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GM COTTON A RELIEF FOR COTTON FARMERS

11/09/2017 08:35:00 The Editor

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For many years we have been buying planting seeds from South Africa and Delta Pine co. Inc. was the supplier of the Delta pine varieties, especially Delta opal which was preferred for its short season characteristics and for being adaptive to climate change.

The variety improved farmers’ income, especially under irrigated conditions.
In 1996 when BT cotton was introduced in South Africa, the Delta opal was converted to GM firstly with a BT gene then with a staked gin where a roundup ready gene was also inserted. This then took us away from getting this variety since the country did not have legislation to regulate it.

It was in 2012 when Parliament passed the Bio-Safety Act and we were filled with excitement that we would start benefitting from the technology.
To our surprise the technology owner was not happy with Section 32 (liability and redress) of the Act.
Training on this new technology began as early as 1996 when campaigns were done throughout the cotton growing areas. The trainings became vigorous in the 2014/2015 season when the Technical Department of the Swaziland Cotton Board ran field days, workshops on the management of the GM cotton.

From what we saw during the field days in the various areas and at the Research Station, were pronounced differences and with all this data we stand ready to engage in cotton production again after getting a lot of crop failures. The key benefits being: Reduce no of sprays and the use of round up in weed control.
We support the application to release the technology to the environment, since this will allow us to benefit from the technology. For us we do not have other options but to resort to this technology as it has proven that it can sustain our productivity, and will increase our income now that it will be easy to manage especially because we won’t have to spray for the bollworms, which we have been struggling to control effectively on the conventional cotton. We are looking forward to the approval of the technology by SEA.