Anthropological study explores the effects of genetically modified crops on developing countries

Biofuels, bioenergy and plant-based products are set to transform the fossil fuel based economy of the past, into the bioeconomy of the future. The developing world by far has the largest potential to contribute to this emerging post-oil revolution.

But some fear this green, clean and climate-friendly economy will increasingly rely on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Considerable research is currently going into the development of crops that yield more biomass that can be converted easily into useful products (from fuels to plastics) or in to plants that withstand previously unsuitable agro-climatic conditions.

So far, the developing world has already had its fair share of experiences with GMOs. But very few studies have actually looked at the long-term economic, social and cultural impacts of these crops on the farming communities who cultivate them. Often, social and environmental impact assessments are written in a routine, standard fashion (by the companies that sell the crops), or they are ideologically burdened because written by (Western) NGOs with a narrow, ethnocentric agenda. The analytical tools used in such studies are often of dubious quality, not to say outright superficial.

In such a climate, the scientific, deep, ethnographic gaze of the social anthropologist is more than welcome. A new study in the February issue of Current Anthropology explores how the arrival of genetically modified crops affects peasants in developing countries. Glenn Davis Stone, professor of anthropology and environment at Washington University, carried out a multi-year ethnography of farmers 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:
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"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.

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.


We will be needing this kind of studies much more in the future. The introduction of bioenergy and biofuel production is not merely a technological or economic matter. Instead, it is caught up in the dense realities of social structures and cultural change. An anthropological approach to studying the ways local cultures perceive and deal with the introduction of new energy paradigms, markets and products, implies that we are willing to question our own ideas on 'modernisation', 'technological progress', and 'development'.

Too often, the institutions involved in 'development' (governments, corporations, international development agencies, NGOs) still rely on a 'top down' and ethnocentric vision when they assess the effects of the projects they (are planning to) implement. Despite their attempts to include as many 'stake-holders' into their sustainability analyses, such assessments seldom reflect the deeper social and cultural realities of the people in question. This is one of the reasons why so many development projects ultimately fail, provoke resistance or end up being damaging.

For this reason we need analysts, like anthropologists and ethnographers, who can 'translate' the way cultural systems deal with social and economic change. This is especially true in the field of large-scale bioenergy projects in the South, which affect a complex set of interacting socio-cultural factors: from views on land ownership and patterns of local power, to migration and labor dynamics. No company, government or development agency can afford to side-step a thorough anthropological analysis of these interacting factors.

Picture: Farmers buying cotton seeds at a shop in Warangal. Visible behind them are a few of the many hybrid seeds available at the shop. The man in the middle is paying 1600 rupiah a pack of RCH2-Bt (4 times the cost of conventional seed). When asked why he had chosen RCH2-Bt, he said it was what other farmers were buying. Courtesy Glenn Davis Stone.

More information:
Glenn Davis Stone, "Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal", Current Anthropology, Volume 48, Number 1, February 2007 - abstract.