Framing genetically modified crops: where do

women fit into the picture?

Sky Croeser

abstract
There are several different perspectives from which genetic modification (GM) technology has been criticised, including
ecofeminism, environmentalism and anti-capitalism or anti-colonialism. Each of these frameworks for understanding the GM
issue has important insights to offer, but also affects the strategies that activists adopt in their attempts to oppose the spread
of GM technology. Strategies also depend on whether activism is seen as opposing or providing alternatives to GM technology.
This focus looks at the way in which the GM issue has been constructed in Karnataka, India, where it has primarily been framed
within an anti-colonialist, pro-farmer discourse. Analysing the issue through this lens has had several positive effects, including
a foregrounding of the effects of GM technology on agricultural producers and several actions that have brought attention to
the issue. Unfortunately, it has also meant that women’s concerns and participation have been overlooked or sidelined. The
anti-GM movement in Karnataka also includes groups and individuals who frame the GM debate as an environmental and
social justice issue, focusing their work on seed conservation and organic farming, among other methods. This aspect of
the movement has received less attention and is not entirely unproblematic, but it has opened up possibilities for increased
participation by women in the movement, as well as for improvements in women’s status and conditions.

keywords
GM crops, India, social movements, seed banks, women’s participation

• Four hundred Indian farmers join with activists
from Europe and from other Southern
movements in the Intercontinental Caravan of
Solidarity and Resistance. The Caravan travels
around Europe for a month, linking up with
local movements, staying in squats, planting
organic vegetables, protesting outside the
offices of NATO and several large corporations,
burning GM crops, holding public meetings.
• In the southern Indian state of Karnataka,
activists contact the owners of three fields in
which test crops of genetically modified cotton
are being grown. They arrive, occupy two of
the fields1 and uproot and burn the crops.
The media is invited to watch this act of civil
disobedience, part of the ‘Cremate Monsanto’
campaign.
• In D Kurubarahalli village in Karnataka,

Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture? 33
 Papamma runs the Community Seed Bank. She
focus
convinces her neighbours to grow vegetables
and medicinal plants around their gardens.
Papamma and other women like her throughout
India have managed to save hundreds of crop
varieties that would otherwise have been lost
(Pailoor, 2007).
The burning of cotton in Karnataka, the
Intercontinental Caravan and the saving of
seeds are all part of the growing resistance to
the ‘second green revolution’. The ‘first green
revolution’, which began in the 1950s, radically
changed the face of agriculture and centred on
the extensive use of fertilisers, high yielding crop
varieties (HYVs) and large-scale monocropping.
While some commentators argue that it saved
India and other developing countries from
famine and was instrumental in feeding a rapidly
growing global population, the ‘first green
revolution’ has also been blamed for a variety of
problems, including soil damage and the loss of
agricultural biodiversity.
Women need the opportunity to make their
concerns heard and be a part of the
debates that will shape their future
The current green revolution has the potential
to have an even greater effect on human food
production systems and on the environment, in
part because it is based on genetically modified
organisms (GMOs). Efforts to challenge the
changes and explore alternatives, particularly
by those who are most vulnerable, are worth
attention.
While women have traditionally played
a significant role in indigenous agricultural
systems throughout the developing world,
the commercialisation of agriculture and other
developments has meant that in many places
decision-making has been taken out of their
hands. Developing world movements against GM
34 AGENDA 73 2007
technology need to include women to succeed,
and women also need the opportunity to make
their concerns heard and be a part of the debates
that will shape their future.
While much of the activism undertaken by
those opposing GM crops has been effective
in gaining visibility for the debate, it has not
always created spaces for women’s participation.
However, many of the activities that have gained
less attention have been built on women’s
knowledge and involvement, particularly those
which focus on presenting alternatives to green
revolution technologies. Instead of confrontative
protests and large actions, women are taking
part in seed conservation, festivals and other
small-scale activities that more directly target the
grassroots.
Research methodology
This discussion of women’s involvement in anti-
GM activism will focus on the movement based
in Karnataka, India. Like all social movements,
its borders are somewhat blurry, its membership
fluid. Groups and individuals that take part in the
movement do not always share the same analysis
or tactics, and there is significant overlap with
other movements.
The farmers’ movement, for example, forms
the backbone of the opposition to GMOs in
Karnataka, but the two are not identical. In addition,
the anti-GM movement is both firmly rooted
in local conditions and concerns while
simultaneously connected to international
networks and debates. While activists from
Karnataka have not reached the same level
of prominence as Vandana Shiva, who
remains the most prominent Indian critic
of GMOs internationally, they have taken part
in activism that has gained significant attention
in India and abroad. They have helped to publicise
the GM debate internationally and have played
a role in international networks of farmers,
environmentalists and peoples’ movements,

