Dried up Bt cotton narratives: climate, debt and distressed livelihoods in semi-arid smallholder India
Dried up Bt cotton narratives: climate, debt and distressed livelihoods in semi-arid smallholder India
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DOI：
10.1080/17565529.2023.2211037
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发表时间：
2023-06
影响因子：
4.3
通讯作者：
Ambarish Karamchedu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ambarish Karamchedu
摘要本文探讨了印度转基因作物Bt棉花的技术修复叙述，这些叙述声称可以解决气候变化下的贫困问题。此外，我专注于投入市场的政治经济学的技术采用和理论上最大限度地提高农民的利润机制。我比较这些叙述的经验现实借鉴94个访谈和151个家庭调查，在印度南部的特兰加纳，印度第二大Bt棉花生产国进行。我展示了Bt棉花是如何作为一种技术气候修复作物进行繁殖的，它的技术特性是在较高的温度下茁壮成长，并适应非转基因棉花品种在干旱条件下的特定害虫。然而，我展示了Bt棉花如何增加农民的经济风险，因为投入成本较高，而这些成本是通过与市场中介机构的债务关系来融资的。这些债务关系，我称之为“债务磨坊”，与特兰加纳的干旱和降雨气候变化有着内在的联系，这是由于农业生态系统越来越不可靠和半干旱的Bt棉花种植条件。因此，本文强调了技术修复气候叙述的意外后果，这些后果是由孤立技术从其采用的背景条件中产生的，从而损害了现实世界的结果。
ABSTRACT This paper interrogates technological fix narratives on the genetically modified crop Bt cotton in India that claim to address poverty under climate change. Furthermore, I focus on the political economy of input markets as the mechanism for technology adoption and theoretically maximizing profitability for farmers. I compare these narratives to empirical reality by drawing on 94 interviews and 151 household surveys conducted in the south Indian state of Telangana, the second biggest Bt cotton producing state in India. I show how Bt cotton has been propagated as a technological climate fix crop through its technical traits of thriving in higher temperatures and adapting to particular pests in rainfed conditions relative to non-GM cotton varieties. Yet, I show how Bt cotton increases economic risks for farmers due to higher input costs, which are financed by debt relations with market intermediaries. These debt relations, which I term ‘indebtedness treadmills’, are intrinsically linked to droughts and rainfall climatic variability in Telangana, owing to the increasingly unreliable agroecological rainfed and semi-arid Bt cotton growing conditions. The paper therefore highlights unintended consequences of technological fix climate narratives that arise from siloing technologies from their contextual conditions of adoption to the detriment of real-world outcomes.