Week 11: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week

Post by Sunday at midnight.

1. China's political regime of choosing Genetically Modified Cotton being Challenged

2. This story continues our discussion of the politics of particular material choices and how institutional politics (combined with various forms of individual habit and organizational habit combined with laws and cultural legitimacy in an open ended way) create a contentious political arena of consumptive infrastructure of some choices, over others, supported (and defended and challenged) both politically and economically by institutions, cultural actors, and laws.

It seems that what I said in class was only part of the story. This story discusses Monsanto's GM-cotton in China and ignores that China has its own GM-patents for cotton.

I will put brackets ("[]"] around the words state, science, finance, and consumption to highlight institutional politics working together or against each other in any form of regime materials in their consumptive use category.

This article is about the politics within the category of textiles.

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Scientists call for GM review after surge in pests around cotton farms in China

Farmland struck by infestations of bugs following widespread adoption of Bt cotton made by biotech giant Monsanto

picture: Workers unload bags of picked cotton, Xinjiang, China

Workers unload bags of picked cotton from fields in Korla, China's far west Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images



[SCIENCE] Scientists are calling for the long-term risks of GM crops to be reassessed after field studies revealed an explosion in pest numbers around farms growing modified strains of cotton.

The unexpected surge of infestations "highlights a critical need" for better [CHOICES OF] ways of predicting the impact of GM crops and spotting potentially damaging knock-on effects arising from their cultivation, researchers said.

Millions of hectares of farmland in northern China have been struck by infestations of bugs following the widespread adoption of Bt cotton, an engineered variety made by the US biotech giant, Monsanto.

Outbreaks of mirid bugs, which can devastate around 200 varieties of fruit, vegetable and corn crops, have risen dramatically in the past decade, as cotton farmers have shifted from traditional cotton crops to GM varieties, scientists said.

Traditional cotton farmers have to spray their crops with insecticides to combat destructive bollworm pests, but Bt cotton produces its own insecticide, meaning [LEGITIMATION STORY] farmers can save money by spraying it less. [However, testing that legitimation story of this material regime, farmers can spray even more in some studies I have seen reported on this.]

But a 10-year study across six major cotton-growing regions of China found that by spraying their crops less, farmers allowed mirid bugs to thrive and infest their own and neighbouring farms.

[CONSUMPTION, competition from other consumptive regime choices in food, politically challenging the GM-cotton regime] The infestations are potentially catastrophic for more than 10m small-scale farmers who cultivate 26m hectares of vulnerable crops in the region studied.

The findings mark the first confirmed report of mass infestations arising as an unintended consequence of farmers using less pesticide – a feature of Bt cotton that [LEGITIMATION STORY CONNECTED TO THE REGIME CHOICE] was supposed to save money and lessen the crops' environmental impact. The research, led by Kongming Wu at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, is published in the US journal, Science.

"Our work highlights a critical need to do ecological assessments and monitoring at the landscape-level to better understand the impacts of GM crop adoption," Dr Wu told the Guardian.

[DELEGITIMATION STORY FROM OTHERS WANTING DIFFERENT MATERIAL CHOICES IN THE CATEGORY:] Environmental campaigners seized on the study as further evidence that GM crops are not the environmental saviour that manufacturers have led farmers to believe.

"This is a massive issue in terms of the environment, but also in terms of costs for the farmer. The plan with GM crops was to reduce costs and environmental impact, but neither of these things seem to be happening, because over time, nature takes its course, and that was bound to happen. The supposed benefits in yield can be cancelled out by unintended consequences like this," said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, a food campaigner at Friends of the Earth.

[SCIENCE / CONSUMPTION] In the past decade, farmers in India and elsewhere have noticed that herbicide-tolerant GM crops have developed resistance to pesticide sprays, again reducing the benefits of the crops, Chandrasekaran said. "Reliance on GM is not sustainable. We need to get back to using local varieties of crops that are adpted to the conditions, and develop an integrated system of pest management."

While many countries around the world have embraced GM crops, they have never taken root in Britain, where [SUBPOLITICS] multinational companies have faced protests and vandalism to crop trials in recent years. Britain's large-scale field trials of herbicide-tolerant GM crops in 2003 found changes in herbicide use had an impact on weeds and insects that might also affect country wildlife.

Dr Wu's team monitored insecticide use from 1992 to 2008 at 38 farms throughout the six northern Chinese provinces of Henan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Shanxi. They also kept records of mirid bug populations at the farms between 1997 and 2008.