Karnataka, the centre of India's booming biotech industry, has become something of a battleground in the GM debate.
including Via Campesina and Peoples’ Global
Action.
There are also many groups that are working
within Karnataka on the preservation and
improvement of traditional agricultural techniques
and seed varieties. Karnataka has therefore
become something of a battleground in the GM
debate, being both the centre of India’s booming
biotech industry and the site of some of the
largest anti-GM protests in the world.
While the questions being raised by this
movement are important, social movements also
have broader effects on the political and social
structures which they are embedded in. As well
as making specific demands, social movements
make explicit and implicit arguments for new ways
of doing politics. Social movements are spaces in
Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture?
focus
DAVID SWANSON, IRIN
which alternative political models are tested and
are efforts ‘to use activism itself, rooted in the
actual experience of ordinary people, as a form of
governance’ (Wapner, 1995:336).
The movement against GMOs in Karnataka,
then, has implications not only for the struggle
over how agriculture will develop – it also has the
potential to affect whose voices are included in
the decision-making process and how that process
works. Women, among other groups, are still
underrepresented in Indian politics, just as they are
in most other nations. The opportunities available
to women are still limited, particularly for those
from poorer backgrounds or oppressed castes
and ethnicities. Social movements are one space
in which gender relations are being reworked,
renegotiated, and this movement is no exception.
35
 The fieldwork for this project was carried out
focus
in 2006 and involved over 20 semi-structured
interviews as well as observations of meetings,
protests and workshops and analysis of activist
literature. Initially, academics and key figures
within the movement were contacted and
further interviewees were approached through a
process of snowball sampling. There are various
limitations to this research, and the use of multiple
information sources is intended to give a breadth
of perspectives that would not be available by
basing research solely on interviews.
Several significant studies have already been
made of the anti-GM movement in Karnataka2 of
the farmers’ movement that forms its backbone,
and I have drawn extensively on this material. I
have also attempted to situate my study of this
movement within the wider context of anti-GM
activism in India and internationally.
Some of the opposition to genetically modified
organisms is based on a moral standpoint
about the sanctity of life
In examining the opposition to GM crops, it
is necessary to understand that there are many
different critiques of these technologies, and these
critiques often foreground different concerns.
Some of the opposition to genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) is based on a moral standpoint
about the sanctity of life (Herring, 2001). Those
who take this view argue that GM technology is
inherently blasphemous or disrespectful because
it tampers with the very building blocks of life,
‘playing God’ or treating non-human beings as if
they are merely resources to be modified at our
convenience.
There are, however, several other critiques of
GM technology and its use in agriculture, not all of
which necessarily involve a complete rejection of
GM technology (Walgate, 1990). In the developed
world, the emphasis has been on possible effects
on environmental and consumer safety. Concerns
36 AGENDA 73 2007
have been raised about the build-up of toxins in
the food chain, cross-pollination of wild varieties,
damage to insect life or to soil ecosystems and
other related issues. In India, these concerns
have also been raised but others, particularly
economic and food security issues, have been at
the forefront of the debate.
Some critiques are related to an aspect
of the current green revolution that has often
received little attention: the role of the private
sector in today’s agricultural research. Where the
‘first green revolution’ was the result of public
research efforts and the seeds and techniques
developed were frequently distributed through
public agencies, the current wave of research
has been primarily driven by the private sector.
This has meant that instead of the technologies
involved becoming freely (or at least affordably)
available, biotechnologies are tightly controlled
by the companies that patent them (Josling and
Nelson, 2001:144).
The private sector is therefore playing a far
larger role today than it did during the ‘first
green revolution’, and the development of new
technologies is predominantly being driven by
the drive for profit. India, along with South Africa,
Brasil, China and Argentina, is targeted as a
site for broader adoption of GM crops, not out
of humanitarian or even political considerations
but because these countries are seen by
Monsanto and other multinational corporations
as bridgeheads for wider adoption of GM crops
in the ‘expanding markets’ of the developing
world (Scoones, 2005:4). Many of the criticisms
being raised are therefore intimately tied to a
concern with the growing power of multinational
corporations (MNCs) and a critique of neoliberal
globalisation.
Perspectives which foreground intellectual
property issues are related to those which focus
on environmental issues, but they frame the GM
issue differently. Studies of social movements call
the process by which reality is made meaningful

