Posted on 06/15/2012 10:15:53 PM PDT by smokingfrog
llinois corn growers are seeing problems already.
Corn that has been genetically engineered by Monsanto Co. to kill pests is being damaged by those pests instead – and it's weeks earlier than they typically show up.
“We're still early in the growing season, and the adults are about a month ahead of schedule,” explained Mike Gray, a professor of entomology with the University of Illinois. “I was surprised to see them – and there were a lot.”
Last year, farmers in several states found that the western corn rootworm – a major crop pest that has the potential to seriously reduce yields – was surviving after ingesting an insecticidal toxin produced by the corn plants. The corn, launched in 2003, is engineered to produce a protein, known as Cry3Bb1, derived from a bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. The rootworms ingest the roots of the corn, known as “Bt corn,” and the protein is fatal.
But farmers in six states last year reported damage from rootworm to Bt corn – a sign that the product, which was grown on 37 million acres in 2011, could be losing its efficacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Maybe Monsanto can incorporate DDT genes...
Hmmm....does Monsanto also sell pesticides, perhaps?
I wonder if this would be primarily corn for food/feed or corn grown to make ethanol?
Monsanto engineers the corn and then patents it. That means that a farmer can not legally save seed corn he has to purchase new from Monsanto every year.
It would be a wash if the farmer purchased the insecticide or the engineered corn.
Nature, perhaps, will have the last laugh - but it will take years, maybe decades to heal the soil...
excerpt:
“Typically, corn farmers have had to rotate corn crops to minimize pest pressures. But with Bt corn, many simply planted “corn on corn,” year after year.”
In their haste to control the worlds food supply (Dictators Creed: He who controls the food, controls the people.) they forget what the Irish learned the hard way.
They grew one potato crop and without rotation. The crops were overtaken with disease and brought on the Great Famine.
I grew up on my grandparents farm in the ‘40’s. Grampa always rotated crops - changing his garden spot and planting clover in the old one to replenish the ground with nutrients.
The neighbors grew potatoes for a living - always rotated -
The simplest of farmers know this.
I admit it. The title made me imagine pin-striped suited members of congress scuttling the crops, destroying everything they touch.
Heal the soil from Bacillus thurengensis? It's the same bacteria I sprinkle on tomatoes to kill tomato horn worms. The bacteria grows in their stomachs when they ingest it, and finito horn worms.
Apparently the BT toxin in the GMO corn is no longer effective. They have attempted soaking the seed corn in a neo-nicotinoid pesticide only to find that is causing colony collapse disease in honeybees. The weeds are becoming insensitive to Roundup too. Nature has adapted. The Monsanto approach has been overcome.
Monsanto inserted the gene for the BT toxin into the corn genome. The worms that are now resistant to GMO BT toxin are also resistant to the BT bacterial powder you’ve been using.
Like the old line in Jurassic Park - Nature will find a way. Researchers have always known that the insects would adapt to the Bt resistance. Strategies have been attempted to delay the adaptation. This is not a big surprise, nor is it God’s referendum on Monsanto. Its normal biology. Happens all the time.
Ditto.
My tomatoes are free of leaf eating bugs but bees have free reign.
It’s all the same corn including the corn used for corn flakes and corn meal.
A massive class action suit against Monsanto would be sweet revenge.
I’m hoping that all of the non-Monsanto farmers whose crops have been cross pollinated with Monsanto’s “patents” can also sue.
It be ironic turnaround for the years long reign of terror they’ve inflicted on family farmers.
GTH.
A lot of farmers haven’t rotated crops for 50 years, that’s right 50. Long before Monsanto. We were one of them.
You are just spouting a bunch of ignorant nonsense.
Stop it.
Did God also not WANT Norman Borlaug engineering food to withstand disease so that hundreds of millions, possibly a billion, people could eat rather than starve (mostly children) to death?
You Luddites are anti-science because you never bothered to learn anything about it. Ignorance is easy, understanding science is hard.
If this in fact the case, should Monsanto, DuPonte, and others simply throw their hands in the air and give up? Science progresses at it learns. Same as it ever was. The answer to this issue will, most likely, be solved by Monsanto.
Should the pharmaceutical companies (you know, Big Pharma) give up the search for new antibiotics simply because a particular bug has become resistant to a class of drugs?
Do you think that "Food Inc" presents a balanced and objective view of the food industry? If so, then you must be a really big fan of films made by Michael Moore.
The anti-technology nonsense you spout here is absolutely mind-boggling.
No. It won’t happen. Monsanto has already sued farmers in the past when the farmers crops were contaminated by the Monsanto GMO crops. Also, organic farmers also sued Monsanto for their GMO productions in respect to harming the organic supplies. Lost that one as well.
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