The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

india: the seeds of suicide 305the short term and that it would cost farmers a good deal. With their walletsdirectly affected, the farmers joined the camp of the entomologists.This is why around the world, Bt growers’ manuals since then have requiredthat refuges be equivalent to at least 20 percent of the GMO surface area. Butit must be acknowledged that this amounts once again to tinkering and improvisation,because no serious study has been conducted to verify that thiscompromise—worked out in one corner of Missouri—has any scientific validity.And when Michael Pollan questioned Monsanto representatives on the issuefor the New York Times in 1998, they answered: “If all goes well, resistancecan be postponed for 30 years,” which can only be called a short-term policy. 26When Pollan persisted with Jerry Hjelle, Monsanto vice president for regulatoryaffairs, attempting to find out what would happen after that crucial period,“the response [was] more troubling. . . . ‘There are a thousand other Bt’sout there. ...We can handle this problem with new products. . . . The criticsdon’t know what we have in the pipeline. . . . Trust us.’”In the meantime, ten years after the inauguration of Bt crops, it is possibleto draw up a preliminary assessment of the shiny bureaucratic edifice.First, as an Associated Press dispatch pointed out in January 2001, accordingto a survey conducted in 2000 “30 percent of [American] Bt corn growersdo not follow the published recommendations for the management ofresistance,” because they found them too restrictive. 27 To tell the truth, I understandthem. But they should, of course, stop supporting such an absurdsystem, which will sooner or later collapse like a house of cards, as a 2006study conducted by Cornell University researchers in cooperation with theChinese Academy of Science showed. 28 Considered “the first to look at thelonger-term economic impact of Bt cotton,” the study covered 481 of the5 million GM producers in China. It found that “the substantial profits theyhave reaped for several years by saving on pesticides have now been eroded.”According to the authors, while for the first three years after the introductionof Bt crops, farmers had “cut pesticide use by more than 70 percent andhad earnings 36 percent higher than farmers planting conventional cotton,”in 2004 “they had to spray just as much as conventional farmers, which resultedin a net average income of 8 percent less than conventional cottonfarmers because Bt seed is triple the cost of conventional seed.” Finally, afterseven years, “insects have increased so much that farmers are now havingto spray their crops up to 20 times a growing season to control them.”The researchers’ conclusion, despite their support for GMOs, is devastating: