diffusent des produits génétiquement modifiés. L'article montre que les productions biotechnologiques représentent une culture technologique liée à un cadre de valeurs spécifiques qui est non seulement associable aux firmes multinationales productrices de semences biotechnologiques telles les graines Bt, mais aussi à certains groupes de producteurs de coton, et notamment les plus privilégiés. La production et la multiplication des graines Bt sont devenues très populaires dans la région car cette biotechnologie n'a pas suscité de grand changement dans les pratiques agricoles et les relations agraires, induites par la révolution verte, mais a plutôt privilégié et renforcé le positionnement social des agriculteurs les plus riches, et donc traditionnellement les plus puissants. Le succès du coton Bt fait ainsi partie de la reproduction réussie de ce groupe d'agriculteurs, dont la capacité à mettre en œuvre de nouvelles technologies peut être vue comme ayant été historiquement acquise et culturellement consolidée.

Keywords:

• Bt cotton
• crop biotechnology
• genetically modified organism
• technological culture
• Gujarat

Notes

1. According to the Gujarat agricultural department's data, although the area under cotton in Gujarat marginally grew from 1.615 million hectares in 2000–2001 to 1.628 million hectares in 2003–4, both total production and yield more than tripled in 2003–4 – the production increased from 1,161,000 bags in 2000–2001 to 5,400,000 bags in 2004–5 and yield increased from 122 kg per hectare to 483 kg per hectare (Mehta and Patel 2004). However these claims, especially of the yield difference between the local and officially released seeds, are contested. For example, a survey of 363 farmers in Gujarat reported that the officially released Monsanto-patented Bt seeds gave the highest yield (Gupta and Chandak 2004). Others attribute the increase in yield to good rainfall since 2001 (Sahai and Rehman 2004). What is being claimed widely is that locally multiplied seeds, first generic Navbharat and later other locally multiplied varieties, have been cultivated in 60–80% of the total area under cotton in Gujarat since 2000–2001. This paper does not take a conclusive side in this dichotomised debate, and provide these figures merely to give a flavour.

2. Polemically quizzing – whose number counts? – Ronald Herring described these debates as social production of data (Herring 2007). Other scholars also have critically responded to the highly controversial nature of the ‘impact’ debate especially on the economic performance of Bt cotton (Scoones 2003; Stone 2004, 2007a).

3. Ranjana Smetacek, the director of corporate affairs of India, Monsanto, expressed similar views speaking at the Development Studies Association's conference on science, technology, development organised at University of Sussex, 18–20 September 2007, also as referred by Stone (2007a).

4. Thomas Kuhn's famous line, ‘when paradigm change, the world itself change with them’, is perhaps by now is one of the most quoted lines. What is not well-known is that Kuhn also said in the subsequent pages that ‘Of course, nothing of quite that sort does occur. Outside the laboratories everyday affairs usually continue as before’ (Kuhn 1970, p. 111). For Kuhn, the concept of paradigm was primarily cognitive and yet his theory of paradigm change is widely used to explain socio-technical change.

5. Gidwani employs these mechanisms to account for agrarian change that combines pure determinism and pure contingency variances of history of agrarian change. Unfortunately Gidwani's mechanisms have prominent space for nature, but technology appears peripherally in his conception. Gidwani has subsumed all aspects belonging to the physical landscape under the category of ‘nature’ and thus has obliterated the role of technology to transform nature through work.

6. The separate and monolithic spaces of global and local are increasingly challenged in social sciences. Responding to a closely intertwined interplay between global and local spaces, some scholars instead prefer to use the term glocal. In contradistinction, this paper retains the separate identities of global and local precisely to understand the culture of interplay between them.

7. During the colonial period, the Kanabis (a peasant caste/community of sedentary cultivators), as against Kolis (shifting cultivators) were elevated into a category of landowners called Patidars. Through changes in the land tenure system during the colonial period, Kanabis encroached upon the land until then cultivated by Kolis and tribals. Since the early-to-mid nineteenth century Kanabis – who were eventually re-caste into Patel – ascended in economic and political power. ‘Patel’ was originally a title given to a village officer in charge of tax collection and law and order, but it was now adopted by all members of the Kanabi alia Patidar caste/community (for further discussion, see Rutten and Patel 2002; Gidwani 2001; Shah and Rutten 2002).

8. Two types of seeds known as foundation seeds – 240 gms of Bt male and 600 gms of hybrid female (usually GujCot 8) – are supplied for one acre. One acre can produce anywhere between 100 to 300 kg of seeds. Seeds are plotted in the month of May or June and after usually 45 to 60 days hand-crossing starts which continues until 120 days.