Bad news on the technology front: We won't get so-called suicide seeds after all.
Holding transgenic seeds responsible, they dubbed them "Seeds of Suicide, Seeds of Slavery, and Seeds of Despair" (Shiva and Jalees, 2006, p. 281; Shiva, 2013c).
Responsible newspapers and reputable writers, often echoing Shiva's rhetoric, have written about the "suicide-seed" connection as if it were an established fact.
We decided to cover the controversial topics of GMOs, farmer suicide and seed saving (not so controversial) in India.
The problem was worst in the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where some farmers who took large loans to buy new Bt Cotton seeds committed suicide when their yields were so poor that they couldn't repay their debts.
cotton notwithstanding, Shiva's direct link between MMB's seed monopolisation and farmer-suicide stand tall.
These two peaks confirm that there is no causal connection between Monsanto's seed monopolisation and farmers' suicides.
Although the association between seed monopolization and farmer-suicide is debatable, we will show that there is a link between the economic factors associated with Bt. cultivation and farmer suicide.
Summing up, the chief components of the allegations by the biotech opponents on the link between MMB's seed monopolisation and farmer-suicide are: the firm's thwarting of seed-saving and exchange via patency and use of terminator technology; the clever destruction of farmers' seed variety; the increased production cost; the insufficient crop-yield and financial returns.
Scepticism over the appropriateness of Bt. cotton for India's farmers notwithstanding, Shiva's establishment of a direct link between MMB's seed monopolisation and farmer-suicides remains a towering assertion.
In recent publications, including "Seed Monopolies, GMOs and Farmer-suicides in India" (2013c), Shiva draws a direct link between farmer-suicide and MMB's exercise of seed patency.