The ‘first green revolution’ has been blamed for a variety of problems, including soil damage and the loss of agricultural
biodiversity.
and by which a certain state of affairs is described
as a problem or injustice ‘framing’. The frame
adopted by social movement participants, then,
plays a key role in the movements’ project, as
it ‘function[s] to organise experience and guide
action’ (Snow et al, 1986:464).
The frame that participants of a social
movement adopt also has implications for which
solutions are pursued and how they are pursued.
For example, a group with a pacifist frame is
unlikely to organise violent demonstrations. In the
case of the opposition to GM crops, groups that
use an environmental frame for understanding the
issue often have different tactics to those who
foreground the interests of farmers or those who
see it as a religious matter. The way in which an
issue is framed also has implications for whose
Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture?
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BRENNON JONES, IRIN
voices are listened to and whose participation is
sought in movement activities.
In Karnataka, the GM issue has largely been
framed as a threat to farmers and as part of a wider
struggle against MNCs and international trade and
finance agreements. Resistance to GM crops is
described as a ‘second independence movement’.
This is to a large part because of the adoption of
the issue by the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha
(Karnataka State Farmers’ Association, KRRS) who
has addressed the issue predominantly through
the lens of their pre-existing activism around
farmers’ economic conditions and their opposition
to neoliberal globalisation.
The KRRS has historically been very strong
in Karnataka, and the fervour with which they
adopted the issue ensured that their frame has
37
 been the dominant one within the movement.
focus
However, other actors within the movement have
also contributed to the debate and foregrounded
different frames of analysis. Greenpeace India and
the Environment Support Group have addressed
the issue through an environmental frame,
focusing their efforts on information-gathering
and dissemination, lobbying and legal challenges.
The Green Foundation and the Institute for Social
Research and Action (ISRA) are among those
working with small farmers, emphasising an
environmental and social justice frame. These
frames coexist and interact, just as movement
participants do, developing over time and receiving
different levels of attention.
Resistance...
The first GM crop to be introduced in India was
Monsanto’s Bt cotton imported by Mahyco in
1995 and marketed under the trade name of
Bollgard. This cotton contains genetic material
from Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces a
pesticide within the plant that kills some of the
insects that commonly feed on cotton, including
the cotton and pink bollworms and the tobacco
budworm, the most serious pests for American
cotton farmers (Nelson, 2001:11-12).
In India, however, bollworm is only one of
several important pests (Stone, 2002:3). The
cotton was not approved for commercial release
until March 2002, although several years of illegal
plantings occurred before then (Scoones, 2005:4).
The first significant opposition to the use of GM
crops in India began around Bt cotton in 1998.
Debate over GM crops was largely sparked
by the implication of Bt cotton in a wave of
farmer suicides that has struck India since the
mid-1990s. The suicides have taken place in rural
areas throughout India, especially cotton-growing
areas. Andhra Pradesh has been the epicentre of
the phenomenon, but Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana,
West Bengal, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh have also
38 AGENDA 73 2007
been hard hit (Stone, 2002; Sharma, 2004). The
main victims have been cotton farmers, those
who are wealthy enough to be growing for the
market rather than for subsistence. One scholar3
noted that,
‘agricultural labourers are not committing
suicide here. Because he or she is from a
low background, it is enough if you can get
enough food. But there, the peasantry are in
the middle, the dominant caste – they would
like to always live a dignified life. So when
you have such a base and the economic base
is dwindling, hopelessness results. Okay – if
I [as a university professor] don’t have a job I
cannot beg. I cannot ask you for any money,
because of my socio-economic position.
So these suicides come from a position of
hopelessness’.
While the majority of those who commit suicide
are men, in some cases, a ‘farmer may not only
commit suicide, but he kills his wife, he kills
his children’4, and even when the family is left
alive, the resulting economic burden is likely
to lead to great hardship. While much of the
attention has been directed at the men who have
killed themselves, this phenomenon also has
devastating effects on the rest of the family. As
Sunanda Jayaram, president of the women’s wing
of the Puttanaiah faction of the KRRS, said of one
widow, ‘Her husband took his own life. She will
pay the price all her life’ (P Sainath, ‘Farmer’s diet
worse than a convict’s’, The Hindu [online], 29
May 2007).
The exact cause of the suicides is still a
matter of some controversy – although most
agree that it is related to indebtedness, there is
still debate about what stands behind these debts
(the KRRS, Vandana Shiva and others have made
links between farmer suicides and GM seeds).
The KRRS took up the issue in 1998 as part of
the ‘Cremate Monsanto’ campaign, explaining

