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Abstract
The relationship between poverty and transgenic agricultural
crops has created a global rift at the frontier of development
studies. Proponents and opponents of biotechnology each
have a story about poverty to tell – but with
different conclusions. Some, but not all, central questions
in this debate should be amenable to empirical treatment,
but the empirical case itself has generated divergent
numbers. Controversy about yields, cash inputs, profits
and labor effects on poor farms remains prominent in
India, as in other countries, despite growing consensus
in international institutions. Studies from India come
to diametrically opposed findings about Bt cotton: either
the technology is scale-neutral and helpful to farmers
of all size classes, or produces rural catastrophe –
reaching the characterization “genocidal”
in one prominent critique. This essay reviews the dispute
and discusses a field trip meant to investigate mechanisms
in the most controversial district in India. Given lack
of agreement on what science to trust, or how much science
counts, one possible epistemological move is to indirect
indicators: how do farmers behave? Farmers count carefully;
their numbers should count. The methodological suggestion
is for close investigation of mechanisms at the field
level to assess plausibility of data-driven anomalies.
Interpolating among these indicators, this essay concludes
that Bt cotton technology in India has been quite successful
on agronomic, economic and environmental grounds to
date; persistent claims to the contrary have both methodological
and instrumental roots.
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