BANGALORE: Talking tough, the Cargill Seeds India Pvt. Lid on July 18 hit out at the Kamataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, saying the company was engaged in helping the Indian farmers with important genetic material to ensure high crop yields.

The company’s head office in Bangalore issued a lengthy Press Statement charging the Sangha with indulging in a campaign to destroy the credibility of Cargill seeds by alleging that India’s genetic resources were being drained.

“In reality, the reverse is true and all Cargill material offered to the Indian farmers is the result of the import of basic genetic material from around the world,” the eight page statement said.

Activists of the Sangha had destroyed portion of the company’s upcoming seeds processing plant in Bellary, 300 km from Bangalore on July 12 in protest against the Dunkel draft on patenting of seeds and plants, Seven months earlier, the farmers had destroyed documents at the company’s head office in Bangalore.

Without being apologetic about is Operations, the subsidiary of the US multinational company said:” “Ultimately, India can only benefit from Cargill’s global strategy source superior germ-plasm which will be made available to the Indian farmer to obtain new levels of productivity for the benefit of the nation.”

Cargill is responsible for establishing new standards of returns to the grower and has been an industrial leader with as much as 40% higher returns than other companies, the statement said. It said farmers received up to Rs 42 per kilogram from Cargill for sunflower seeds, while many other companies still offered only Rs 30 per kg.

The company said it had supplied seeds to some 2.5 lakh farmers in one year, and detailed figures to show that farmers in Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had reaped high yields of sunflower and maize from out of seeds supplied by Cargill.

About prices, Cargill said they were competitive compared to other companies.

The Kamataka Rajya Raitha Sangha president, Prof M.D. Nanjundaswamy, MLA, alleged that the half of the amount in the 13.5 lakh tons of wheat purchased from American multinational companies, including Cargill, at an exorbitant Rs 660 a quintal, had been pocketed by the Congress as kickbacks.

Addressing a news conference, he claimed that he had authentic information pertaining to the wheat purchase deal by the Center at prices which were more than double the wheat procurement price paid to Indian farmers.

The US seeds giant Cargill, was the principal supplier in the wheat purchase deal struck on October 2,1992, involving several MNCs from US, he said, questioning the rationale for buying US wheat at an “outrageous” price of Rs 660 a quintal when the procurement price for Indian farmers was around Rs 320 a quintal.

The Sangha leader criticized the Karnataka chief minister, Veerappa Moily, for his statement on the state government’s offer to pay compensation to Cargill and said the government had no business to pay compensation. “Our fight is a civil dispute between the farmers and the MNCs. The state has no role to play in this civil dispute. The talk of paying compensation to the MNG sin this civil dispute is not only laughable but an expression of political weakness,” he said, adding, “If the government goes ahead with its plans to pay compensation, we will challenge it in court.”

Subramaniam, who claims to be a Gandhian, does not know anything about biotechnology. We can certainly progress in the field of biotechnology because India has vast opportunities to establish its supremacy in the biotechnology field. The third world counties have abundant bio wealth while the West is totally bankrupt. We have enough scientists who can achieve this task, Biotechnology is labor intensive and not Capital intensive. So we don’t need foreign capital to Progress in the field of biotechnology,” he said.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 30, 1993