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New Pub in @WorldDevJournal w/ Jessie Luna: Knowledge Politics of Bt cotton ‘success narrative’ in Burkina Faso. Free access: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bb3p,6yxDEM3C
Important implications for #GMO crop research and development in #Africa (THREAD) 1/ #BurkinaFaso #cotton #scicomm
Important implications for #GMO crop research and development in #Africa (THREAD) 1/ #BurkinaFaso #cotton #scicomm
Burkina Faso was once the poster child for GM crop advocates. Its 2008 adoption of Bt cotton grew to almost 150,000 households, but came to a surprising halt in 2016 when it was abandoned entirely 2/ https://theconversation.com/lessons-to-be-learnt-from-burkina-fasos-decision-to-drop-gm-cotton-53906
The problem: Bt cotton had shorter lint, and less of it could be proportionally extracted from the cotton boll, leading to $76 million USD in losses for cotton companies 3/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/monsanto-burkina-cotton/
New evidence from G. Vognan (INERA) and M. Fok (CIRAD) raises other issues - yields were much less than anticipated - and highly variable depending on capital intensity of production - and most Bt cotton farmers lost money 4/ https://agritrop.cirad.fr/594426/1/cagri190102.pdf
We found that rather than these issues being new, many were known by cotton officials since 2006 - 10 years before Bt cotton was abandoned. We ask: how could a Bt cotton ‘success narrative’ be produced when such problems were apparent? In short, it has a lot to do with power 5/
We draw from over 250 interviews + over a decade of research. We build on work from @domglov @glenndavisstone @MatthewSchnurr Melinda Smale + others, which identifies methodological issues in GM crop evals. We merge this analysis with attention to how power influences evals 6/
Bt cotton eval studies had significant methodological issues. They also were conducted with major conflicts of interest. Monsanto funded the evaluation studies and had ultimate control over research findings. Concerns raised were dismissed or unexplored 7/
Eval studies didn’t incorporate local-level dynamics which influence outcomes. We attend to these dynamics in two cases - fertilizer use + additional seed costs. These issues affect GM crop returns - principally for resource-poor farmers + were ‘invisibilized’ in GM crop evals 8/
Monsanto profited from success narrative. The contract used an inflated yield estimate (from faulty studies) to calculate its payment + was paid according to the number of Bt cotton hectares planted. They bore none of the risk shouldered by farmers + cotton companies 9/
The Bt cotton ‘success narrative’ in Burkina Faso is still used to promote GM crops in Africa - despite these issues 10/ https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/analysis/ideas/Burkina-Faso-cotton-production-dip/4259414-5106640-arhei5z/index.html
Moving forward, it is important to fully examine how vested interests influence how GM crop knowledge is produced. This is particularly true as multiple African nations consider GM crop adoptions. Many are not the domain of Monsanto - but vested interest may still shape evals 11/
Eval studies will need to be independent, transparent, rigorous + methodologically diverse to accurately reflect GM crop realities + anticipate challenges + shortcomings: Particularly true to understand whether/how GM crops aid resource-poor, women + marginalized farmers 12/
For too long GM crops have been evaluated as if they exist in a social + political vacuum. Understanding how GM crops perform needs close attention to local-level dynamics + context. The role that power plays in that context must be a part of how we understand GM crops FIN
