Indian Farmers Face Suicide Crisis- Debt and GM Crops

[JCMach1]

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Hundreds of farmers unable to repay crop loans killed themselves in India's richest state in the past year, despite a multi-million dollar cash plan to improve their lot, activists said on Friday.

The spate of suicides in Maharashtra since last July touched 1,132, they said, highlighting the failure of highly publicised efforts by New Delhi to ease the financial burden of cotton farmers.

Debt-ridden farmers have been committing suicide in four Indian states and government statistics have recorded more than 4,500 deaths in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala in the past six years.

Activists and farmers' groups say the figure is at least five times more... http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-07-06T163214Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-283485-1.xml

When Monsanto's President and CEO, Hugh Grant, flies in to meet India's
political leaders next week, he should be arrested for crimes against
humanity and slung into jail alongside the CEOs of all the other seed houses
that have taken a leaf out of Monsanto's Bt book.

Aggressively pushing this faulty but expensive technology onto poor farmers
amounts to nothing less than such a crime. And Monsanto knew what it was
doing from the start.

Its failure in Indonesia - the first country in Asia to accept Bt cotton - had been
unambiguous. Despite all Monsanto's corruption of officials, Bt cotton was
so unsuccessful Monsanto had to pull its GM cotton out of the country,
leaving only a trail of broken promises and illegality.
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=58&page=1

AP farmers hit by failed Bt cotton crop
Uma Sudhir, NDTV
http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?slug=AP+farmers+hit+by+failed+Bt+cotton+crop&id=83983&category=National



January 22, 2006 (Hyderabad):

Farmers in Andhra Pradesh are grappling with crippling debt and desperation
and choosing to end their lives after their cotton crop failed.

Most farmers say, Bt cotton that was introduced to put an end to their
problems, have now become one of the biggest causes of farmer suicides.

Failed crop

Twenty-year-old Vijayalakshmi is a widow and she blames the genetically
modified Bt cotton for it.

Less than two months ago, her husband Raju drank pesticide because the Bt
cotton he grew on four acres left him with a debt of over Rs 1 lakh.

With no buyers even for the land he owned, the humiliation of not being able
to even ensure his wife and two little children don't go hungry was too much
for the 25-year-old.

"We grew Raasi hybrid seeds with great hope but it has ruined us. Never
before, had we invested Rs 75,000 in one crop. Now he is dead and I have
debts and two children. What should I do?" said Vijaylakshmi.

Rising debts

There were other widows and farmers with similar tales at the public hearing
on Bt cotton in Hyderabad.

All of them echo the sentiment that what was seen as the seeds of hope are
turning out to be seeds of debt and death.

"Bt Cotton is hardly useful. They had said that it would yield 10-12 or even
15 quintals but I got only 3 quintals," said Devaiah, a cotton farmer.

"It has not significantly reduced pesticide use, it has not reduced
cultivation cost. It has in fact increased cultivation cost.

"There's no high yield, farmers have suffered negative returns. That is why
the first Bt cotton suicides have started being reported," said P V
Satheesh, Convenor, South Against Genetic Engineering...

[NashVegas]

1. I Hope It's Finally Starting to Dawn On People

That GM/GE crops' primary benefits are to the production companies' and patent-holders' profit margins.

[JCMach1]

2. They are horrific... farmers gave up legacy cotton bred for generations

to fit the local climate for Corporate Monsanto seed which CANNOT be saved and must be repurchased every year... On top of that, the Bt Cotton requires CONSTANT irrigation. This has led to disaster for these poor people.

One poor lady in a documentary/report I saw this last week had her husband walk home looking very ill. She smelled his breath... he had drank pesticides and died a few hours later.

[NashVegas]

4. Fascinating Thing About the Reuters Story

There's no mention in it of the seed company's role.

Here's an interesting stat from a Frontline 2005 story:

Since 1997, more than 25,000 farmers have committed suicide, many drinking the chemical that was supposed to make their crops more, not less, productive.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/seeds_of_suicid.html

A few years ago, I got into it on a different message board with a GM/GE proponent, a bio-chem major who slipped up and said outright: "the small, independent farmer needs to be eliminated." I don't think even he meant it literally.

[Stargazer99]

6. Typically Fox News SOP

they rarely mention the WHOLE thing, that we the common man can be manipulated.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. ...

:cry:

[Stargazer99]

5. Legalized murder

Not only the body but the spirit. Now you see why I use the term "legalized murder". Corps have no morality and no loyalty of anyone one or things just stockholders. Mammon, how many times were we warned about worshipping mammon? Guess who runs the country, it sure ain't Christians.