An interesting new paper (Gutierrez 2015 cited below) discusses the way in which rain-fed cotton could be managed in India to avoid crop losses from insect damage caused by pests such as the pink bollworm.
This new article also revisits the worrying farmer suicide issue that continues to be a thorny political issue that continues to attract debate world-wide, and which has previously featured in posts at GMO Pundit.
It shows that smaller farm sizes are (not surprisingly, for basic economic reasons) a likely contributor to the higher suicide rates seen in MH and AP. Furthermore, farmer dependence on rain-fed cotton seems a clear-cut factor leading to farmer suicide.
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From the graphs of GM cotton as a factor in farmer suicide (see above), and the fact that suicides in MH and AP seem to be rising before GM cotton was introduced around 2001, it still seems premature to link GM technology as a major cause of farmer suicide in India. But the Gutierrez 2015 focus on weather and yields of rain-fed cotton is certainly a worthy topic of further conversation.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: In which parts of India are farmer suicides growing to be a worse tragedy, and why are they so?