Debate over GM crops was sparked by the implication of Bt cotton in a wave of farmer suicides that has struck India since
the mid-1990s.
the suicides as the result of international free
trade agreements and the extension of foreign
agricultural companies into the Indian market.
They also established what Herring (2001:3) calls
a ‘brilliant verbal jujitsu’ that linked farmer suicides
to ‘suicide seeds’5.
This was also linked into an earlier national
campaign, the Seed Satyagraha, which began in
1992 and explicitly made connections with the
Salt Satyagraha of the independence era: ‘If the
charka [spinning wheel] was the symbol of Indian
independence, the seed is the symbol of the
protection of this independence and the farmers’
culture’ (KRRS in Assadi, 2004:208). This firmly
and effectively framed the resistance to GM crops
and ‘foreign’ seeds as an anti-colonial struggle
focused around the protection of farmers.
Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture?
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SAGAR SHRESTA, IRIN
Unfortunately, it also placed men squarely in the
centre of the picture. Numerous studies of the
farmer suicides have been undertaken, but little
is known about others who may be affected by
GM crops. Environmental studies of the build-
up of toxins in the food chain and the possible
contamination of other agricultural ecosystems
are being undertaken, but these only indirectly
address questions about how GM crops may
affect subsistence farmers and other marginalised
groups. Most of the farmers who have killed
themselves have been men, the farmers who the
KRRS has traditionally represented are usually
men who are able to grow for the market rather
than purely for subsistence, and the leadership
of the KRRS has historically been and remains
dominated by men.
39
 There is also a danger that the protection of
focus
‘farmers’ culture’ that the KRRS and some
other groups within the anti-GM movement
often advocate will lead to a reification of an
inferior status for women or the idealisation of
an archetypal femininity associated with land,
regeneration and the transmission of cultural
values that suppresses the voices of women.
Both the rhetoric and the practical conditions
of the KRRS’s adoption of the GM issue have
together worked to some extent to reinforce
women’s place at the edge of the picture rather
than in the foreground.
This is not to say that this is deliberate – quite
the opposite is true, in fact. The KRRS has made
several determined efforts to take a progressive
stand on women’s position in society, for
example by participating in mobilisations against
celebrations of the Miss Universe ceremony
in India. It has also demanded the reservation
of a minimum number of seats in parliament
for women, campaigned against dowries and
alcohol, attempted to include women in the
movement’s structures, mobilisations and
programmes and has declared itself in favour
of the elimination of patriarchy, along with ‘all
other forms of oppression, discrimination and
exploitation’ (KRRS, 1999).
Public protests have been tremendously useful
in bringing attention to concerns about the
implications of GM technology
Unfortunately, the KRRS has not been able to
fully translate this commitment into real changes
at societal level or within the organisation itself,
in large part because the analysis and tactics that
flow from its anti-colonial frame do not easily
foreground women’s perspectives.
One aspect of this is the way in which the
kinds of protest that are associated with this
‘second independence movement’ often subtly
discourage women’s participation. In its actions
40 AGENDA 73 2007
against GM crops, the KRRS has focused on
‘open, announced act[s] of civil disobedience’
(Nanjundaswamy, 1998a:152), including the
occupation and destruction of two test fields of
Bt cotton and the occupation of Cargill offices. It is
not impossible for women to take part in protests
such as these – in 2005, more than 3,000 women
from a tribal women’s organisation in Orissa
made a bonfire of hybrid and GM seeds of
cotton and other crops to draw attention to their
demand that the state be declared organic (GM
Watch, 2005).
However, there are substantial barriers to
women’s participation in public protests, especially
where the risk of confrontations or time in prison
is involved. HP Dwarakanath, who works with
another Indian movement, Azadi Bachao Andolan,
says that women ‘are participating in protests,
nowadays they are participating. But they are not
coming to the street fights, the street protests
and public speeches’. Shyla Dwarakanath says
that her participation is only possible because
her husband gives her support, which is rare
among the women that she knows.6 While public
protests have been tremendously useful in bringing
attention to concerns about the implications of
GM technology, they have not done as much to
encourage women’s participation.
Similarly, although the Intercontinental Caravan
was an amazing feat of organisation, few Indian
women were involved, and even the European
women involved were not always entirely
comfortable while participating. Involvement in
the trip meant spending significant time away
from home, which is harder for women who are
considered responsible for the care of children
and domestic affairs. Some European women
acting as bus conductors experienced disrespect
or harassment from the men (Ainger, 2003:164),
which indicates a neglect of efforts to address
gendered power structures and encourage
women’s participation. While the Caravan made
many achievements, it seems not to have actively

