2-Plants: Chinese farmers favor Bt-cotton above dying from pesticides

[GENET <hmeyer@ngi.de>]

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                                  PART I
-------------------------------- GENET-news --------------------------------

TITLE:  Chinese 'Bt' cotton farmer survives insecticide poisoning
SOURCE: Today & abs-cbnNEWS.com, USA, by Jose G. Burgos Jr.
        http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Provincial&
        oid=5353
DATE:   Oct. 8, 2002

------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch/genet.html ------------------


Dear GENET-news readers,

obviously the success of Bt cotton in China is based on the fact that 
highly toxic pesticides are allowed to be used in agriculture without 
proper risk assessment and management and without proper education and 
training of farmers. No necessary measures, eg capacity building for 
farmers or development of IPM systems have been taken but instead money was 
invested for cooperation with Monsanto to develop Bt cotton for China. The 
farmers still die - unless they use Bt cotton. You might call this an 
incentive to use Bt cotton.

Yours,

Hartmut Meyer

*****

Chinese 'Bt' cotton farmer survives insecticide poisoning

First of two parts

LANG FANG PREFECTURE, Hebei, China - Five years ago, Zhen-Bo Chai, a 43-
year old cotton farmer, would wake up with an uneasy feeling of nausea and 
dizziness. He would also worry for his neighbors who have been encountering 
similar symptoms of what was diagnosed as pesticide poisoning.

In fact, it would seem that the entire farming village populace of Dong 
Zhang Wu -- located about two hours drive north of Beijing -- was under 
constant threat of ill health caused by toxins released by chemical 
sprayers for their various crops, the most common of which was corn and 
cotton.

These days, however, Zhen goes to his two-hectare Bt (Bacillus 
thuringiensis) cotton field feeling hearty and well, his sluggishness 
diminished and his fears about illness, vanished. "I feel well now, unlike 
when I used to spray my fields as many as 30 times for each cropping 
season," the hulking farmer claimed before Filipino journalists and 
scientists who visited his farm.

Zhen is one of 300 cotton farmers here whose main source of income is corn 
and, since 1997, a genetically modified (GM) cotton variety.

All of the farmers have subsisted for many years from alternately 
cultivating corn and a local breed of cotton. To protect their fields, the 
farmers were forced to rely on pesticides in combating cotton's dreaded and 
most pervasive enemy: bollworm.

This pest would devastate an entire cotton field unless farmers use 
insecticides generically known as organophosphate as often as 20 to 30 
times for each cropping season, or within six months after planting.

This village, which collectively nurtures 100 hectares of Bt cotton is one 
of Hebei's show windows in Bt cotton production and one of the successful 
cases where the controversial biotechnology crop had been adopted by 
farmers in China.

According to Zhen, he is quite at peace with his new GM variety of cotton 
and proudly escorted visitors to his flowering cotton field, which five 
years back was a scene of desolation because of bollworm infestation, and 
reeked with pesticide residues.

Zhen said that because of massive spraying of a cocktail of poisonous 
chemicals every time they plant the ordinary, non-Bt cotton variety, he and 
his fellow farmers -- and even their family members -- would suffer from 
headaches, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms of severe respiratory 
diseases.

"In fact there were times when we had to rush people to the hospitals," 
Zhen said. He claimed that one or two have succumbed to poisoning, but the 
cause of the deaths could not be verified.

Besides his physical well-being, Zhen cited increased net income and less 
work when he converted his farm into a Bt cotton field.

When he was planting the ordinary cotton variety his net income for every 
hectare each season was an average of P33,000. But since 1997, when he 
started using Bt cotton, his income rose to P55,700.

The difference was due to less cost in the chemical fight against bollworm 
and lesser expenses for hired workers.

Delinted (without seeds) Bt cotton is purchased by traders of processing 
centers at approximately P25 a kilo although prices had been fluctuating, 
according to Zhen.

The market for cotton in China is expanding and Bt cotton farmers could not 
yet supply the demands for it and a great amount of the commodity is still 
imported from the United States and some countries in Asia, according to 
Dr. Randy Hautea, a Filipino scientist who is the global coordinator of the 
International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotechnology 
Applications (ISAAA).

Hautea said that the most promising results for the developing world has 
been the adoption of Bt cotton by at least four million small farmers in 
China.

He added that based on surveys in the Yellow River cotton-growing region in 
northern China, these farmers have been able to increase their yield for 
each hectare, reduce pesticide costs, cut down the time they spent spraying 
dangerous pesticides and reduce the number of times they are sick from 
pesticide poisoning.

