Karnataka   

Farm varsity tie-up with USAID causes concern

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: The collaboration of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore (UAS) with the funding agency USAID, on "biotechnology approaches for alleviating malnutrition", has sent alarm bells ringing among farmers' organisations, scientists and academics and consumer groups from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Ahead of an international symposium to discuss the specifics of this collaboration, the network of groups from these States, South Against Genetic Engineering (SAGE) organised a workshop last week to articulate the shared concerns against the introduction and promotion of genetic engineering in agriculture.

SAGE convener P.V. Satheesh and joint convener P. Babu said USAID had long been identified as an agency that actively affiliated itself with efforts to introduce GE in poor countries. USAID's role in trying to push GE food to African nations, where the United Nations was running a programme to provide food for its starving millions, had been well documented, they pointed out.

What is more alarming, according to SAGE, was that agriculture policies in India continued to favour GE, as had been seen in the form of Bt cotton, Bt okra and Bt brinjal, and several other crops which could be already under trial clandestinely in academic institutions like UAS, and farmers' fields.

To make matters worse, they fear that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech at the National Science Congress in Hyderabad, hailing the role of large multinational corporations and seed companies and inviting them to join the Second Green Revolution, would open a Pandora's box.

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