Differenice between the methodsame used by india ,china,usa to increase productivity of bt cotton

Expert response from Luis Burzio, PhD, Biotech Reg Affairs Cotton Lead, Bayer Company

PhD, Biotech Reg Affairs Cotton Lead

Thursday, 09/05/2019 20:23

Farmers in India, China and the US utilize Bt Cotton varieties within their farming practices.  According to the recent PG Economics report, these 3 countries have “close to or more than 90 percent adoption of biotech cotton”. For a deeper review on country/crop specific information in relations to biotech crops (or just Bt Cotton) grown around the world and the economic  and environmental benefits, I recommend these two reports: Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2017 and GM crops: global socio-economic and environmental impacts 1996-2016.  See here for highlights of the reports.

According to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, in the 2016/17 production year India was the largest global producer of cotton. Of the approximately 107 million bales (MB, each weighing 480 pounds or approximately 218 kilograms) produced globally, India produced 27 MB (25% of global production), followed by China (22.75MB) (21%), United States (17.17MB) (16%), Pakistan (7.7 MB) (7%), and Brazil (7.02 MB) (6.5%) as the top five countries.

Overall, many factors account for differences between production output and methods used/available when comparing countries, especially when climates and other growing conditions are very different. Also, political, environmental and social conditions, such as farmers’ access to the latest technologies (e.g. GM seeds, crop protection options, digital ag tools, automation, mechanization, etc.), as well as resources (water, productive soil, weather conditions, etc.), significantly impact agriculture output.