Indian State Drops Support for Bt Cotton

The government of Tamil Nadu, the seventh most-populous of India’s 28 states, has decided to stop encouraging the use of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton, according to a statement from Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.

Government officials approved the use of Bt cotton in 2002 in the hopes that it would increase grower yields and incomes, and that position was reaffirmed less than a month ago. The state assembly decided to reverse that position, however, citing the fact that the use of GM products should not be encouraged, and that Bt cotton didn’t provide significant benefits to growers anyway.

More than 70 percent of the cotton currently cultivated in Tamil Nadu is Bt, and while that is a high percentage, it still trails the use of Bt in states such as Gujarat and Maharastra, where as much as 90 percent of the cotton cultivated is Bt. Nationally, Bt cotton was grown on 9.4 million hectares in 2010, a 12 percent increase from the 8.4 million hectares cultivated the year before.