built a space for women’s participation in the
movement against GM technology and trade
liberalisation.
...and alternatives
The public destruction of GM crops, the occupation
of Cargill warehouses and the Intercontinental
Caravan were all impressive actions in their own
ways, but these protests are only one side of
the story. After all, ‘there is no sense in dividing
resistance and alternatives since none of them can
take place without the other’ (Nanjundaswamy,
1998b:157). The struggle against a ‘second green
revolution’ must involve a vision of a better
alternative if it is to have any hope of succeeding.
The alternatives being proposed have received less
attention and have not always been recognised as
part of the opposition to GMOs and commercial
biotechnology, in part because they have focused
on different arenas and strategies.
While the actions against GM crops have often
been deliberately symbolic and aimed to gain
media attention, much of the work for alternatives
has aimed at the grassroots and has been far
less dramatic. This work has framed the GM
debate primarily in terms of support for agricultural
biodiversity and organic agriculture, more a social
justice and environmental issue than an anti-
colonial struggle.
The alternatives being suggested draw
on traditional seed varieties and agricultural
techniques, many of which fell into disuse during
the ‘first green revolution’. They involve cutting
down or entirely ceasing the purchase of fertilisers,
pesticides, herbicides and so on, the cost of which
has risen dramatically over recent years. Compost,
cow dung and/or crop rotation is used to improve
the soil, and pests are controlled through the
application of home-made pest deterrents or by
companion planting. Farmers are encouraged to
plant many different crops, even on small plots,
and mulching and other measures are put into
place to conserve water.
Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture?
focus
It should be noted that placing value on
indigenous knowledge does not imply returning
to an unchanging, idealised past. Humans have
developed domestic plant and animal varieties
for hundreds of years, deliberately and skilfully
breeding them for increased yields and other
desirable traits. New agricultural technologies
have come and gone, including methods of
irrigation, fertilising and mulching crops as well
as rotation systems that help to keep the soil
healthy. Opposition to a ‘biotech revolution’
does not imply an unthinking rejection of all
improvements or of science itself.
The KRRS says that it accepts or rejects
technologies not according to whether they are
new or old but rather through considering ‘factors,
such as whether the technology can be directly
operated and managed by the people who use it,
whether it is labour-intensive or capital-intensive
and other political criteria’ (Nanjundaswamy,
1998b:157). Groups like the Green Foundation
draw on the skills of scientists and carry out
research into different agricultural technologies.
Opposition to a ‘biotech revolution’ does
not imply an unthinking rejection of all
improvements or of science itself
The alternative being presented by the anti-
GM movement in Karnataka involves traditional
techniques but also a willingness to experiment
and learn, tempered by a knowledge of the need
to fit new technologies to local conditions.
Organic agriculture and seed conservation is
also an alternative that provides a lot of room for
women’s participation, in part because of the long
association in India, as in many other countries,
between women and seed saving. Traditionally,
women choose how much and which seed to
store. They are involved in weeding, harvesting
crops and collecting grains. ‘They watch plants
grow through their whole lifecycle and are best-
placed to select the seeds’ (Ramprasad, 2002:31).
41
 Women also play a central role in many rituals and
focus
celebrations that acknowledge the importance of
seed, many of which are important in the testing
of seed quality (Ramprasad, 2002:34-35). While
public protests act to subtly discourage women’s
participation, a focus on conserving biodiversity
through seed conservation acts to foreground and
facilitate women’s involvement.
Seed festivals are one way in which
indigenous food crops and local seed varieties
are being promoted, and many of these are
