November 3 3008 ~ GM debate: “official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that …more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.”

I saw this on the Warmwell site (see link on RHS) yesterday.

A journalist from the Daily Mail, Andrew Malone, travelled to the ’suicide belt’ in Maharashtra state.

“…What I found was deeply disturbing – and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature…..In village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds. The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds…”

The article explains how traditional varieties have been banned from many government seed banks. Up to 17 million acres in India have been planted with GM but, far from being ‘magic seeds’, as poor farmers were promised, not only do GM pest-proof ‘breeds’ of cotton become devastated by bollworms, they also require double the amount of water. When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year but these GM seeds contain ‘terminator technology’and do not produce viable seeds of their own.”

Whatever the arguments for and against GM it’s obvious that the technology is not being used correctly in India and the result is the death of some very desperate people. It’s another reminder to us all that if we use fibres for our crafts we should always give thought to provenence. Just as nowadays most people in the UK certainly like to know where their meat has come from before eating it, we should always know as much as possible about the origin of our fibres.