India: Greed has to end

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

India cuts Monsanto cotton seed royalties despite threat to quit

India 'not scared' if Monsanto leaves, as GM cotton row escalates

Of course, everyone is well aware of the farce that Monsanto has been playing for years. The general scheme goes as follows. Some limited seed funds are given by the company to a university or lab for a one-year period. Once the product or process is developed, it is patented with the researcher and the company. The company then buys out the share of the patent from the researcher. Such companies or patents or products are bought and re-bought many times over by financial capitalists, and the resultant drug, crop or other product is priced many times over the usual prices. That is, by the way, how US health care has become the most expensive while remaining nowhere being efficient or accessible enough for the American people.

Meanwhile, back to India... The introduction of GMO crops, while being crucial for feeding millions of people, has changed the landscape of the Indian cotton industry, rendering its production patterns and profitability rates unrecognisable, ultimately turning India from a major exporter to a major importer of agricultural technology and know-how. And this goes way beyond the cotton industry, as this crop production is very closely intertwined with other important crops an industries. After cotton, the corn industry has been growing exponentially, with big profits for the companies that are running the show, and of course major producers like India desperately needing the relevant technology in order to stay afloat on the market, meet the demand of the local market, and use their potential in a way as efficient as possible. The problem is, India is still lagging far behind other countries in terms of productivity, even after years of Monsanto involvement.

As for Monsanto's corporate practices and instincts, it is no surprise that their talk of "technology" has served as a convenient smokescreen that "tries to hide its real objectives of control over seed where genetic engineering is a means to control seed", as Dr. Vandana Shiva, an activist, author and founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, has argued. So, while a possible Monsanto withdrawal from India may hurt both that country's agriculture and the company's bottom-line in the short term, it would rather have a positive effect in the long run, as it would demonstrate that neo-colonial economic practices of exploitation and blackmail will not hold water in the 21st century.

Comments

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Brief quibble, but I'll get back to the point in a moment: I'm not going to say that Shiva is wrong here, but it's hard to accept what she's saying at face value because of her past history and specific biases against anything remotely GM (to the point of pushing for the rejection of food aid after the devastating cyclone in 1999 because it was - in her opinion - part of a conspiracy to use her people as guinea pigs in some kind of weird "GMO-food" experiment.)

Anyway, one might argue that the problem is a problem with capitalism itself, in which something like a seed can be patented in the first place. I understand that research and money go into things, but we're talking about patents on lifeforms. There's something maybe troubling there. While I don't fully agree with the stance completely condemning capitalism entirely, I can appreciate that our current model doesn't always lend itself to equitable outcomes. The kind of contracts where farmers plant seeds, agree to not save any, and re-buy the next year have been around for over a century (for long before the original Monsanto even existed, not to speak of the current company.) If anything, there may be a problem with how we approach agriculture entirely. Monsanto isn't unique or particularly evil, unless we consider the industry as a whole to be evil (and that might actually be an argument we can make!) I know that my leftist friends would argue that it might be time to reevaluate the basic assumption that something as vital as food should be something on which profits are based.

Beyond Monsanto or even India's own burgeoning agritech industry, I think a good avenue for helping the farmers, in both the short and long term, would be investment in better irrigation and access to financial services. It was the crop failures due to poor irrigation and rising debt that started the rash of farmer suicides (and when Monsanto introduced its Bt-cotton several years later, it improved the economic position of many farmers, though that didn't stop many from associating the company with the suicides.) But it points to the need for infrastructure investment. Financial assistance and education, irrigation systems, and perhaps even better government assistance during times of downturn. These measures might help far more than going the independent route from Monsanto - and if that is where India chooses to go, they will certainly make the farmers that much more robust and able to succeed as they set out on their own.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Whatever the conceptual merits of Genetically Modified food, Monsanto's corporate practices are so often trawling the gutter that I'd believe the worst about them in every case because they go out of their way to achieve it. Frankly, too, countries should have as much sovereignty over their food supply as they can get because nothing good comes of giving unaccountable people the ability to strip cupboards bare on spurious means without any real accountability.

[garote]

Nice to see India playing hardball with Monsanto.

Most of Monsanto's methodologies are ill-suited to the problem of crop yields in India. The main issue is, India is tropical and subtropical land: a hugely diverse place in terms of growing environments - soil types, geology, hydrology, pests, infrastructure, weather, etc. Monsanto's bread and butter is a genetic monoculture assisted by mechanized procedures developed in the flat, temperate United States. To put it bluntly, fuck that shit. India needs to maintain its seed stock biodiversity as a given in any solution that stands a chance of really (pun intended) taking root. It should remain a net importer of technology and "know-how", but change the charter to match what it needs, and demand a lot more fine-grained collaboration with farmers when writing that charter.

That's going to be very hard, in the Indian bureaucracy though.