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The Gujarat government has decided to withdraw multinational company Monsanto’s proprietary seeds from various ongoing government projects in the state. The decision is said to have been taken at a Cabinet meeting on April 25.
State agriculture minister Dileepbhai Sanghani was quoted by media saying the state government has decided not to procure Monsanto seeds that were being distributed among the farmers of tribal areas. The farmers would now be allowed to buy government approved/certified seeds of their choice; they would then be reimbursed the seed costs after they submit the purchase/receipt bills. According to the minister, the decision has been taken to break the monopoly of Monsanto.
Ministers and officials of the Gujarat Agriculture and Co-operation Department and the Tribal Development Department were not available for comments though repeated attempts were made to get in touch with them. Monsanto’s spokesperson, however, denies having received any “such information from the government of Gujarat”.
Project Sunshine
The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) and Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), which lobby to keep corporate interests out of agriculture, claim that the government had taken the decision following a recommendation by a cabinet sub-committee comprising Gujarat agriculture minister Dileepbhai Sanghani and tribal minister Mangubhai Patel; it was formed to investigate the seeds supplied by Monsanto for its pet programme—Project Sunshine. Under this scheme, the multinational’s Prabal brand of hybrid maize seeds are distributed to tribal farmers under a subsidy scheme.
In a press conference held at Ahmedabad on April 26, state president of BKS, Maganbhai Patel, and non-profit Jatan’s Kapil Shah said, “We have spoken to a minister in the Cabinet and he has apprised us of the development.”
Farmer activists say that since 2008 the state government has distributed Prabal to over half a million tribal farmers under Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana (see 'The Monsanto Way', August 15, 2011). They claimed that the Gujarat government has spent around Rs 50 crore in the past four years to buy seeds from the company.
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