Posted on 07/10/2013 6:55:25 AM PDT by opentalk
Though biotech companies like Monsanto spent many millions creating and inserting genes that would make corn plants poisonous to the corn rootworm but harmless to other creatures, the pest has begun to develop an immunity.
Though the use of chemical pesticides has always been a source of contention, the advent of corn hybrid plants by biotech companies like Monsanto allowed farmers to cut back on their use. These new hybrids had been specifically designed using genes from a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which provided a formidable defense against corn rootworm.
Throughout parts of the midwest, however, farmers are now discovering rootworms that are immune to the genetically modified corn. In parts of Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska, where rootworm has made a comeback, farmers have now returned to using chemical pesticides.
… Some 15 years later, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton cultivated in the US stems from these Roundup Ready seeds. While the genetically modified crops were meant to be resistant to application of the weed-killing Roundup herbicide, farmers are now increasingly having to deal with Roundup-resistant "superweeds."
It is now estimated that in the period from 1996, when the GMO crops were introduced, to 2011, an additional 404 million pounds of chemical pesticides were applied to US fields, amounting to a 7 per cent increase overall.
(Excerpt) Read more at rt.com ...
Obama signed something making
them exempt from all future lawsuits.
Payoff must have been steep when the payoff
company learned the truth and kept it hidden.
How do organic farmers deal with pests?
Yeah,right.
Save for later.
Roundup is tied to infertility and cancer; herbicide’s maker calls it safe
… “Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” the study says.
God 1
Monstanto 0
This is actually a serious problem, for an odd reason.
Patents still remain in effect even if the patent is obsolete.
And courts have ruled that if GM pollen lands on the crop of another farmer, the patent owner deserves royalties from that crop, and the farmer may even lose ownership of his crop, in unusual cases.
This would take this problem even further, giving to the GM patent holder rights to other crops, even though their GM provided no value whatsoever.
… Though traditional pesticides may help in evening out the odds, there are other alternatives to combat rootworm despite its adaptation to the corn hybrid. Steiner, for one, has advocated “starving” the rootworm by depriving it of its food source, and advising farmers to rotate their crops from corn.
Crop rotation, however, is not likely to prove popular among farmers who take advantage of some $5 billion in government subsidies per year, doled out regardless of crop prices or yields
Corn is by far the largest recipient of yearly crop subsidies in the US, a policy which has been sustained in part due to corn ethanol production, which critics say is not a viable energy policy, and which has kept the price of corn so low that manufacturers of processed foods in the US habitually replace sugar with high fructose corn syrup.
Less chemicals? That's awful!
Is this a “Pimp my blog” exercise? No author and no website named, just a link.
No he didn't.
Organic farmers use a variety of conventional pesticides that are licensed for use under the somewhat arbitrary “organic” labelling regs. Insects, by the way, develop resistance to conventional pesticides just as they do to biotech traits. As a matter of good stewardship, farmers need to rotate crops and employ varied control measures whether they are farming conventionally or organically.
Bt provides an illustrative case. Bt, a soil bacterium that produces bug killing proteins, is a naturally occuring insecticide and historically was widely used as a spray in both conventional and organic farming. It is considered preferable to many other common pesticides because it is highly specific in its effects, is less toxic, and causes little or no collateral damage to “innocent bystander” organisms. Monsanto figured out how to insert the gene for the desired protein into corn, soybean, and cotton seeds. The anti-GMO hysterics have fits about this. But I would guess that not one frenzied activist in a million understands that organic farmers still routinely spray the stuff. And the people who make money off the scare campaigns aren’t going to tell them.
As far as Bt is concerned, the only thing at issue is the delivery system. Engineering the Bt into the plant provides a much more precise, controlled, and limited use; biotech Bt only kills the rootworms trying to eat the plant. One would think that environmentalists would prefer this to spraying Bt, which broadcasts much greater quantities willy-nilly into environment. But that would presume that the activist groups were rational. Or honest. Or technically competent. Or interested in anything other than profiteering from hysteria and fueling left-wing demonologies about Evil Corporations.
Reuters / John Sommers II
Tags
SciTech, Science, USA
'Monsanto Protection Act': 5 Terrifying Things To Know About The HR 933 Provision
It is now estimated that in the period from 1996,when the GMO crops were introduced,to 2011,an additional 404 million pounds of chemical pesticides were applied to US fields,amounting to a 7 per cent increase overall.
Notice what they are GMing them to do -
make them able to withstand a good soaking in Roundup.
So, the plants and the beans bioaccumulate a boatload of glysophate... YUMMM YUMMM!
That would be awful, if true.
I guess if you showed the part of the Act that does this, I'd be worried.
In the meantime, companies such as Syngenta and AMVAC Chemical, which produce soil insecticides for corn, have reported increases in sales of 50 to 100 per cent over the past two years.
Which is larger, 7 percent over 15 years or 50 percent over 2 years?
My wife wroks with a man who used to certify farms to be organic.
He had a 32 page single spaced list of chemicals allowed to be used on organic crops.
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