Don’t test maize, learn from Bt cotton fiasco

MAHATMA GANDHI’s proverbial three wise monkeys have perhaps escaped the attention of Punjab administration.The go-ahead granted to the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) to carry out penultimate-stage field trials of genetically modified (GM) herbicide-tolerant maize and insect-resistant maize, and that too at the insistence of the multi-national giant Bayer (which had acquired Monsanto in 2018) clearly tells us that nothing has been learnt from the collapse of cotton.After the GM cotton debacle in Punjab, to rely on the same GM technology to breed another set of Bt maize varieties speaks volumes of scientific naivete. The area under cotton cultivation reduced drastically to less than one lakh hectares, the lowest in 2024 . It essentially happened because of the failure of Bt cotton resistance against the pink bollworm pest and the devastation caused by whitefly on cotton.Bt cotton, touted as a silver bullet, has bitten the dust, first in China and then in India. In 2021, after the damage by the pink bollworm pest, Punjab announced a compensation of Rs 416 crore. In 2015, 1.36 lakh hectares were ravaged by the whitefly insect attack, with losses estimated at Rs 4,200 crore.Surprisingly, not drawing any lessons, Punjab is still demanding the next generation Bt-3 cotton variety. No penalty was imposed on the GM companies for the failure of Bt-1 and Bt-2 varieties. It was the taxpayers who ended up bearing the massive crops loss.Strange are the ways of politics. After the crash of cotton, it still favoured the same technology . Refusing to ‘see the evil’, as one of the monkeys had demonstrated, Punjab is seeking a hasty approval for the next-generation Bt-3 cotton variety.When it comes to herbicide-tolerant (Ht) maize research, the PAU is remorseless. In 2018, on the insistence of the Punjab Commission for Farmers and Farm Workers Commission, the acutely harmful herbicide, glyphosate (and its versions) were banned (to a maximum allowed period of two months). But when the university undertakes research on Ht maize, it only means that farmers will be left with no choice but to use glyphosate herbicide and its versions that have been dovetailed with the seeds of the genetically modified maize variety.The government and the PAU also seem to have closed their ears to the plethora of court cases in America. In March 2025, Bayer (which now owns the popular glyphosate-based retail brand Roundup) was directed by a US court to shell out $2.1 billion to a plaintiff who believed the herbicide triggered a type of blood cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, in his body.In America, Bayer has already paid nearly $11 billion to reach settlements in around one lakh lawsuits against Roundup, and roughly 67,000 cases are pending. Further, a latest publication of the Pesticides Action Network (PAN) says that even at low EU standards of application, Roundup is not safe. It causes multiple types of cancer in rats, including leukemia. Nevertheless, Bayer continues to contest and is threatening to withdraw Roundup from the market. At the same time, it has filed a court case, saying that because the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has already approved glyphosate-based products without cancer warnings, the company can no longer be held responsible.If only the PAU had kept its eyes and ears open, there was no reason to grab this research project. Albert Einstein has rightly said: “Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”Devinder Sharma is a food and agriculture specialist.

Don’t test maize, learn from Bt cotton fiasco

Devinder Sharma

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