GMO brings hardship to S. Sulawesi, farmers claim
GMO brings hardship to S. Sulawesi, farmers claim
A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali
A year ago, Santi, a farmer group leader in Bulukumba, South Sulawesi, was extremely pleased when an employee from plantation company PT Branita Sandhini arrived at her home and offered her genetically modified cotton seeds.
The man promised a good harvest with the seeds, with a yield of four to seven tons of cotton per hectare of land.
In addition, Branita Sandhini, a subsidiary of the multinational Monsanto Group, said it would provide the seeds and fertilizer through a credit scheme.
Then the company said it would buy the farmers' cotton at a good price, allowing them to pay off their debt to the company and improve their income.
It sounded like a very good offer indeed. So Santi and the farmers in her group set aside 25 hectares of land to plant the genetically modified cotton seeds.
This fantastic offer, however, soon turned sour. The cotton harvest was very poor, with the farmers getting only some 70 kilograms to 120 kilograms per hectare. Worse still, the price the company set for the cotton was less than impressive.
This trapped Santi and the farmers in her group in debt. "My fellow farmers and I did not deserve this fate. We burned our cotton as a sign of resistance to this unfair treatment," said Santi, who told her story during a discussion organized by the National Consortia for Forest and Nature Conservation in Indonesia (Konphalindo) in Nusa Dua, Bali.
According to a statement provided by Konphalindo, the planting of genetically modified Bollgard cotton seeds by Branita had caused losses not only to farmers, but also to the environment.
Mosanto spokeswoman Tri Sukirman, however, disputed Santi's account and Konphalindo's statement, saying that farmers had gained much from the project, with the productivity of their land increasing after planting the transgenic cotton seeds provided by Branita.
"Using conventional cotton seeds, the productivity was only 550 kilograms per hectare. However, the productivity increased after they used the transgenic cotton, to 1.2 tons per hectares," she told The Jakarta Post.
According to Tri, the new transgenic cotton seeds require less fertilizer than conventional seeds, thus reducing pollution.
Conventional cotton, she said, requires seven to 12 fertilizing sessions per season, while the new cotton requires two.
She added that the revenue of the farmers had also increased. In the past, she said, farmers earned Rp 750,000 per season, which lasts five months, but now they can earn Rp 3 million.
She noted that Branita Sandhini had carried out a pilot project on 4,300 hectares of land in South Sulawesi, involving 6,500 farmers.
As to the experience of Santi and the other farmers in her group, Tri said the seeds were only one factor in determining if a cotton harvest was a success or not.
Despite this controversy over the genetically modified cotton, the government seems to be very slow in responding to the issue.
Speaking at the same meeting, Liana Bratasidha, a senior official at the Office of the State Minister of the Environment, acknowledged that the government was still in the process of drafting a bill to protect biodiversity and improve biosafety, as demanded by the Carthagena Protocol on Bio-Safety.
"The bill will contain, among other things, regulations to manage the risks of genetically modified organisms," said Liana, adding that the enforcement of law would be the government's next priority.