either organised by women or have a focus on
women’s participation. One of these, the Mobile
Biodiversity Festival, is organised by dalit7 women
farmers from Deccan Andhra in conjunction with
the Deccan Development Society, a group that
has many links with the movement in Karnataka.
Kohli and Bhutani (‘Celebrating agro-diversity’,
The Hindu [online], 11 February 2007) describe the
festival as an attempt to revive the use of millets,
indigenous grains that grow well on arid land,
not through ‘black and white memorandums’ but
Seed festivals are one way in which indigenous
food crops and local seed varieties
are being promoted
through music, songs, decorated carts, displays
of seed and traditionally-prepared meals. This
festival and others like it being held throughout
Karnataka and the rest of India are inclusive rather
than confrontational. They present information
on the alternatives to ‘green revolution’ farming
methods but they also tap into and celebrate ‘local
cultural and emotional aspects of biodiversity’
(Apte, 2005:17).
Emotions have traditionally been neglected
in the study of social movements, although this
in now changing, and there have been several
calls for more attention to the area (e.g. Ferree
and Merrill, 2000; Benford, 1997). Emotions play
a key role in convincing people to become part of
a movement or support its goals: it is not enough
42 AGENDA 73 2007
to convince others that your arguments are right,
you must also convince them to care.
The previous failure to attend to emotions is
not only a barrier to fully understanding activism
but also subtly reinforces the idea that ‘rational’
political actors are unemotional. Further to this, as
femininity is often associated with emotionality,
it subtly reinforces the idea that rational political
actors are men. Men as well as women are
emotional beings, and it is important to remember
that, for all of us, emotions play a role in guiding
activism and rightly so (Ferree and Merrill, 2000).
Another aspect of this is the need to recognise
that the public expression of some emotions is
more socially acceptable than others, and that the
range of socially acceptable emotions for each
gender is different.
Anger or outrage are not necessarily emotions
that women are encouraged to express publicly,
which may affect their participation in protests.
This is not to say, of course, that women never
publicly express anger or that they should not do
so. There are very many injustices which women
as well as men have a right to be angry about,
although Gandhi’s injunction to non-violent protest
that is based on compassion rather than anger has
strong points. However, events that are based on
a public display of joy, love or even amusement,
such as the seed festivals and other such events,
may be more accessible and more appealing to
women as well as to children, the elderly and
even to many men.
A collective spirit of love and care is, arguably,
present in the running of community seed banks
around India, many of which are maintained
predominantly by women. Community seed
banks are vital to sustainable agriculture because
they ensure that farmers have a range of crop
varieties that suit local conditions and that they
can access in case of a particularly bad attack of
pests or viruses – where one crop variety is hit,
another may be more resistant and can be planted
in its place.
 focus
These seed banks are important because the ‘first
green revolution’ resulted in the decimation of
the range of crop varieties available to farmers in
the developed and developing world. The ‘second
green revolution’ is likely to exacerbate this trend,
as the amount of time and money invested in
developing each GM crop means that the focus
for large companies will be on a few key crops
rather than on providing a wide range of options.
Community seed banks therefore provide the
most basic necessity for a real alternative to GM
crops: choice.
When seed banks are set up, usually through
a partnership between a community and a non-
governmental organisation (NGO), farmers identify
the crop varieties that were used before the ‘first
green revolution’. These seeds are then collected
through different channels, including from women
like Papamma who refused to switch away from
traditional seeds (Pailoor, 2007). Farmers ‘borrow’
seed from the bank on the condition that they

