Documentary Review: Bitter Seeds

Bitter Seeds Micha X Peled (director and producer), 2011, USA: Teddy Bear Films and ITVS, 60 minutes

This film, Bitter Seeds, covers the story of farming in India which is, like most developing countries, a mixture of small- and large-plot farming with few mid-sized farms. I lived for more than a year in rural Uganda researching the financial lives of small-plot farmers, so this film was of particular interest to me. I was careful in my research to always look at the farmer as a businessperson, an entrepreneur, and not a mere peasant; I was pleased to see this same lens employed often in the film.

However, the film suffers from two hiccups – there are two themes upon which it seems to grasp too tightly in attempting to hold the narrative together.

The first problem is the focus on the statistic that a farmer in India kills himself every 30 minutes, which is woven through the film as though it’s a large number of farmers. Though every suicide is tragic, neither the frequency nor the raw number is surprising. As an example, among American military veterans (a population a tiny fraction the size of the number of farmers in India) there is a suicide every 55 minutes. In some years, during the exam season, the number of Japanese secondary student suicides (a much, much smaller population) is in the same order of magnitude. In other words, while these rates may be high historically, these rates of suicide are not unique, especially among such a large population.

The second problem is the heavy-handed anti-GMO message of the film. Cotton is an extremely risky crop with huge yield variance; these risk characteristics were at the centre of my Ph.D. research. It is unsurprising that farmers choose GMO cotton to attempt to reduce the yield variance from season to season and are willing to pay a premium to reduce these risks. Little coverage is given to the mechanics of this decision, alternative crops (including alternative strains of cotton), or the degree to which increased yields cover the increased cost of using GMO cotton and its ancillary products (fertilisers, etc.). The Monsanto corporate affairs person interviewed states that yields have increased dramatically, which is consistent with the data on these crops, and not challenged by anyone else interviewed.

Once one overcomes these points of skepticism (both of which are introduced in the first dozen minutes of the film), one can gain some insight into the life of a farmer specific to India. These vignettes focus primarily on farmer poverty which is, of course, something that predates the existence of GMO cotton. As in the literature on Africa and elsewhere in Asia, it is difficult to disentangle the introduction of GMO seeds from other factors, including the move to a more commercial type of farming very different from the inefficient subsistence farming of the past. The film nicely depicts the current state of the art, reminding the viewer that agricultural mechanisation is still decades in the future for rural India and – perhaps counter to its film’s larger message – that foreign biotechnology is likely the only substantial improvement possible for these farmers’ productivity.

The question of whether GMO crops, or the broader cotton industry (GMO or not) is exploitative of farmers is a complex one. And it is inexorably intertwined with other questions, such as “what is exploitation?” and “are bureaucrats better-suited to design agricultural systems?” The latter invites comparisons to inland China and Bangladesh, both cases of agricultural “master plan” failure. But the film leaves the viewer with few viable policy alternatives to the current system. Yes, the loan shark shown could be subject to better regulation, but what he is doing is already illegal and poorly-policed. The film shows a level of apathy from the Indian government that matches, or even surpasses that of the seed dealers and Monsanto representatives it seeks to vilify.

The thrust of the film’s message is that farmers are not being allowed to capture enough of the additional revenue that has come with these advanced crops. But it leaves the viewer to ask: if the farmer has done nothing differently over the past fifty or one hundred years, if the primary change is the seed being planted, and the farmer has done nothing to develop or research or manufacture that seed, why should he enjoy a greater share of the revenue? This question, though central to the film’s premise, is unresolved.

Karl T. Muth is an M.Phil./Ph.D. postgraduate research student at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a lecturer in economics and public policy at Northwestern University. The focus of his current research is business decision-making among agricultural entrepreneurs, and especially the deployment of capital and risk aversion of key decision-makers within agricultural businesses. He lived near the Uganda – South Sudan border on fieldwork related to agriculture from 2011 through 2012.