January, 2007
Source:
University of
Chicago Press Journals
Study explores the effect of
genetically modified crops on developing countries
A new study in the February issue
of Current
Anthropology explores how the arrival of genetically
modified crops affects farmers in developing countries. Glenn
Davis Stone (Washington
University) studied the Warangal District of Andhra Pradesh
in India, a key cotton growing area notorious for suicides by
cotton farmers. In 2003 to 2005, market share of "Bt cotton"
seeds rose from 12 percent to 62 percent in Warangal. Bt cotton
is genetically modified to produce its own insecticide and has
been claimed by its manufacturer as the fastest-adopted
agricultural technology in history.
Monsato, the firm behind Bt cotton, has interpreted the rapid
spread of the modified strain as the result of farmer
experimentation and management skill – similar to mechanisms
that scholars cite to explain the spread of hybrid corn across
American farms. But Stone's multiyear ethnography of Warangal
cotton farmers shows an unexpected pattern of localized cotton
seed fads in the district. He argues that, rather than a case of
careful assessment and adoption, Warangal is plagued by a severe
breakdown of the "skilling" process by which farmers normally
hone their management practices.
"Warangal cotton farming offers a case study in ‘agricultural
deskilling'," writes Stone. The seed fads had virtually no
environmental basis, and farmers generally lacked recognition of
what was actually being planted, a striking contrast to highly
strategic seed selection processes in areas where technological
change is learned and gradual. Interviews also provided
consistent evidence that Warangal cotton farmers prefer trying
new seeds – seeds without any background information whatsoever
– to trying several strains on smaller, experimental scales and
choosing one for long-term adoption.
The problem preceded Bt cotton, Stone points out; its root
causes are reliance on hybrid seed, which must be repurchased
every year, and a chaotic seed market in which products come and
go at a furious pace and farmers often cannot tell what they are
using. Farmer desire for novelty exacerbates the turnover of
seeds in the market, Stone argues, and seed firms will
frequently take seeds that have fallen out of favor, rename
them, and resell with new marketing campaigns. For instance, one
recent favorite seed in several villages is identical to four
other seeds on the market.
ABSTRACT Warangal
District, Andhra Pradesh, India, is a key cotton-growing
area in one of the most closely watched arenas of the
global struggle over genetically modified crops. In 2005
farmers adopted India's first genetically modified crop,
Bt cotton, in numbers that resemble a fad. Various
parties, including the biotechnology firm behind the new
technology, interpret the spread as the result of farmer
experimentation and management skill, alluding to
orthodox innovation-diffusion theory. However, a
multiyear ethnography of Warangal cotton farmers shows a
striking pattern of localized, ephemeral cotton seed
fads preceding the spread of the genetically modified
seeds. The Bt cotton fad is symptomatic of systematic
disruption of the process of experimentation and
development of management skill. In fact, Warangal
cotton farming offers a case study in agricultural
deskilling, a process that differs in fundamental ways
from the better-known process of industrial deskilling.
In terms of cultural evolutionary theory, deskilling
severs a vital link between environmental and social
learning, leaving social learning to propagate practices
with little or no environmental basis. However, crop
genetic modification is not inherently deskilling and,
ironically, has played a role in reinvolving farmers in
Gujarat in the process of breeding. |
Stone argues that the previously
undocumented pattern of fads, in which each village lurches from
seed to seed, reflects a breakdown of the process of
"environmental learning," leaving farmers to rely purely on
"social learning." Bt cotton was not the cause of this
"deskilling," but in Warangal it has exacerbated the problem.
"On the surface, [Warangal] appears to be a dramatic case of
successful adoption of an innovation," Stone explains. "However,
a closer analysis of the dynamics of adoption shows that the
pattern some see as an environmentally based change in
agricultural practice actually continues the established pattern
of socially driven fads arising in the virtual absence of
environmental learning."
Strangely, in another part of India, a very different history of
Bt cotton has led to an improvement in agricultural skilling. In
Gujarat, the loss of corporate control over the Bt technology
has led to an increased involvement of farmers in local
breeding, and an apparent increase in knowledge-based
innovation.
Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research, Current Anthropology is a transnational journal
devoted to research on humankind, encompassing the full range of
anthropological scholarship on human cultures and on the human
and other primate species. Communicating across the subfields,
the journal features papers in a wide variety of areas,
including social, cultural, and physical anthropology as well as
ethnology and ethnohistory, archaeology and prehistory,
folklore, and linguistics. For more information, please see our
Web site:
www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA
Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified
Cotton in Warangal.
Stone, Glenn Davis
Current
Anthropology 48:67-103. |