He explained that Bacillus thuringiensis is a common soil bacterium which 
produces a protein that is toxic to certain insects, in the case of cotton, 
bollworm which feeds on cotton bolls.

However, Bt cotton is not resistant to other insects, such as mites and 
aphids, which may force farmers to still use pesticides.

These pests, however, are not as prevalent and destructive as bollworms.

The experience of China in the production of Bt cotton illustrates this 
populous nation's evolving rural economy that other developing countries 
can study to determine their direction in adopting -- or rejecting -- 
genetic engineering or modification of certain important agricultural 
crops, Hautea said.

To be concluded


                                  PART II
-------------------------------- GENET-news --------------------------------

TITLE:  Why genetically modified cotton thrives in China
SOURCE: Today & abs-cbnNEWS.com, USA, by Jose G. Burgos Jr.
        http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Provincial&
        oid=5454
DATE:   Oct. 9, 2002

------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch/genet.html ------------------



Why genetically modified cotton thrives in China

Conclusion

BEIJING - The drastic reduction of pesticide use is the main reason why 
more than four million Chinese farmers are planting the controversial Bt 
cotton variety.

This was reported here by Dr. Randy Hautea, a Filipino scientist who is the 
global coordinator of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-
biotech Applications (ISAAA) based at the International Rice Research 
Institute in Los Banos, Laguna.

Hautea cited a series of surveys conducted by Carl Pray, Jikun Huang, Ruifa 
Hu and Scott Rozelle of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource 
Economics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Center for 
Chinese Agricultural Policy, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural 
Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; and 
Department of Agricultural Resource Economics, University of California, 
respectively.

The surveys conducted in 1999, 2000 and 2001 in five northern provinces in 
China documented the impact of Bt cotton, demonstrating that genetically 
modified (GM) cotton led to "positive and significant economic and health 
benefits for poor, small farmers," who adopted the modern technology, 
Hautea said.

Data from the latest survey also indicate that Bt cotton farmers have 
increased their incomes by being able to whittle down their use of 
pesticides and the reduction of labor.

According to the scientists who conducted the surveys, China has made a 
major investment in biotechnology research which started in the mid-1980s 
and unlike in most other countries which have adopted genetically 
engineered crops, the researches and resulting technologies were undertaken 
by the government sector.

Biotech advances in cotton production in China were prompted by the 
widespread damage caused by insect pests, particularly the cotton bollworm 
(Helicoverpa armigera).

China's farmers have been dependent on pesticides, specifically chlorinated 
hydrocarbons (e.g. DDT) in controlling pests. But when this particular 
pesticide was banned in the early '80s, they began to use organophosphates. 
However, the pests developed resistance. In the early '90s other chemicals 
were used but again the bollworms developed resistance until in the mid-
1990s, farmers resorted to mixing various toxic chemicals which endangered 
their lives.

At that time China's cotton farmers were applying more pesticides for each 
hectare on cotton than on any other field crop. Per hectare pesticide cost 
reached US$101 in 1995 for cotton. Cotton production consumed nearly US$500 
million in pesticides annually, according to survey data.

With funding from government research sources, the Chinese Academy of 
Agricultural Sciences and other scientists from public research institutes 
developed Bt cotton varieties, tested the varieties for their impact on the 
environment and eventually released them for commercial use in 1997.

Hautea disclosed that the Chinese Biosafety Committee has approved the sale 
of 22 Bt cotton varieties in all provinces of China.

It is estimated that farmers planted nearly 1.5 million hectares of Bt 
cotton in 2001, or approximately 31 percent of ChinaÕs cotton area.

According to data gathered by Carl Pray, et. al., pesticide use has 
remained low in the provinces that adopted Bt cotton. In the provinces of 
Henan and Anhui, where Bt cotton was recently introduced commercially, the 
main application of pesticides was reduced by 24 kilograms to 63 kilogram a 
hetare.

The substantial decrease in pesticide use has also reduced the number of 
farmers who are poisoned by pesticides each year, the data show. In 1999 
the reduction in pesticide use was approximately 20,000 tons of formulated 
pesticides, while in 2001, owing to increased area under Bt and increased 
savings per hectare, the pesticide cut down was 78,000 tons, or about one 
quarter of all the pesticides sprayed in China in the mid-1990s.

According to Hautea, the success of China in the rapidly growing adoption 
of Bt cotton can also be traced to the important role played by local 
research on biotechnology. He said that the yeoman's work done by public 
researchers and the government scientists have made Chinese farmers more 
confident in accepting Bt cotton as an option to improve their income and 
safeguard their health.



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