Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 6 • Number 22 • 15th December 2006
Burkina Faso to Introduce GM Cotton
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Burkina Faso, a leading cotton producer in West Africa, recently announced that its farmers will be allowed to plant genetically modified (GM) cotton in the 2007 growing season. The country initiated field trials in 2003 with the support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). According to Agriculture Minister Salif Diallo “this new technology will reduce the cost of production for farmers and eliminate the predators of the cotton sector”. This move makes Burkina Faso the first major cotton grower in the region to turn to GM technology in a bid to weather falling prices on the global market.
Farmers and civil society groups, however, said that GM cotton provided no solution, and questioned claims that output would grow by 30 percent. According to the Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN), “GMOs are not a solution for Africa. The major problems that agriculture faces in our countries include incompetent water management, low soil fertility in many regions, lack of access to the means of production, in particular around issues related to land, lack of access to loans at acceptable interest rates, and the processing of our raw materials on our own continent.” In addition, COPAGEN said that the introduction of GM cotton might open the door to “all genetically modified seeds in agriculture and food,” which a number of African countries have opposed.
A year ago, local groups raised similar concerns when Mail, supported by USAID, Monsanto and Syngenta, launched field trials of Bt cotton. The farmers groups in Mali stressed that their problem was low cotton prices, not low productivity. The Coalition to Protect Mali’s Genetic Heritage further cautioned that paying for GM seeds would be problematic for poor, small-scale farmers, who lack financial resources and are the stewards of a number of unique local seed varieties.
Burkina Faso was one of the four West African sponsors of the cotton initiative at the WTO ahead of the Cancun ministerial in 2003 (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 2 June 2003, http://www.ictsd.org/biores/03-06-02/story1.htm ), which led to the creation of a sub-committee on cotton under the WTO Committee on Agriculture. The purpose of the cotton initiative was to address structural imbalances in the global market, namely the fact that the massive cotton subsidies provided by developed countries had led to artificially low international prices.
Four million people in Burkina Faso depend on cotton for a living, and cotton sales yield 60 percent of the country’s state revenue.
“Impoverished Burkina Faso turns to GMO cotton to boost output, quality,” AFP, 3 December 2006; “Burkina Faso’s GM cotton causes concern,” BUSINESS IN AFRICA, 27 November 2006; “Mali’s David v Goliath GM struggle,” BBC, 7 December 2005.
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