Scorched Fields

India, Monsanto and the growing resentment towards genetically altered substances

India is a land of contrasts. While it boasts to be the world's largest democracy, its caste system and the level of poverty ranks the country among the worst in the developing world. Travellers to southeast Asia often comment after coming to China from India on how much better the former seems to be in comparison with the latter; it seems to be relatively cleaner, efficient, and better organised.

This comparison in many ways is a reflection of the dichotomy of globalization: one the one hand, the more efficient and prosperous (the west and north) versus the more drab and backward (the east and south). Ironically, in trying to protect the planet from certain destruction due to capitalist over-consumption and disregard for the environment, it's often the underprivileged that brings issues to the fore. India is a case in point. Politically, it tried to stand outside of the two bloc system imposed by the game rules of the Cold War. Together with countries like Tito's Yugoslavia, the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) acted as quasi buffer to the neo-imperialist designs of the USSR and the US. This also included being a harsh critic of the nuclear arms race. Unfortunately, since the demise of Yugoslavia and India's desire to be a part of the nuclear "Big Five" earlier this summer, this political legacy has long since evaporated.

Nevertheless, progressive grassroots opposition still exists. This is usually against the activities of multinationals, many of whom operate in Southeast Asia solely to exploit cheap labour and resources, not to mention lax environmental and fiscal laws. Large concerns such as KFC and Pepsi have come attack by local residents protesting the environmental and social problems that such companies cause. Likewise, voices have also been raised against globalization's regulatory bodies, such as the WTO and those regulating patents. In the case of the latter, an attempt by an American company to patent Basamti rice drew widespread criticism.

Presently, Indian protesters have gone on the offensive, taking on one of globalization's most notorious multinationals: Monsanto.

Monsanto is world renown for its controversial biotechnology activities in the area of agricultural production. It developed Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), the first genetically modified product that was ever commercialised in the world. Other products include the the Monsanto Calgene Flavor-Saver tomato, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and Roundup Ready cotton (both of which are supposed to be immune to boll damage), Roundup-resistant sugar-beets, Roundup Ready soybean seeds, and its Terminator Technology which produces "terminator seeds", that is, seeds which produce plants that have sterile seeds which don't germinate for another season. As one observer aptly noted, "Monsanto's aim is to monopolise the food chain."

In addition to all this, Monsanto's list of commercial products also includes poisons, most notably the infamous herbicide Agent Orange. This chemical played a major role in one of the most horrible genocides in the history of humankind, the Vietnam War. Vietnam claims that half a million people have died or contracted serious illnesses over the years because of the spraying of Agent Orange during the war.

While it would seem that fighting against Monsanto's policies and products should not be overly difficult given the fact that to be "green" is now a fashion statement of sorts, the truth is that the power behind Monsanto is immense. Moreover, in the present neo-liberalist environment of the bottom line and a "business uber alles" attitude, political support weighs in heavy on the side of multinationals. Finally, the present fad of being "green" as a fashion statement is just that: a statement, with little substance behind it. For India, the odds appear not be in their favour. In the US Monsanto had challenged the requirement of the labelling of milk which contained rBGH as unconstitutional since it went against their right to free speech - free speech including the right not to say something.

A recently disclosed official report of the Canadian government published in April 21, 1998 describes the illegal tactics used by Monsanto to obtain permission to commercialise rBGH in Canada. According to the report, "evidence from the animal safety reviews were [sic] not taken into consideration. These studies indicated numerous adverse effects in cows, including birth defects, reproductive disorders, higher incidence of mastitis [infection leading to inflammation of the udder], which may have had an impact on human health." (p. 14)

Additionally, "there are reports on file that Monsanto pursued aggressive marketing tactics, compensated farmers whose veterinary bills escalated due to increased side effects associated with the use of rBST [rBGH], and covered up negative trial results. All the four U.S. manufacturers [Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Cyanamid and Elanco, with only Monsanto actually marketing a product] refused to disclose the lists of their research grants to U.S. universities." Naturally, without such lists, one could not inquire what effects had been revealed by animal experiments, since nobody knows where the experiments took place.

The Canadian government scientists conclude that "the usually required long-term toxicology studies to ascertain human safety were not conducted. Hence, such possibilities as sterility, infertility, birth defects, cancer, and immunological derangements were not addressed." The scientists who wrote the report testified before an inquiry board in October that they have been pressured by higher-ups to alter the content of their report. Two of the report's authors, and four other Canadian government scientists, testified that they have been threatened with transfers to other jobs where "they would never be heard of again" if they did not speed up approval of Monsanto's rBGH product in Canada, despite the absence of long-term data showing the product is safe for humans.

These tactics have also been used on those directly involved with Monsanto: the farmers. The multinational giant has already been prosecuting farmers for saving Roundup Ready soybean seeds (these are not terminator seeds). According to press reports, Monsanto has hired Pinkerton detectives to harass more than 1,800 farmers and seed dealers across the US, with 475 potential criminal "seed piracy" cases already under investigation. A group of seed-saving farmers in Kentucky, Iowa, and Illinois have already been forced to pay fines to Monsanto of up to $35,000 each.

Even members of the press have a hard time. In late-September of this year in the U.K., a special issue of The Ecologist magazine on Monsanto was pulled off the presses and destroyed by its printer. Although Monsanto claims they hadn't threatened the printers or magazine vendors, almost no one seems to believe them. Despite such compelling examples of the power of Monsanto, farmers in India will not be deterred. The Karnataka State Farmers Association (KRSS), a Gandhian movement of 10 million farmers in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka, has initiated a series of non-violent civil disobedient protests in the form crop burnings. In a campaign of direct action by farmers against biotechnology, called Operation "Cremation Monsanto", fields being used as tests sites by Monsanto for a hybrid cotton seed that has been genetically engineered to produce the Bt enzyme are being torched. KRRS activists contacted the owners of the fields in advance, explaining to them what action will be taken, for what reasons, and to let them know that the KRRS will cover any loses they will suffer.

