In Medak District , DDS- APCIDD observed GM Opposition Day on April 10th in front of ICRISAT, Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh denouncing ICRISAT for its corporate backed pro- GM research agenda and submitted a of memorandum to the Director General, ICRISAT and demanded to:

1. Move away from GE and move back to basics. Work with farmers and start building on the foundations of their science once again.
2. Get out of the unholy alliance with the biotech industry which has very little to do with Life and everything to do with Death. Death of the environment, death of the poor and death of food sovereignty and dignity.
3. Stop renting out your facilities which was donated to you by the internatonal community to the biotech industry. This is a total breach of trust.
4. Bring back biodiversity and NPM on to your agenda. We hope these terms, biodiversity and NPM ring a bell in you. Can you retrace this path from where you strayed away and redeem yourself as a public research institution?
5. Start repatriating the genetic wealth you have amassed from the farmers of Asia and Africa. Farmers have the right over it but are unable to access it from you whereas the biotech industry which is accessing it from you do it as biopirates

Later in the day, the farmers also marched on to the office of the head of Medak District and demanded to:

1. Ban genetic engineering from agriculture from the Medak District. All over the dryland belts of the Deccan genetic engineering as seen in the cultivation of Bt cotton, has proved a disaster for smagll and marginal farmers resulting in thousands of suicides. Besides it has also started toxifying our soils and killing the livestock.
2. Genetic engineering in agriculture is the surest way of depriving farmers their control over agriculture and handing it over to large agrochemical corporations.
3. As the custodian of the farming communities in Medak, where small and marginal farmers constitute nearly 70% of the population, it becomes your duty to do everything to save their life, honour and dignity. One of the ways of achieving this is to stop institutions such as ICRISAT and the state agricultural research institutions from engaging in genetic engineering.
4. Instead, promote ecological farming which is the surest answer to the horrifying water wars and the climate change that looms threateningly on our horizon.
5. Expand the state support to food farmers, particularly in the rainfed farming systems thereby reducing the stress on natural resources. This can be done by promoting dryland crops such as sorghum, millets and pulses which still form the finest mosaic of biodiversity on the farms of Medak District.

AP Coalition in Defence of Diversity (APCIDD) partners from Adilabad, Anatapur, East Godavari, Kurnool, Khammam, Nalgonda, Nellore, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Prakasam, Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, Warangal & West Godavari districts also observed GM Opposition day in their respective districts.

Click for the memorandum submitted to Director General, ICRISAT, Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh

Click for the memorandum submitted to District Collector, Medak District, Andhra Pradesh

Protests in Karnataka