India’s biopesticide regulation must protect farmer rights, grassroots practices

As Indian agriculture moves away from chemical pesticides, pushed by pest resistance, rising costs and serious health concerns, biopesticides are emerging as an important alternative. Yet the shift has exposed a regulatory vacuum increasingly exploited at farmers’ expense.

Today, the sector operates in two parallel worlds: A small formal market of packaged commercial products and a vast informal universe of farmer-made traditional formulations. Between these worlds lies a policy challenge unlike any other.

The debate is no longer whether regulation is necessary, but what kind can protect farmers without suffocating the innovation and community knowledge that make biological pest management work. If done poorly, regulation could either leave cultivators vulnerable to fraud or destroy grassroots practices that have sustained agriculture for generations.

The crisis: Spurious products, exploitation

Across rural India, shop shelves are filled with attractively packaged biopesticides making extravagant claims. Labels display scientific terminology and impressive promises. Yet, farmers frequently discover that what they bought is ineffective — sometimes little more than coloured water, sometimes microbes already dead because of poor storage, sometimes botanical extracts diluted beyond usefulness. With almost no oversight of quality or price, familiar patterns of adulteration and deception have reappeared.

The damage is cascading. Farmers lose money on useless inputs. Crops fail when pests remain uncontrolled, forcing a return to hazardous chemicals. Trust in genuine biological alternatives erodes. Most importantly, cheated farmers have almost no mechanism for redress. The regulatory vacuum has created ideal conditions for exploitation.

At the same time, many farmer organisations and civil society groups worry that strict regulation could bureaucratise what should remain a farmer-led domain. Compliance costs might exclude small producers, while large firms capture the market. Others argue that without firm standards, fraud will flourish. Both views contain truth, and policy must navigate between them.

What exactly are we regulating?

“Biopesticides” is not a single category. It includes living microbes, plant-based extracts, pheromones and other biological materials. Microbials may involve bacteria such as Bacillus thuringiensis, fungi like Trichoderma or Beauveria, or viruses such as Nuclear Polyhedrosis Virus. Botanicals range from neem formulations to innumerable local plant mixtures. Some products are standardised and factory-made; others are prepared on farms using inherited knowledge.

A single regulatory template cannot suit this diversity. Rules designed for laboratory-produced commercial inputs may be absurd when applied to a farmer brewing a leaf extract for immediate use. A sensible approach is to differentiate between commercially packaged products sold with claims of efficacy and farmer or community preparations meant for local use. The former demand oversight; the latter should largely remain free, perhaps supported through extension and voluntary guidelines rather than licensing.

Territory, temperature, time

Unlike chemical pesticides, microbes are alive. They are sensitive to heat, sunlight, and storage conditions. High temperatures during transport can wipe out viability. Some formulations remain effective only for short periods, making rapid movement from production to field crucial. Shelf-life claims derived from ideal laboratory situations can be dangerously misleading in India’s varied climates.

This biological reality reshapes regulation. Testing cannot occur only at the factory; quality must be verified at the point of sale. Temperature monitoring in transport and storage becomes essential. Retailers may require infrastructure such as refrigeration. Distribution chains should be short, encouraging regional production rather than distant centralised plants.

Ironically, these constraints favor decentralised small units close to farmers. A village-level producer may supply fresher and more reliable material than a national corporation. Heavy compliance burdens that unintentionally eliminate such producers would undermine effectiveness. Regulation should therefore support, not obstruct, localised manufacture while still protecting buyers from fraud.

Biosafety: When living organisms spread

Where the line must harden is with genetically modified organisms or species imported from other ecosystems. Here the risks differ qualitatively from most other inputs. Living organisms can reproduce, disperse, evolve, and become permanent parts of the environment. Once released, recall is virtually impossible.

GM microbes may multiply exponentially. Genes can move into native populations through horizontal transfer. Effects may take years to appear, by which time containment is unrealistic. Introduced species may outcompete local beneficial organisms and disrupt ecological relationships. Rapid microbial evolution can generate unforeseen variants.

Because prediction is limited, the precautionary principle has to dominate. Detailed characterisation of genetic makeup, origin, reproductive behavior, and dispersal potential is fundamental. Risk assessments must consider impacts on non-target organisms, soil life, water systems, and biodiversity. Multi-year field evaluations under controlled conditions, conducted or verified by independent bodies rather than solely by applicants, should be mandatory.

Approval, if granted, ought to be conditional. Use may need geographic limits, seasonal restrictions, trained applicators and strict handling protocols. Continuous environmental monitoring and immediate suspension in case of adverse signals must be built in.

Certain things should simply be off the table: organisms carrying antibiotic resistance markers, genes derived from human pathogens, or species known to behave invasively elsewhere. Manufacturers must bear strict liability for ecological damage, backed by insurance and long-term responsibility extending beyond product withdrawal.

With self-replicating life forms, the cost of error is too high for anything less.

Transparency as foundation

Whatever regulatory architecture emerges, transparency is indispensable. Decisions in this arena affect livelihoods, public health and ecosystems. Opaque processes inevitably breed suspicion and invite capture.

Openness enables democratic accountability. It allows scientists to scrutinise data, farmers to understand what they are buying and citizens to detect conflicts of interest. Trust in biopesticides will grow only if approval systems are visible and comprehensible.

In practice, this means prompt public notice of applications and access to documents, except for genuinely proprietary details that do not influence safety. Independent reviews should be published. There should be opportunities for public comment, and authorities must explain how those comments influenced decisions. A searchable database of registered products, with clear status information, is essential.

Safety and efficacy data require similar openness. Raw results, trial locations, and methodologies should be accessible to researchers. Adverse event reports and enforcement actions must be disclosed quickly. Committee deliberations, voting records, and financial interests of decision-makers should be public.

For GM or imported organisms, standards should be even higher: Publication of genetic information, environmental assessments, monitoring results, consultation records, emergency plans, and liability provisions.

The default assumption must favor disclosure. The burden lies on manufacturers to justify secrecy, not on the public to demand visibility.

India’s task is delicate. Farmers must be shielded from fraudulent or dangerous products, yet their own creativity and local knowledge must not be strangled by bureaucracy. Commercial sellers should meet enforceable quality and labeling standards. Community-level innovation should remain vibrant and supported. Decentralised production should be encouraged where it improves viability. High-risk technologies must face stringent precaution. And throughout, transparency must anchor legitimacy.

Biopesticides hold real promise for a safer agricultural future. Realising that promise requires regulation that is intelligent rather than heavy, protective rather than prohibitive, and always accountable to the people whose fields and livelihoods are at stake.

Narasimha Reddy Donthi is a public policy expert and consultant at the Pesticide Action Network India and a visiting faculty (honorary) at Delhi-based Impact and Policy Research Institute. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.