The first field to be torched was in the village of Maladagudda, about 400 km North of Bangalore. Mr. Basanna, owner of the field, claimed that officials of Mahyco-Monsanto (a joint venture between Monsanto and Mahyco, a 30 years old seed company in India, where Monsanto now owns 26 percent of Mahyco) went to his farm in July and proposed him to grow -- free of cost -- a new variety of cotton seeds, which they claimed would give very good results. He didn't suspect that their intention was to carry out an experiment on genetic engineering without his knowledge and consent, risking the future viability not only of his farm, but of his complete community.

Officials of Mahyco-Monsanto went regularly to apply manure and pesticides to the Bt cotton, including heavy doses of insecticides. However, the plants became infested with bollworm (the pest that Bt cotton is supposed to control) and other pests like white fly and red-rot. Despite the heavy use of chemical fertiliser, traces of which still can be observed in the field, the Bt plants grew miserably, less than half the size of the traditional cotton plants in the adjacent fields.

Basanna has only now realised that this remarkably inferior cotton variety has polluted next years' cotton harvest in the whole region, rendering it as useless as his field. He has also come to know that he has unknowingly engaged in illegal behaviour by commercialising a cotton variety whose commercial exploitation has not been approved yet. He thus shares the anger of the farmers from the whole region, and has given his approval to the cremation of the cotton.

Aside from the inferiority of the cotton, what has upset many local residents is that no single biosafety measure (e.g. buffer zone around the genetically engineered cotton to reduce biopollution, construction of a fence around the field, etc...) was undertaken by Mahyco-Monsanto. Nor did they demarcate the field as biohazard area. This has also raised concern among many environmentalists outside of India, who had narrowly adverted a biotechnological disaster earlier this year in the UK.

According to news reports from the British newspaper Mail On Sunday (25th October 1998), an experimental crop of oilseed rape that was altered to be resistant to herbicides had to be destroyed after it pollinated nearby plants. The fear was that, left unchecked, a new breed of superweeds which normal chemicals could not destroy might have resulted with devastating effects for British - and even European - agriculture.

So far, the first series of scorched earth protests against Monsanto went off peacefully. During the first burning, however, there was a small incident in where the local representative of BJP, the Hindu fundamentalist party now in power in India, tried to stop the action and questioned the right of KRRS to burn down the Bt cotton planted by Monsanto. He was subsequently taken out of the field by a crowd of activists. We are calling only for non-violent direct actions," stresses Prof. Nanjundaswamy, president of the KRRS. "Non-violence in this context means that we should respect all (non-genetically modified) living beings, including policemen and the people who work for these TNCs [Trans National Corporations]."

What gives added impetus to the protesters is the knowledge that they are not alone. Much use has been made of the Internet to disseminate information about what has been happening in India, including the establishment of a listserv (pga-ge@gn.apc.org). To this extent, Monsanto may have a bigger fight on their hands than they think. As with the MAI earlier this year, the Internet has proved instrumental in rallying people together.

Yet unlike many who at this point would begin to extol the "revolutionary" aspect of the new media and be suffering the pangs of electronic diarrhea, the leaders of the KRSS are more practical and level-headed. "We know that stopping biotechnology in India will not be of much help to us if it continues in other countries, since the threats that it poses do not stop at the borders," remarks Nanjundaswamy. "If we play our cards right at global level and coordinate our work, these actions can also pose a major challenge to the survival of these corporations in the stock markets."

So far, the strategy has been working. With Monsanto's commercial success mostly illusory, the pressure of late has had an effect. Monsanto has recently suffered a 30% drop in the value of its stock. This has come about through a combination of events over the past couple of years: firstly, the corporation's $1 billion investment in rBGH has been described by business analysts as an economic failure for, after four years of heavy promotion, it still used officially on only 4% of American dairy cows; the Monsanto Calgene Flavor-Saver tomato was taken off the market in 1996 due to consumer resistance and production failures; Monsanto's entire Canadian genetically-engineered rapeseed crop had to be recalled in 1997 because of "technical difficulties"; half of Monsanto's Bt cotton crop in the US was attacked by bollworms in 1996, prompting lawsuits by outraged cotton growers; in 1997 their Roundup Ready cotton did little better, with boll damage or deformities that led to still more lawsuits; Irish authorities made public US EPA documents revealing that Monsanto's supposedly Roundup-resistant sugar-beets were dying in significant numbers after having been sprayed with Roundup; in the US, Monsanto has begun receiving adverse publicity for prosecuting farmers for saving Monsanto's patented herbicide-resistant "Roundup Ready" soybean seed; and in Brazil a judge temporarily blocked Monsanto's efforts to get approval for farmers to plant Roundup Ready Soybeans.

In addition to all this is a growing resentment among the general public toward genetically altered substances. Continuing public relations and marketing problems are mounting across Europe as genetically engineered field crops are becoming a focal point of protest. Meanwhile, more and more supermarket chains are attempting to source non-genetically engineered products, while activist organizations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Global 2000, European Farmers Coordination (CPE), and the Genetic Engineering Network generate steady media coverage and bad publicity for corporations like Monsanto.

Of course, the effect of the scorched earth tactics in India should not be underrated. As Nanjundaswamy makes clear: "we have a more specific message for all those who have invested in Monsanto: you should take your money out before we reduce it to ashes."

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