I remember all the PR about GMO that told us that GMO makes plants resistant against pests so pesticides would be less necessary. Turns out the main use for GMO was to make the plants more resistant against herbicides so even more could be used. Very disappointing and a very cynical campaign by industry.
I guess the same happened with the push for plastics recycling by industry which also turned out be pure deception.
The first big anti-GMO push was against the transgenic Flavr Savr tomato. It's unfortunate that pesticide resistance is conflated with other potential applications.
Their yields go even higher. It is also a matter of being able to use cheaper broad spectrum herbicides like glyphosate rather than something that is more expensive but won't kill an unaltered crop.
Slight correction, it leads to loads of herbicide usage (glyphosate). The process of desiccation also leads to loads of glyphosate being used just prior to harvest, on non ‘Roundup Ready’ (glyphosate resistant) crops, which may be worse as it doesn’t get rinsed off since it’s used in the drying phase. See:
https://ensia.com/features/glyphosate-drying/
GMO crops lead to different herbicide usage, not necessarily more, and it’s not quite clear how to compare what is “more” between two herbicides anyway.
The alternatives to glyphosphate are quite a bit more concerning when it comes to human toxicity.
This bit about desiccation sounds like it isn’t very common at all, in a quick search I wasn’t able to find references to it from an ag university extension… and it would be quite expensive and hard to justify.
I think you might be confusing herbicides and pesticides.
Some GMO crops can lead to less pesticide usage as the plants can sometimes be engineered to be resistant to the pests targeted.
Weed plants don't generally attack the crop plant directly, instead they merely grow nearby and compete for various resources that the crops would otherwise be able to use.
GMO crops can be engineered to be resistant to specific herbicides. This leads to more of that herbicide (generally glyphosate) being used, since more herbicide = fewer weeds, and amounts of glyphosate that would kill non-GMO crops are tolerated by GMO crops.
I look at research. And in this case, it contradicts your claim.
"A steady, linear trend for increasing number of herbicide area-treatments over the last 25 years was observed for all crops except soybean. The linear trend was not statistically significant for soybean [...]"
That's a misreading of the paragraph. The specific claim is that non-glyphosate herbicide use is increasing faster than glyphosate herbicide use.
Later on, in the conclusion section, the researchers acknowledge that farming is generally a complex system with many reasons for doing things, but nevertheless point fingers at herbicide-resistant GM crops in general (not roundup-ready in particular) as a reason for increasing herbicide usage.
> Some researchers have blamed glyphosate-resistant crops and the resulting evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds for increasing herbicide use in maize, soybean, and cotton2,6. While this explanation is plausible for these three glyphosate-resistant crops, it cannot explain the similar trends for increasing herbicide intensity in rice and wheat, since no glyphosate-resistant cultivars are commercially available for those crops. In fact, herbicide area-treatments increased at a faster rate in rice and wheat compared with the glyphosate-resistant crops, so the claim that glyphosate-resistant crops are the primary driver of increasing herbicide use is at odds with the empirical data. The broader problem of herbicide-resistant weeds (rather than the artificially narrow focus on glyphosate) may certainly have played a role in increasing herbicide use for all of the crops in this analysis. The most likely explanation, though, is probably a combination of inter-related factors and is far more complex than any single driver.
To recap, you contradicted drewmal above, who said:
> it leads to loads of herbicide usage (glyphosate). The process of desiccation also leads to loads of glyphosate being used just prior to harvest, on non ‘Roundup Ready’ (glyphosate resistant) crops
You replied "Ummm no, less herbicide actually".
The Nature study you claimed supported your assertion said herbicide usage was steadily up, and more was used on non-roundup-ready crops.
I don't know if you meant "no" to reply to one or the other of those claims or both, but it doesn't matter because they both agree with drewmal.
Care to elaborate? Roundup ready crops have glyphosate resistance which allows for broad application of the herbicide on a field to kill off unwanted other crops, weeds, while not harming the crops with genetically engineered resistance. Otherwise, the application of herbicide would need to be targeted to only the unwanted plants, which is a more labor intensive process. Unless I’m misunderstanding something?
You have that completely wrong. GMO's ushered in reduced pesticide use and the pesticides that are used are safer. I say this as a fertilizer company agronomist that was working when GMO's appeared. The amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) around GMO's is high.
The only papers I've seen that indicate GMO has reduced pesticide use were published by various industry groups with unclear ties to pesticide manufacturers. Academic papers seem to indicate pesticide use is higher, especially as the pests develop a resistance to the pesticide. E.g. https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2190-471...
