Today, Indian cotton farmers are facing a genocide that has resulted in
the death of at least300,000 of their brothers and sisters between 1995
and 2013, averaging 14,462 per year (1995-2000) and 16,743 per year
(2001-2011). This epidemic began in the cotton belt, in Maharashtra,
where 53,818 farmers have taken their lives. Monsanto, on it’s own
website, admits that pink bollworm “resistance [to Bt] is natural and
expected” and that the resistance to Bt “posed a significant threat to
the nearly 5 million farmers who were planting the product in India.”
Eighty four percent of the farmer suicides have been attributed to
Monsanto’s Bt Cotton, placing the corporation’s greed and lawlessness at
the heart of India’s agrarian crisis.
