Can the poor help GM crops? Technology, representation and cotton in the Makhathini Flats, South Africa

The adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton in South Africa’s Makhathini Flats in 1998 was heralded as a case in which agricultural biotechnology could benefit smallholder farmers, and a model for the rest of the continent to follow. Recent literature has reported benefits such as improved yields and increased pesticide resistance, claiming that farmers themselves have chosen GM crops of their own will, due to the advantages associated with them.

Using historical, political, economic and ethnographic data, this study finds the initial enthusiasm around GM technology to be misguided. It draws upon thirty in-depth interviews with the leaders of cotton growing associations, interviews with local government officials, growers, processors and suppliers of inputs in addition to debt data from both regional and national creditors, survey data and the findings of three workshops.

The authors suggest that the considerable favourable attention accorded to the Makhathini cotton farmers is indicative not of the appropriateness of the technology, but a symptom of a development policy which is keen for the technology to succeed. The adoption of GM cotton in the Makhathini area is found to be symptomatic not of an endorsement of GM technology, nor a step on the road to agricultural regeneration, but rather a sign of a profound lack of choice facing farmers in the region.

The paper's conclusions include:

• the rhetoric of “GM technology helping the poor” seems to serve the needs of the promoters of the technology, rather than the residents of Makhathini. Yet, interventions in other parts of Africa are sanctioned by the “success” of the Makhathini initiative
• GM technology represents an anti-politics machine – offering a technological solution to a series of political problems around differentiated access to markets, state resources such as credit and agricultural extension services
• any serious and consistent engagement by the government to offer genuine sustainable alternatives or to promote a viable model suitable to small-scale agricultural development is lacking.