> Contrary to often-repeated claims that today’s genetically-engineered crops have, and are reducing pesticide use, the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds in herbicide-resistant weed management systems has brought about substantial increases in the number and volume of herbicides applied.
I meant herbicides, so my original comment is wrong.
That said, I’d be surprised if GMO really has managed to reduce pesticide usage. I’m pretty skeptical of big-tobacco-like scientific studies. Do you know of a good study that shows this, and which isn’t funded by Bayer or some similarly motivated company?
In practice it seems like capital intensive large scale mono-cropping does most of that without GMOs needing to make an appearance. Careful application of GMOs could probably cut the need for fertilizers and pesticides.
Figuring out how to maintain some food production capacity without debt peonage in developing countries is a policy problem more than a technical problem.
In practice? A major reason for the explosion in use of the herbicide glyphosate (RoundUp) is the use of genetically modified crops that are glyphosate resistant. Because of this users of these crops can dump huge volumes of glyphosate on their farms. This is a well known example of GMO’s leading to an increase in use of biocides.
That's not really true. Intensive herbicide use in agriculture has been around for a long time. Sugar cane plantations used so much sodium arsenite in the 1800s that it regularly killed working animals and farm employees. Glyphosate was developed to be less toxic to humans and to require far less to be appied 100 pounds per acre vs 1 ton per acre of older herbicides. Yes, 1 ton per acre was the dosage rate for carbon bisulfide, borax, and arsenic trioxide prior to glyophosphate's development in 1974. Even when glyphosate is used as a desiccant it's still used at lower rates than the chemicals it replaced, and is far less dangerous for farmers.
Worth noting, the increase in desiccation practices, to prepare crops for a more scheduled harvest is also leading to a huge increase in glyphosate usage. It’s used high concentrations on crops at the last stage of crop growth just prior to harvest, in expectation of dry conditions which are ideal for harvesting, among other benefits.
The abuse of monopoly powers is a very GMO-specific issue: roundup-resistant strains are patented, so where farmers used to retain enough seed to re-plant the next season, they're now hooked on a subscription model and their "non-GMO" neighbors are in risk of crippling lawsuits because an illiterate bee thought it would be cool to pollinate two fields on the same day.
I've never seen any evidence of anyone ever being sued by an agro-chemical company for accidentally planting/growing patented seeds, and I've spent some time looking. So people have made the claim, and they were later discovered to have been using the seeds intentionally.
I actually think that farmers should be allowed to save those seeds and replanting them, as long as they don't sell them. So I'm in favor of changing the way patent law works there.
> risk of crippling lawsuits because an illiterate bee thought it would be cool to pollinate two fields on the same day
AFAIK, this has never happened. Monsanto states they have policy against it ever happening. The infringement lawsuits I'm aware of, including the ones the anti-GMO crowd like to trot out, sure seem like pretty clear cases of wilful infringement.
I acknowledge that all of the Monsanto Infringement lawsuits have involved farmers who a) Purchased Roundup-Resistant seed from Monsanto b) under contract with Monsanto c) that included a provision not to replant the seed derived from those crops.
It is my opinion, as a political stance, that that provision c is against natural law as well as the laws of man, and is therefore null and void. Farmers, even big corporate ones, should be allowed to replant the seed of their crops, and it's unconscionable to restrict that.
I thought there had been a lawsuit against a farmer who intentionally planted a crop near someone else's roundup-ready crop and then bred the resulting seeds for roundup resistance.
Like you, I take the view toward that (potentially hypothetical?) case that the farmer's evident intent to infringe Monsanto's intellectual property is irrelevant because he hasn't done anything wrong. In that case, he is not even party to an agreement, though note that violating a patent doesn't require you to be party to an agreement.
The “against natural law” is an interesting claim to me. Where is the comprehensive list of all natural laws? How can we prove that there is no yet undiscovered law guaranteeing Monsanto/GMO seed patent holder such rights? Didn’t the US founding fathers assert that Natural Rights included private property rights, including of natural things like land? It seems to be more of an assertion of intuitive feeling to assert a claim of “natural law” than any concrete proof.
And the “against the laws of man” seems to be false based on case law that I’ve read about in the news. Is your opinion/assertion that seeds / engineered plants should not be patentable? Should they be patentable, but sold at a loss or smaller profit?
Those seeds exist because they were engineered to solve a need. Is there a legal requirement for a farm to use engineered seeds? How much do you think the engineer would have to charge for unlimited license of those engineered seeds? I imagine it would be 20x - 1000x of a single harvest limited license for the same number of seeds. Do you agree?
