The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

294 the world according to monsantoso low. This is the result of the subsidies the American administration givesits farmers, which has a dumping effect on world prices.”*We had barely gone through the imposing gate into the market when wewere assailed by hundreds of angry cotton farmers who surrounded us so wecouldn’t move. “We’ve been here several days with our harvest,” one of themsaid, brandishing a ball of cotton in each hand. “The dealers are offering aprice that’s so low we can’t accept it. We all have debts to pay.”“How much is your debt?” Tarak Kate asked.“Fifty-two thousand rupees,” the farmer answered.What came next was an incredible scene in which dozens of peasantsspontaneously declared, one after another, the amount of their debts:50,000 rupees, 20,000 rupees, 15,000 rupees, 32,000 rupees, 36,000 rupees.Nothing seemed able to stop this litany running through the crowdlike an irresistible tidal wave.“We don’t want any more Bt cotton!” yelled a man whom I couldn’t evenpick out from the crowd.“No!” roared dozens of voices.Kate, clearly very moved, asked: “How many of you are not going to plantBt cotton next year?”A forest of hands went up that, miraculously, the cameraman, GuillaumeMartin, managed to film, even though we were literally crushed in themidst of this human tide, which made filming extremely difficult. “The problem,”said Kate, “is that these farmers will have a lot of trouble finding nontransgeniccotton seeds, because Monsanto controls practically the entiremarket.”Beginning in the early 1990s—in fact, at the same time as it was settingits sights on Brazil, the world’s largest soybean producer—Monsanto wascarefully preparing the launch of its GMOs in India, the world’s third-largestcotton producer after China and the United States. An eminently symbolicplant in the country of Mahatma Gandhi, who made the growing of cottonthe spearhead of his nonviolent resistance to British occupation, cotton hasbeen grown for more than five thousand years on the Indian subcontinent.It now provides a livelihood for 17 million families, mainly in southern states(Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh).*Subsidies to American farmers amounted to $18 billion in 2006. See Somini Sengupta, “On India’sFarms, a Plague of Suicide,” New York Times, September 19, 2006. Three days after we filmed, a riotbroke out in the market and the police arrested several farmers, including Kishor Tiwari.