Biotech Boost For Farming

Context: Considering the benefits of biotechnology in Agriculture, market and supply chain reforms must extend to making available the best technologies (especially biotechnology) to farmers.

Biotechnology in the Indian agriculture sector:

• Fastest adopted crop technology: By 2019, the area under precision agriculture of Genetically Modified (GM) crops had increased 112 times from 1996.
• Applied in different crops: During 2019, 79 % of cotton, 74 % of soybean, 31 % of maize, 27 % of canola acreages etc., were under biotech crops.

Benefits of biotech crops:

• Socio-economic benefits:
  • Increased farm incomes: Net global farm income increased by $ 186 billion in 20 years.
  • That helped alleviate the poverty of over 16.5 million farmers globally.
• Environment friendly: There is an 8.2 % reduction in global consumption of pesticides in 20 years.
• Increased productivity: After the introduction of Bt Cotton in 2002, cotton productivity almost doubled in six years. 
• Improved trade balance: India’s share in the global production of cotton increased from 12 % in 2002 to 25 % by 2014. As a result, India became the second-largest exporter of cotton.

Concerns:

• Stalemate in the introduction of new GM crops: Bt brinjal and GM mustard are still not approved for commercialization. India imports over 65 % of edible oil requirement costing $10 billion annually.
  • There is an opposition to making available the same technology used by cotton growers to mustard growers, which is based on irrational ideology rather than science.
  • Over 95% of cotton grown in India being Bt cotton; we consume about 1.4 million tonnes of cottonseed oil produced from GM cotton.

Way forward: Make reforms in the market and supply chain.

• Transform Indian agriculture into precision agriculture: by using modern tools of biotechnology.
  • For E.g. Agriculturally developed countries are rapidly adopting new frontiers of precision agriculture tools, like CRISPR CAS9.
• Commercialize new GM crops: like Bt Brinjal and GM mustard, to improve the competitiveness of Indian farmers and boost their income.