This [unedited] guest post is by a student in my EEP100 class (background post).
Please praise/critique/comment on its economic quality and importance to you.
Sumita Mitra says:Last summer I had the opportunity to visit Vandana Shiva’s organic farm in Dehradun, India. Shiva became famous after her participation in the Chipko Andolan, an eco-feminist movement, and continues to fight for farmer’s rights Her recent battles have been with Monsanto, a biotech corporation. One of Monsato’s campaigns involves “helping farmers meet the needs of a growing planet,” as stated on their website. Their method of helping farmers includes selling genetically modified seeds and special fertilizers to improve yields.
GMO’s are a controversial topic for many different reasons, but I wanted to look at why I think selling genetically modified seeds are not sustainable economically for farmers in the long run, especially for poor farmers in developing nations.
The purpose of these seeds is to improve the output of certain crops. However, the purchasing of these seeds come at a fairly high variable cost, and if the farmers are unable to cover those costs with the money earned from the marginal product of their land, they run into debt. And in the Indian context running into debt potentially means committing suicide by drinking the chemical fertilizers sold by Monsanto. There is more incentive to plant the crops that price the highest on the market rather than farming local seeds, which won’t sell for as much. This type of reasoning promotes monoculture (the cultivation of one crop), which steadily depletes the nutrients of the soil. The value of the soil depreciates over time. This causes the farmers to invest even more money into chemical fertilizers, which sinks the farmers even further into debt. Ultimately in the long run, the marginal costs exceed the marginal revenue.
Part of the problem too is the fact that certain crops in the United States and European countries are heavily subsidized by the government, limiting how well small international farmers can compete on the world market because the price of corn and soy in developed nations is lower. And for the small Indian farmer this means they must lower the price of their crops, make less profit, and struggle that much more to pay off loans.
Bottom Line: GMOs may increase productivity in the short run, but in the long run side effects include soil degradation, debt, and possibly death. And since death has such a high social cost I cannot support Monsanto’s work in India. And something also needs to be done about the way food is priced on the world market.
1 comments:
Farmers in India have stopped committing suicide (and they were not using Monsanto fertilizer to do that, they were using insecticide and herbicides made by other companies) because of the improved yields from GM cotton. The yields are improved because the farmers did not have to purchase expensive and dangerous pesticides. Seed costs are a small part of growing a crop, and one that few competent farmers would knowingly skimp on.
FYI, monoculture is bad not so much because it depletes the soil, but because it encourages plant disease. Poor soil management (ignoring recommendations for fertilizer and rotation) depletes the soil. You are correct about the damage done by subsidies; but subsidies in the less developed world are equally distorting, and take resources away from far more important human needs.
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