MANOOCHER DEGHATI, IRIN

return twice as much the next year.
Women’s participation has been encouraged
through the efforts of NGOs – women farmers do
most of the work involved in seed banks, which now
store around 500 varieties of 30 crops throughout
Karnataka (Pailoor, 2007). The partnership between
women in local communities and NGOs has gone
a long way towards preserving crop varieties that
would otherwise have been lost.
Community seed banks are also vital if farmers
are to have access to affordable alternatives to
GM seeds. The current international patent regime
allows companies to charge patent fees that are
several times the cost of the seed itself, making
them very expensive. Many farmers take out
loans to buy seeds based on the expectation of a
good crop, a strategy that can prove ruinous if the
crop fails or under-performs. For other farmers,
buying commercial seed, particularly expensive
GM seed, is simply not an option, and they have
to rely on saved seed. The accessibility of seed
affects all farmers but particularly those who are
Women play a central role in many rituals and celebrations
that acknowledge the importance of seed.
likely to be less well-off, including women, tribals
and dalits.
Seed banks, however, require more than just a
physical stock of seeds. They are built on networks
of reciprocity and communication, and if they are
to be useful, the seeds need to be accompanied
by knowledge about how and where to use
different crop varieties. Women’s traditional role
in seed saving and preservation means that they
are often the custodians of extensive knowledge
about which soil certain seeds will grow well in,
which crops will suit local conditions, and so on.
Often, this knowledge has been devalued and

Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture? 43
 criticised for being ‘unscientific’, but now more and
focus
more people, including many within the scientific
establishment, are realising that local knowledges
may have insights that decontextualised science
has not. Community seed banks not only benefit
farmers, they also recognise women’s knowledge
as valuable and put women in a position where
they are able to have a greater influence on
village affairs and participate in the broader seed
conservation movement (Pailoor, 2007).
Conclusion
The difference between framing this issue as a
matter of opposing GM crops and multinational
corporations’ role in Indian agriculture and
promoting alternatives like the conservation of
indigenous seeds and organic agriculture may
seem small, but it can have significant implications
for women’s participation in the movement, not
only in Karnataka but also in other parts of
the world. Both resistance and alternatives are
important to the struggle over the future of
agriculture, and the way in which each is pursued
will have implications not only for whether GMOs
are more widely adopted but also for how we
make decisions about different technologies and
who is included in the political process.
While there is much to take courage from in
the work of those involved in the movement in
Karnataka, there are also lessons to be learnt and
questions that need to be raised. The work of
women involved in community seed banks and
seed festivals, for example, opens up possibilities
for increased status, material benefits and better
food security. However, there is a risk that
women’s traditional roles will merely be reinforced
through such practices and that women will be
relegated to position of caretakers and cheap
labour. If women’s participation in the debate
about GMOs is to be meaningful and effective,
their current involvement needs to be a platform
for broader changes within the movement. The
44 AGENDA 73 2007
way in which anti-GM and other activism is
framed and pursued needs to be considered and
discussed, and women need to be placed in the
foreground of that discussion.
Notes
1 The owner of the third field changed his mind about
allowing the activists to destroy the crops.
2 Including those by Featherstone (2003), Scoones (2005)
and Herring (2001).
3 Author’s interview with P Kammaradi, Bangalore, India,
22 January 2006.
4 Author’s interview with Sanghita, Bangalore, India, 2006.
5 The term ‘suicide seeds’ was used to refer to ‘terminator’
or sterile seed technology which produces seeds that
cannot be resown. Terminator technology was never used
in India and has been banned under the Convention on
Biological Diversity, although there are currently several
patents underway that would accomplish a similar effect.
6 Interview by the author with Shyla and HP Dwarakanath,
Azadi Bachao Andolan, Mysore, India, 19 March 2006.
7 In the Indian caste system, a dalit, according to traditional
Hindu belief is an untouchable or an outcaste.
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SKY CROESER is a PhD student at the University of Western Australia’s department

of political science and international relations. Her work focuses on the global justice
movement and the movements that link up with it as well as on the relationship
between technology and politics. She is a sporadic activist, supports open source
software and creative commons licenses and has a blog, witty title pending.
Email: sky.croeser@grs.uwa.edu.au

Framing genetically modified crops: where do women fit into the picture? 45