Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

India is an agriculture based country where a big chunk of its population is employed
in the agricultural sector. Despite significant improvements in food security mainly
as a result of the Green revolution, farmers are still facing a list of problems. From
among a range of solutions to help these farmers, GM crops were supposed to be an
important one. The use of GM technology in agriculture gathered much attention
worldwide ever since it came into practice and there are many different opinions
about if and how GM crops can be of benefit to the farmers.
In this study the ‘problematizations’ of agriculture by two directly involved and
relatively less heard actors in GM debate, the farmers and the researchers, is analysed.
The study employs Bacchi’s tool for policy analysis, the ‘What’s the problem represented
to be (WPR) approach. This approach helps us understand that ‘problems’ are
not objective, but that different groups of people might frame problems and associated
solutions in different ways. This study also looks at how media has handled this
debate so far as media has played a key role in this debate by (re)producing a large
share of the GM discourse which affects the target audience.
Findings of this study show that neither the farmers nor the researchers prioritize
problems that can be solved only by the use of GM crops. Both, farmers and researchers
describe policy discrepancies to be at the core of major agriculture problems. The
results revealed that the GM debate might actually be a little less polarized than it
appears in the media. It also suggests that there is a need for improved communication
between the farmers and the researchers to discuss farmers’ problems as well as to
generate awareness regarding new technologies. The study concludes that there are a
lot of issues in agriculture which GM crops alone cannot solve rather they need a
combination of solutions.