The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

300 the world according to monsantoEverything goes well for the first two months: the plants are healthy andthere are no insects. Then disillusionment strikes. The plants are very smalland cotton bolls less numerous than in the adjacent conventional cottonfields. In the October dry season, when parasites have deserted the traditionalcrops, the GM plants are besieged by cotton thrips and whiteflies. InNovember, when the harvest begins, anxiety can be seen in farmers’ faces:the yields are very low, the bolls hard to pick, and the cotton fiber shorter,which means a 20 percent reduction in price.I met the filmmakers in December 2006 in a cotton field in Warangalwhere they had come to film with the two agronomists. I was impressed bythe professionalism of these extraordinary women, who, carrying sleepingbabies on their backs, set up camera, stand, microphones, and reflector tointerview a group of farmers who were desperate because of the failure oftheir Bt crops.Since the first report published by the two agronomists, the situation hadonly gotten worse, triggering the second wave of suicides, which soonreached the state of Maharashtra. Worried by this tragic situation, theAndhra Pradesh government conducted a study that confirmed the conclusionsreached by Qayum and Sakkhari. 13 Aware of the electoral consequencesthis disaster might have, the head of the Agriculture Department,Raghuveera Reddy, then demanded that Mahyco indemnify the farmers forthe failure of their crops, a demand the company ignored.Propaganda and MonopolyIn its defense, Monsanto brandished a study very opportunely published inScience on February 7, 2003. 14 The influence of scientific studies is extraordinaryas long as they are backed by prestigious journals, which seldom ornever verify the source of the data presented. Matin Qaim, then at the Universityof Bonn, and David Zilberman of the University of California, Berkeley,neither of whom “had ever set foot in India,” as Vandana Shiva put it,found that according to field trials carried out in “different states in India,”Bt cotton “substantially reduces pest damage and increases yields ...asmuch as 88 percent.” “What is really disturbing is that the article extollingthe outstanding performance of Bt cotton is based exclusively on data suppliedby the company that owns Bt cotton, Mahyco-Monsanto,” commented