How can Indian cotton farmers finance the purchase of pesticides and insecticides?　How to secure labor? These two issues have become major social problems.

The Indian state of Maharashtra (the state capital is Mumbai. In the past, the state capital was called Bombay) is one of the leading cotton-growing regions in India. It was in 2002 that Bt cotton seeds developed by an American bio-chemical company were brought there.

*Bt cotton = genetically modified using a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt bacterium) and other bacteria.

The species had been genetically engineered to take advantage of the natural insecticidal effects produced by soil microorganisms, and its toxins were targeted to a moth (the giant tobacco moth) that wreaks havoc on the cotton crop.

At the time, a herbicide manufactured by the same bio-chemical company was widely used in India. The herbicide had the effect of stopping the production of amino acids, which are essential for the growth of any plant. Once the herbicide was applied, it would kill any weeds, whether they were cottonwoods or "non-crop weeds.

Cotton originated in the tropics and subtropics, where the sun shines year-round and rainfall is abundant. In such regions, not only cotton but also many weeds grow. If the weeds are not pulled, the cotton plants do not get the nutrients they need to produce a good crop. Securing enough manpower to pull weeds was also a major problem faced by the farmers.

(Off topic, I will tell you in another post, but the reason why the number of children continues to increase in an area is because children are "productive goods" (money generators).

Herbicides were developed in the first place to save time and effort in removing weeds (from here on, we will call them grasses), which are plants other than crops. However, it would be difficult to sell herbicides as a product if they also killed cotton trees.

The bio-chemical manufacturer came up with the idea of using genetic modification technology to produce herbicide-resistant seeds that would not be killed by the herbicides it produces. The seeds were also advertised to incorporate the genes of insects that feed on cotton, preventing the insects from eating the cotton.

Although these seeds were very expensive, they seemed to be a "savior" for the impoverished farmers. In fact, the initial effect of sowing the seeds was tremendous. The harvest increased dramatically.

Farmers had to keep buying expensive seeds year after year. Even so, in the "early days," farmers competed to borrow money to buy the "miracle seeds," and Bt cotton seeds sold like hotcakes.

Bio-chemical manufacturer made huge profits by selling herbicides and "magic seeds" as a set.

However, "something strange" began to happen to the cotton fields. The yield did not increase as much as it had in the beginning. The weeds began to die back even when herbicides were applied, and the amount of herbicides used increased year by year. Although the "miracle seed" was supposed to be inedible to insects, insects gradually began to eat it. In the end, the amount of insecticide use did not decrease, but increased.

Bio-chemical manufacturers also continue to sell "miracle seeds" to farmers by improving their genetically modified seeds. Cotton farmers continue to buy expensive genetically modified seeds in the hope that the miracle will happen again.

Yet insects and grasses have broken through the barrier of genetically modified seeds improved by the latest science.

The patented bio-chemical manufacturer's seeds are, of course, forbidden to be self-seeded. The system of farmers purchasing the company's seeds every year became more and more robust. For farmers who had no harvest and were unable to repay their debts, the last option was to give up their land.

After several years of debate, the state of Maharashtra banned the sale of genetically modified seeds last August. The state officially announced that its 2012 cotton harvest would be drastically reduced. The state's security authorities have estimated that the number of farmer suicides will increase from 3,500 in 2011 to The number of farmer suicides is estimated to increase from 3,500 in 2011 to 5,000 in 2012.

The problem that farmers growing cotton in Maharashtra are currently facing is that more than 90% of cotton in India is already genetically modified seed, and they are unable to obtain cotton seed to sow in their fields instead.