(First of two parts) 

LANG FANG PREFECTURE, Hebei, China - Five years ago, Zhen-Bo Chai, a 43-year old cotton farmer, would wake up with an uneasy feeling of nausea and dizziness. He would also worry for his neighbors who have been encountering similar symptoms of what was diagnosed as pesticide poisoning.

In fact, it would seem that the entire farming village populace of Dong Zhang Wu -- located about two hours drive north of Beijing -- was under constant threat of ill health caused by toxins released by chemical sprayers for their various crops, the most common of which was corn and cotton.

These days, however, Zhen goes to his two-hectare Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton field feeling hearty and well, his sluggishness diminished and his fears about illness, vanished. I feel well now, unlike when I used to spray my fields as many as 30 times for each cropping season, the hulking farmer claimed before Filipino journalists and scientists who visited his farm.

Zhen is one of 300 cotton farmers here whose main source of income is corn and, since 1997, a genetically modified (GM) cotton variety.

All of the farmers have subsisted for many years from alternately cultivating corn and a local breed of cotton. To protect their fields, the farmers were forced to rely on pesticides in combating cotton’s dreaded and most pervasive enemy: bollworm.

This pest would devastate an entire cotton field unless farmers use insecticides generically known as organophosphate as often as 20 to 30 times for each cropping season, or within six months after planting.

This village, which collectively nurtures 100 hectares of Bt cotton is one of Hebei’s show windows in Bt cotton production and one of the successful cases where the controversial biotechnology crop had been adopted by farmers in China.

According to Zhen, he is quite at peace with his new GM variety of cotton and proudly escorted visitors to his flowering cotton field, which five years back was a scene of desolation because of bollworm infestation, and reeked with pesticide residues.

Zhen said that because of massive spraying of a cocktail of poisonous chemicals every time they plant the ordinary, non-Bt cotton variety, he and his fellow farmers -- and even their family members -- would suffer from headaches, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms of severe respiratory diseases.

In fact there were times when we had to rush people to the hospitals, Zhen said. He claimed that one or two have succumbed to poisoning, but the cause of the deaths could not be verified.

Besides his physical well-being, Zhen cited increased net income and less work when he converted his farm into a Bt cotton field. 

When he was planting the ordinary cotton variety his net income for every hectare each season was an average of P33,000. But since 1997, when he started using Bt cotton, his income rose to P55,700.

The difference was due to less cost in the chemical fight against bollworm and lesser expenses for hired workers.

Delinted (without seeds) Bt cotton is purchased by traders of processing centers at approximately P25 a kilo although prices had been fluctuating, according to Zhen.

The market for cotton in China is expanding and Bt cotton farmers could not yet supply the demands for it and a great amount of the commodity is still imported from the United States and some countries in Asia, according to Dr. Randy Hautea, a Filipino scientist who is the global coordinator of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotechnology Applications (ISAAA).

Hautea said that the most promising results for the developing world has been the adoption of Bt cotton by at least four million small farmers in China.

He added that based on surveys in the Yellow River cotton-growing region in northern China, these farmers have been able to increase their yield for each hectare, reduce pesticide costs, cut down the time they spent spraying dangerous pesticides and reduce the number of times they are sick from pesticide poisoning.

He explained that Bacillus thuringiensis is a common soil bacterium which produces a protein that is toxic to certain insects, in the case of cotton, bollworm which feeds on cotton bolls.

However, Bt cotton is not resistant to other insects, such as mites and aphids, which may force farmers to still use pesticides.

These pests, however, are not as prevalent and destructive as bollworms. 

The experience of China in the production of Bt cotton illustrates this populous nation’s evolving rural economy that other developing countries can study to determine their direction in adopting -- or rejecting -- genetic engineering or modification of certain important agricultural crops, Hautea said.