Cotton farmers are getting desperate to cultivate the crops since the top cotton exporting countries are no longer able to provide the required quota of cotton. For better results, cotton farmers use pesticides that come in cheaper and cause more good than harm. According to Maharashtra, India’s second-biggest cotton producing state, “unauthorized pesticides” has killed least 30 farmers in three months, a government minister told.
The western state is investigating the deaths of the cotton farmers and laborers as a dry spell led to an outbreak of crop-eating bollworm pests that thrive in such weather.
“We have set up a committee to investigate the deaths caused by poisoning,” Maharashtra Agriculture Minister Pandurang Fundkar said in an interview. “We are also seizing stocks of unauthorised pesticides.”
The use of spurious pesticides, made secretly and sometimes given names that resemble the originals, has been rising in India. Counterfeits account for up to 30 percent of the more than $4 billion annual pesticide market, a government-endorsed study showed.
Fundkar said it was also possible some farmers and workers were not following prescribed methods while spraying pesticides, which led them to inhale or ingest fatal quantities.
Pesticide use has risen as genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds approved in early 2000s have started to lose efficacy, farmers and government officials say.
GM cotton seeds, developed by U.S. giant Monsanto have helped transform India into the world’s top producer and second-largest exporter of the fiber.
“Since the pest attack was severe this year farmers were aggressively spraying pesticides. Some of the pesticides were not recommended and poisonous,” said a top Maharashtra farm official.
Some of the more than 600 farmers and laborers treated for pesticide poisoning over the past few months are still in hospital, he added.
An independent fact-finding team that visited the state this week said farmers desperate to save their investments were resorting to “various misadventures”, including use of larger dosages than recommended.
“The real culprit is the poison that has been allowed to be registered, manufactured, sold and used,” it said in a statement. “The only far-reaching way by which the current problem can be tackled is by eliminating these toxins.”
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