Female farmers join protests in India demanding access to GMO herbicide-tolerant cotton

After several instances of farmers in Maharashtra sowing unauthorized varieties of genetically modified (GM) cotton to openly defy the moratorium on the technology, a group of women farmers in Vidarbha have now decided to come together to follow suit.

On [June 23], women farmers led by Maya Patil Pusadekar, a farmer herself, [planted] the unapproved herbicide tolerant (HT) Bt cotton at Pusada village in Vidarbha’s Amravati district on Pusadekar’s land.

The HT seeds are genetically modified to tolerate some specific herbicides. This allows for these herbicides to kill the surrounding weeds but leave the cultivated crop intact.

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Farmers have been furtively using such unapproved herbicide-tolerant seeds to save expenditure on manual labor for weeding, but over the past few days, growers across the state have been openly planting these seeds to defy the ban and demand genetically modified technology. It started with one farmer, Lalit Bahale from Akoli Bahadur village in Akola district, who sowed HT cotton seeds …. in the presence of about a thousand other farmers.

Read full, original article: Now, Maharashtra’s women farmers plan to defy GM ban, get ready to plant HT cotton seeds