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Doubts surround link between Bt cotton failure and farmer suicide

Nature Biotechnology volume 27, pages 9–10 (2009)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 01 February 2009

This article has been updated

Official statistics on the problem vary widely. The study authors, Guillaume Gruère and Debdatta Sengupta, both of IFPRI, an agriculture policy think tank based in Washington DC, and former IFPRI researcher Purvi Mehta-Bhatt, opted to use figures from the National Crime Records Bureau, whose data indicate that about 17,000 farmers take their lives in India every year. “I'm not sure if it's the perfect data, and I'm not sure if it's well measured,” says Gruère.

However, other sources may underestimate the problem, he and his co-authors argue.

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Change history

  • 09 February 2009

    In the version of this article initially published, in col. 3, line 3 in the last paragraph, Debdatta Sengupta was referred to as “he.” The text should have read “she” as Sengupta is a woman. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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    Cormac Sheridan

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Sheridan, C. Doubts surround link between Bt cotton failure and farmer suicide. Nat Biotechnol 27, 9–10 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0109-9

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