The Food Piracy of Monsanto in India

January 12, 2012 by Iqbal Ahmed

Brothers Mohen Singh (left) and Raj Narayin Singh (right) in their wheat field in Bihar, India. They are here growing BAAZ, a CIMMYT line not yet released, for seed production. It is a short-duration cultivar, reaching maturity in 120 days, and yielding around 5 tons/hectare, well above the Indian average. Photo by Petr Kosina via CIMMYT

The Somali pirates terrorize the Gulf of Aden.  In India, Monsanto terrorizes one of basic sources of human survival – food.  But this may change.  After years of cajoling with Monsanto, the Indian government finally threw in the towel.  In 2010, it banned commercial approval of GM seeds “indefinitely” to prevent Monsanto from “frankencroping” basic crops like brinjal.  Most importantly, the Indian government filed a “biopiracy” suit against Monsanto to curb its appetite for flooding the Indian market with “patented” artificial seeds.

At the center of this suit is brinjal or eggplant, a common crop that farmers across India grow.  The Indian government alleged that Monsanto has developed its own lab-grown version of brinjal or known as Bt brinjal in an attempt to “re-engineer them into patented varieties.”  There are about 2500 varieties of brinjals in India.

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