Troubling notions of farmer choice: hybrid Bt cotton seed production in western India

Abstract

The debate over agricultural biotechnology is increasingly being centered on the question of farmer choice. Advocates for biotechnology argue that farmers should be able to choose the seeds and technologies they use, and therefore these new technologies should be legalized and made available immediately. Who would deny farmers of the global South their right to choose? But these discourses of choice and freedom are being deployed to market a particular kind of development. This neoliberal development of agriculture is leading to the individualization of risk, the shifting of risk to marginalized contract farming households, and greater control for wealthier farmers, seed companies and agents. The state of Gujarat, India, is seen as a success story of hybrid Bt cotton, in which farmers have their choice of hundreds of varieties of seeds. As cotton seed production is taking off in the neighboring state of Rajasthan, however, choosing Bt cotton has different implications and meanings altogether. Drawing on eight months of qualitative research with adivasi households in Dungarpur District, Rajasthan, I offer narrative accounts from farmers and seed agents that both explore and trouble neoliberal notions of farmer choice. The use of these discourses by biotech advocates is just one example of the ways that choice and freedom are being utilized to further neoliberal development.

Keywords:

• adivasi
• agricultural biotechnology
• Gujarat
• narrative accounts
• neoliberal development
• Rajasthan

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the families and individuals who participated in this study for their time, patience, and humor. I am grateful to Sharon Weir for her invaluable help in the field. I would also like to thank Lucy Jarosz, Victoria Lawson, and my colleagues in the Winter 2010 professional writing course for their support and generous feedback. Finally, I wish to extend my gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers, for their detailed attention to this manuscript and their immensely helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

¹See Newell (2008) and Scoones (2008) for discussions of resistance to, and mobilization around, agricultural biotechnology in Latin America, and India, Brazil, South Africa, respectively. Scoones' (2008) work compares and contextualizes anti-GM activism in three countries, showing that for many activists the debate over transgenic crops and GM foods ‘[…] is actually a debate about a much wider set of issues: about the future of agriculture and small-scale farmers; about corporate control; about property rights; about global trade rules and so on’ (340). See Schurman and Kelso (2003) for a discussion of resistance in the UK and the US.

²Adivasi is the general word used for Scheduled Tribes of India or tribal communities, and means ‘original inhabitants’. It is also the term used by study participants in identifying themselves.

³My focus here is on the processes and discourses accompanying the spread of agricultural biotechnology, rather than the specifics of hybrid or Bt technology. While I use the case of Bt cotton and biotechnology as an example of how these discourses are deployed in neoliberal development, this discussion also transcends the issue of biotechnology.

⁴While commercial cotton (fiber) production in Gujarat and contracted cotton seed production in Rajasthan are different on a number of levels, both cases feed into the discourses of biotechnology advocates as examples of success, popularity and performance.

⁵See Seshia and Scoones (2003) and Scoones (2006) for detailed discussions and comparative analyses of the Green Revolution and agricultural biotechnology eras in India.

⁶In India, the kinds of legal structures established elsewhere to protect intellectual property rights have not been implemented, but as Ramamurthy (2010) describes, hybrid cotton provides an effective alternative form of intellectual property rights protection. Seeds produced through hybridization offer the advantage of a higher yield, but this decreases in subsequent generations. Gujarati farmers have used hybrid seeds for decades and are already in the habit of returning to the seed store each season for the best new seed available.

⁷The introduction of biotechnology in Gujarat is an excellent example of the power of elite farmers from the Patel community and other powerful caste groups, less restricted by social, political and economic capital, in rural Gujarat. For other examples of the power of certain communities over agricultural production and labor in Gujarat see: Breman (1985), Gidwani (2001), Prakash (2005), Yagnik and Sheth (2005).

⁸In Rajasthan, most farmers had no knowledge about the practice of planting a refuge, and others did not consider it to be necessary.

⁹All interviews referenced occurred between May 2008 and May 2009.

¹⁰This discussion of the factors that have led work in cotton seed production to be seen as appropriate work for adivasi young people is based on interviews and focus groups with parents, young people, seed company representatives, Gujarati ginning mill owners and middlemen during my field research in 2008 and 2009. Deshingkar and Farrington (2006) offer a very similar discussion of the seasonal labor migration patterns of adivasi young people from south Rajasthan to work in hybrid cotton seed production.

¹¹Ramamurthy (2010) and Stone (2007) also offer detailed accounts socio-technical organization of the hybrid and hybrid Bt cotton production system.

¹²The Dakshini Rajasthan Mazdoor Union, based in Udaipur, provides an example of an organization turning its attention to the widespread use of child labor in hybrid cotton seed pollination work as a focal point for anti-child labor campaigns.

¹³See Ramamurthy (2010) for a discussion of recent feminist research on contract family farming, agribusiness and the feminization of agriculture.

¹⁴I use pseudonyms for the sub-district of Dungarpur District as well as for the individuals that I interviewed.

¹⁵I employed a research assistant fluent in Hindi and Gujarati and received additional help from a local woman engaged in independent social work, and a man from the Bhil community who also works locally as a driver. The presence of the latter two individuals helped immensely with rapport-building, putting people at ease with the presence of outsiders (my research assistant and myself), and with communication in a third language spoken locally, Vagari.

¹⁶This is the subject of another forthcoming article about the labor of children and young people in migration and household production of hybrid Bt cotton seed.