Transgenics are already in Colombia

Farmers encouraged by lower costs and the possibility of finding a market in a country that imports 80% of this product for its industry, started to grow cotton, which revives in the fertile lands of the Valle del Cauca Department.

Rodrigo Valderrama, whose family was devoted for over 40 years to grow cotton, is one of the pioneers of this planting in an area close to the Roldanillo town, in Valle del Cauca, where there are already 298 hectares.

Amid sugar cane plantations, the predominant crop in the area, the first white flakes look out on 3.8 acres planted with genetically modified cotton, resistant to pests.

“My father always planted cotton, and we stopped producing it because of some severe problems with pests such as the pink bollworm and Heliothis and Alabama, which is also very aggressive,” he told Efe.

He said that they decided to abandon these crops due to the excessive costs such as up to 24 applications of insecticides and fungicides for harvest after six months. “There came the time when was no longer possible because of the high number of applications and very high costs, then the risk of losing a lot of money because a chemical spraying is is very expensive,” he said.

But this year the choice of planting GM cotton came, whose maintenance has required two general applications to control an insect known as “spiky.”