Whitefly, a global threat: Editorial for Indiagri

It’s been over a month that cotton growing farmers in Punjab and part of Rajasthan were devastated when their crop came under attack from whitefly - a plant sucking pest. Before government agencies and farmers could learn the enormity of the problem, the pest had done the damage. 

Severely affecting standing crops in 12 districts and in Malwa region, the attack affected an estimated 3.3 lakh hectare causing losses to the tune of Re 4000 cr. Punjab grows cotton in about 12 lakh hectares. The state government immediately swung into action and announced a package of Re 640 cr. There were different theories doing the rounds. While some said  it was caused by fake pesticides, some attributed it to the ineffectiveness of genetically modified variety against the pests. Spurious pesticides, according to many, were the key reasons for this. Some of the farmers suicides were also attributed to this.

Without going into the vexed debate, it is important to note that the loser is the farmer and the state. Big agrochemical companies who spend a fortune on R&D and try and do their best to give best products to farmers too have something to worry about - as either the breed has grown smarter or there has been issue with the way the crop protection solutions have been deployed. 

At a time when the cotton market in general has been down for over a year, this attack and resultant decline in cotton production doesn't augur too well. Farmers have been agitating and government is in a bind how to tide over this. 

There is a need for multi-pronged preventive and mitigating activities to ensure we deal with such situations better. A coalition of stakeholders including government, farmers organisations, NGOs, chemicals companies and agriculture universities should come together and form a sustained strategy  to either avert such crises or deal with them. There is merit in considering a PPP model in GM crop technology and focus on developing new technologies to fight pest infestation on cotton and other crops. MNCs and local crop protection companies should join hands to run stewardship program on large scale educating farmers on crop cycle and significance of how science could help us deal with such situations. The government’s extension program, which has apparent problems, should be made more robust. Among other, it should be made mandatory for students of agriculture universities to work on extension.

There is no shortcut solution to this Herculean challenge. What is best, government must take initiative to identify such threats and work out a strategy to deal with all such scenario