Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal

Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh, India, is a key cotton-growing area in one of the most closely watched arenas of the global struggle over genetically modified crops. In 2005 farmers adopted India’s first genetically modified crop, Bt cotton, in numbers that resemble a fad. Various parties, including the biotechnology firm behind the new technology, interpret the spread as the result of farmer experimentation and management skill, alluding to orthodox innovation-diffusion theory. However, a multiyear ethnography of Warangal cotton farmers shows a striking pattern of localized, ephemeral cotton seed fads preceding the spread of the genetically modified seeds. The Bt cotton fad is symptomatic of systematic disruption of the process of experimentation and development of management skill. In fact, Warangal cotton farming offers a case study in agricultural deskilling, a process that differs in fundamental ways from the better-known process of industrial deskilling. In terms of cultural evolutionary theory, deskilling severs a vital link between environmental and social learning, leaving social learning to propagate practices with little or no environmental basis. However, crop genetic modification is not inherently deskilling and, ironically, has played a role in reinvolving farmers in Gujarat in the process of breeding.