Bt cotton under attack in Malwa region

“While it is difficult to quantify the damage, in terms of money, the farmers have already spent Rs 1,000-1,200 as additional costs per acre which will definitely cost them dearly,” says Punjab Agriculture Department Director Balwinder Singh Sidhu.

The Punjab Government has also submitted a report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying that “there is an attack but is under control”.

“While American bollworm damaged some parts of the plant, the mealy bug destroys the entire plant,” says Mohinder Singh, a farmer of Jeevan Singh Wala village in Bathinda.

The white, persistent bug—called chitti bhoondi by farmers—is considered deadlier than the American bollworm and has not responded to the extensive spraying of pesticides by farmers. This has put a question mark over the much talked about pesticide resistance of the Bt cotton seed.

P.S. Sandhu, Chief Agriculture Officer in Bathinda, says that the chemical sprays have not yielded the desired results because “the pest attacks the whole plant. Spraying every part of the plant is a tedious task and when it doesn’t reach all the parts, the bug resurfaces and multiplies as its life cycle is very fast.”

Malwa’s farmers are also rueing the fact that the excessive use of pesticides has drastically escalated their input costs. As compared to almost negligible production costs last year, this year there is a major gap in input-output index of the cotton growers. As per estimates, more than Rs 200 crore worth of pesticides have already been sprayed in the cotton fields of Punjab and in neighbouring states.

“I give Rs 11,000 as contract amount and a lot of money has already been spent on spraying pesticides,” says Sukhchain Singh, a contract farmer in Bathinda, who adds that he has already sprayed pesticide worth Rs 2,000 on one acre. “I am not sure whether I will be able to break even, leave aside the profits,” he says.

Syngenta India Limited, a leading MNC dealing in crop rotation chemicals, claims to have sold about 5 lakh litres of Presenofos, a pesticide under the company brand name Curacron. “The company has already sold Presenofos worth Rs 40 crore,” says Syngenta’s north cotton division regional sales manager Pritpal Singh Sidhu.

Umendra Dutt, executive director of Kheti Virasat Mission, an environmental NGO advocating natural farming, says nearly Rs 500 crore of pesticides have been used after the mealy bug attack. “I have the break up of various pesticides sprayed since then,” he claims.

“Given the persistent dry spell, there is no option but to spray the pesticides. The pest resurfaces and pesticides have to be sprayed again,” says Sidhu. “Productivity is likely to fall, the input costs have gone up and the farmers are the ultimate sufferers. But we are at the mercy of weather and will have to depend on pesticides till the dry spell lasts.” Experts say that Bt cotton required no pesticides and this is the reason the bug has attacked the crop.

Meanwhile, experts say that the pest attacks coupled with the dry spell will result in a fall in production of cotton even though the crop has been grown in a larger area than last time.

There was a record production of 26.5 lakh bales of cotton in Punjab in 1991-92 before the crop was attacked by American bollworm the following year. The production started deteriorating drastically and fell to just 4.5 lakh bales in 1998-99. After the introduction of Bt cotton in the state around three years ago, things started to improve.

In fact, the launch of this variety had a significant political fallout because it cost the Shiromani Akali Dal dearly in the elections. It was voted out and the Congress elected because it was considered to have “helped the farmers come out of the cotton crisis” that had been haunting them since 1992, when a major attack of American bollworm was first reported.