Before switching to [THE CHOICE OF] GM cotton, farmers used more broad-spectrum insecticides to kill bollworms and other pests. But as more farmers began growing Bt cotton, their use of sprays declined, leading to a steady rise in pests, including mirid bugs.

Over the decade-long study, cotton farms flipped from being a grave for mirid bugs to a source of the pests, where populations grew rapidly and then spilled out to feed on a variety of flowering crops in neighbouring farms.

Bt cotton is modified to produce a natural insecticide that is made by a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. The toxin specifically targets bollworms, which can devastate cotton yields.

Additional reporting by Celia Cole
BT cotton timeline

1990: Cotton plants genetically engineered to produce enough Bt toxin (derived from the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium) to be protective against insects

1996: First Bt cotton varieties, known as Bollgard Cotton in US, introduced commercially by Monsanto, and Delta and Pine Land Company

1997: China begins cultivating Bt cotton, increasing area of the crop planted to 1.8m hectares worldwide

2003: Britain's large scale field trials of herbicide tolerant GM crops. Showed that changes in herbicide use had an impact on weeds and insects that might also affect country wildlife hectares worldwide

[REGIME] 2009: 49% of cotton production worldwide is Bt cotton, or 16m hectares [AND ONE CORPORATION OWNS MOST OF GM varieties, Monsanto]

[STATE VARIATION IN REGIME] 2010: No GM crops grown commercially in the UK. Spain is the biggest grower in Europe, but there are also significant amounts of crops grown in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Portugal.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/13/gm-crops-pests-cotton-china

Other stories where you can follow the "SSFC" (state, science, finance, and consumption) institutions in implementing or challenging a particular material regime choice:

[articles below show the importance of legitimacy/delegitimacy 'talk' around a regime as a common way groups maintain or undermine particular choices]

1.

GMO threat summary vs. USDA quick putsch to let GMO corps/crops do without ANY regulation!
author: repost, Center for Food Safety
Main GM crops are SOY, CORN, COTTONSEED, and CANOLA. DESPITE recent Austrian Government Study Confirming Genetically Modified (GM) Crops As a Threat to Human Fertility and Health Safety, Bush regime pressures a quick putsch in its waning days for COMPLETELY unregulated Frankencrops/GMOs that produce drugs and other pesticides/herbicides in your food without your consumer knowledge, without labels, etc. This is despite huge documented heath problems. A book by author Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette, distributed to members of congress last year, documents 65 serious health risks of GM products, including similar fertility problems with GM soy and GM corn: Offspring of rats fed GM soy showed a five-fold increase in mortality, lower birth weights, and the inability to reproduce. Male mice fed GM soy had damaged young sperm cells. .... US farmers reported sterility or fertility problems among pigs and cows fed on GM corn. India has documented fertility problems, abortions, premature births, other serious health issues, including deaths, in buffaloes fed GM cottonseed.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/11/382690.shtml

2.

Monsanto Exerts Monopoly Control: Farmers Face 50% Roundup Glyphosate Price Hike
08:55 Apr-11 (2 comments)
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/04/374499.shtml


3.

France bans Monsanto GM-corn, Brazil allows GM-corn & peasants destroy greenhouse/fields
05:45 Mar-30
Asterisks (***) show how GM crops [can be] a criminal mafia enterprise. When it comes to health, their local economy, and the health of their environment ...the Brazilian state lost its legitimate jurisdiction when it makes an unsustainable decision to be bribed....Brazilian peasants knew it, taking back jurisdiction immediately:

[1] "On March 7th--International Women's Day--dozens of Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn. Participants, members of the international farmers' organization La Vía Campesina, stated in a note that the act was TO PROTEST the Brazilian government's decision in February to legalize Monsanto's GM Guardian® corn, which came JUST WEEKS AFTER the French government PROHIBITED THE CORN DUE TO ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH RISKS."

[above, NOTE DIFFERENT STATE POLITICAL REGIMES AROUND THE SAME MATERIAL]

[2] La Vía Campesina held passive protests in several Brazilian cities against Swiss corporation Syngenta for ongoing impunity for murder of Valmir Mota de Oliveira. Mota was was assassinated last October during these the third occupation of Syngenta's ILLEGAL EXPERIMENTAL SITE for GM soybeans. Brazil already has a high number of land activist murders, THOUGH Mota's was THE FIRST during an occupation organized by La Vía Campesina, and the first in Brazil ON THE PROPERTY OF A MULTINATIONAL AGRIBUSINESS" where corporate hired thugs went out and killed him. ---- More news on criminal activities of GM corporations in asterisks, summarized at close of article.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/374059.shtml