States team up to take on US co on Bt cotton price

NEW DELHI: US Biotech seed major Monsanto is in for big trouble on the Bt cotton trait fee front. Nine top cotton-growing states of the country have decided to approach the Supreme Court together against the company’s fee decision.

This comes close on the heels of the SC refusing to grant a stay, earlier this week, on the Mahyco-Monsanto application filed in the apex court against the Andhra Pradesh government. That order, reinforced by the MRTPC, directed Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (India) to lower its trait fee per 450 gm packet. Significantly, the Centre may implead in the Supreme Court on the issue at a later stage.

Farm ministry sources said that the states have written to the Centre, asking it to implead itself in the hearing on the application filed by Mahyco-Monsanto against the Andhra Pradesh government’s pricing order on Bt cotton seeds. “India has been identified by the ISAAA (International Services for Acquisition of Agri Biotech Applications) and other international organisations as a key growth area in the agricultural biotech sector.

This development could set the trend on making biotechnology more livelihood relevant, accessible and profitable to our farmers,” farm ministry sources maintained, referring to the states’ demand that the Centre consider setting up a regulatory authority for cotton seed pricing and taking emerging technologies to the farmers.

In a bid to broadbase the emerging technology pricing issue, letters have also gone out to other states to seek their support in the legal battle against pricing of Bt cotton seeds, even as the Bt brinjal looms up on the horizons. Bt brinjal is being developed in India by Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company) and the company wants to take up large scale field trials with the permission of the GEAC in ’06-07.

According to critics, no GM brinjal has been released for an advanced stage of field trials in open conditions anywhere in the world. It would also be a first for the GEAC on the GM food crop front.

Ministry sources said that while Punjab and Haryana have given written support to the Bt cotton seed pricing meeting of the senior state government officials in Hyderabad on Friday and asked the meeting to take any decision attuned to farmers’ interests — farm ministers and secretaries of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, TN and West Bengal attended it.

Earlier this week, a vacation bench of the apex court comprising justice Arijit Pasayat and justice CK Thakker, hearing the application filed by the Mahyco-Monsanto, made it clear that it was not going to interfere with the order passed by the Andhra Pradesh government at this juncture.

The Andhra Pradesh government, had on May 29, ordered the US multinational to fix a price of Rs 750 for a 450 gm pack of Bt cotton seed. The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) had ruled, following an Andhra Pradesh government petition, to restrain Monsanto and Mahyco from charging Rs 900 for a packet of 450 gm of Bt cotton as trait fee.

Monsanto-Mahyco has been maintaining that Bollgard (its Bt cotton seed trademark) earned more than Rs 2,100 crore last season, due to investment made by the company in research and development and that the apex court would “ultimately give us a fair hearing.”

However, studies like those of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and the Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RESTE), have since then, presented completely contrary figures on both Bt cotton productivity per acre and the so-called profits accruing to farmers.

Significantly, farm suicides among cotton farmers jumped rapidly in key cotton growing states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in tandem with the spread of Bt cotton.

The legal developments on the Bt Cotton trait fee front gather significance all the more, in the wake of reports that the GEAC is considering “event based” approval to new genetically modified (GM) crops as compared to the “case to case” basis approval for individual hybrids or variety being followed presently.

Worse, this could also mean that instead of a multi-stage clearance (bio-safety, farm worthiness, etc.) granted earlier, this could lead to a single stage DNA fingerprinting-clearance for protein expression, drastically cutting down on time lag between arrival of the new technology and its farm application.

In a country, which has repeatedly proved itself incapable of regulating GM technology and containing contamination, that could be real bad news.

According to the company, after Mahyco received regulatory approval in March ’02, MMB (India) sold 72,000 acres of the three approved Bollgard hybrids for the first year. In ’03, the second year of launch, it claimed the acreage under Bollgardcotton increased three-fold to 2,30,000 acres.

In ’04, Rasi Seeds received approval for one hybrid and Bollgard sales rose to 1.3m acres, a six-fold increase over the previous year. Bollgard, MMB said, was planted in India by nearly 3,50,000 farmers in ’04.

The company claimed earlier that Andhra Pradesh stood out among the six Bollgard cotton growing states as the one that enjoyed the greatest benefits, with net profits for its farmers highest at 551%. Pesticide use against bollworms reduced by about five sprays, it claimed.