Bt Cotton Not Helping Chinese Farmers' Economics

Doane Agricultural Services filed the following report on our content site this morning:

7/27/2006 -- Cornell University agricultural economists presented a report this week that says small cotton farmers in China are making less money planting biotech cotton, even though similar seed assists farmers in the United States earn higher income.

The economists looked at the last seven years of Bt cotton seed use in China and determined that the control of bollworms was appropriate, but bollworm control is not sufficient to assure a profit.

Extremely aggressive crop-destroying secondary pests that are not controlled by Bt cotton have converged on Chinese fields to attack the crop even more than in the United States. Chinese farmers had to spray for an increase in secondary pests such as the sap-sucking mirid.

The researchers said they hope their work will encourage the Chinese government to assure Bt technology is being used properly, with appropriate insecticide use.

"We don't want to see such a wonderful technology die at age seven," Cornell University agricultural economist Shenghui Wang told St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters. Wang
presented the unpublished research at the American Agricultural Economics Association's annual meeting on Tuesday in Long Beach, Calif.

The researchers reported that during the first three years of using Bt cotton, Chinese farmers cut pesticide use by 70 percent and earned 36 percent more than farmers using traditional cotton. These environmental and economic benefits did not continue.

After seven years, the Bt cotton farmers were using as much pesticide as non-Bt users, and they were paying for seed at two to three times traditional seed prices. In the end, the Bt-cotton-seed users were earning eight percent less than the conventional-seed farmers, said study co-author Per Pinstrup-Andersen.

For seven years through 2004, the researchers surveyed the farming practices of nearly 500 Chinese farmers who used Bt cotton or conventional seeds. "This study is the first to confirm in the field that the secondary pest problem is happening," Pinstrup-Andersen said.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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