Case Study:Bt Cotton in Warangal

Glenn StoneAnthropology and Environmental Studies

• Context: global GMO debates

• Focus on actual operation small farms

Hybrid Cotton, Gujarat, 1970s

Also New World species (Gossypium hirsutum) rather than indigenous (G. arboretum, G. herbaceum)

Nationwide data

OPV’S

(Commercial proprietary hybrids are less tested, and have been released in swarms )

Percentages of proprietary hybrid cotton seeds

Effects: Pesticide Treadmill & Debt

• Cotton crops ravaged by pests• Lepidopteran bollworms• Flies (sucking pests)

• Pesticide sprayings skyrocket

Bt cotton

But 56% rise in 2002-4 whenBt adoption was under 6%

And yields declining for last 3 years when Bt adoption was highest

Declines continued for 4th straight year.

In A.P., yields are lower than they were before Bt became popular

Effects: Agricultural DeskillingDue to rapid change in seeds & pesticides

Vendors in Warangal City:• collectively sold 125 cotton brands (61

companies) between 2003-05• of the 78 brands in 2005, only 24 had been

around since 2003

Pesticide treadmill. Ever changing menu of hybrid seeds

Theorizing Agricultural Deskilling

• Disruption of ongoing process of learning to perform with available technology

• Proximate causes mostly from proprietary hybrid seed market:• Unrecognizability• Inconsistency• Rapid change in technologies & products

• Over-reliance on social learning when environmental learning is inaccurate / costly

• Reflected in pure social learning without environmental basis

Stone, G. D. 2007 Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal. Current Anthropology 48:67-103.

Theorizing Agricultural Deskilling

• H. Braverman 1974, Labor and Monopoly Capital : The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century •Behavioral ecology (Boyd & Richerson 1985, Culture and the evolutionary process; Henrich, McElreath)• Cultural biases (e.g., conformist bias)• Rely increasingly on emulation when environmental payoff

info is scarce, expensive, unreliable

•Information cascade theory (Banerjee 1992, “A simple model of herd behavior.”; Bikhchandani et al. 1992, “A theory of fads, fashion, custom, and cultural change as informational cascades”)• Decision-makers follow others’ example rather than own

signal, encouraging others to override own signal

Breakdown in Environmental Learning

`

Deskilling Reflected in Seed Fads

•Seed brands follow boom & bust cycles

•Neighboring villages often have different favorites

•No agro-ecological rationale

Village Fad seed Year Farms censused % buying fad seed

Gudeppad RCH-2 2005 68 96%

Gudeppad Mallika 2008 61 92%

SRP Mallika 2008 58 90%

Kalleda Mallika 2008 25 88%

Ravuru Mallika 2008 63 86%

SRP RCH-2 2005 66 73%

Kalleda RCH-2 2005 27 63%

Ravuru Brahma 2002 36 58%

Kalleda Brahma 2003 29 52%

Bt introduced

Bt adopted

Villages Lumped

Sociological writing on fashion• Veblen (1899, Theory of the Leisure Class)

• Finding new fashion beautiful followed by “aesthetic nausea”• Period length governed by “intrinsic odiousness of the style”• Analog here: seeds inherently unproductive? (not really)

• Simmel (1904, Fashion)• Fashions are adopted by elites to demarcate themselves• As non-elites emulate, elites change style to again demarcate

Assumption of technological progression• Farmers bombarded with narratives of agriculture depending on external science• Reinforced by ongoing experience with generations of pesticides• Leads to implicit belief that new seeds are superior (directly opposing the narrative

of seed saving)

Theorizing Fads