GM crops are increasing the use of herbicides and insecticides

[Jon]

I just read this report in the Guardian.


Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.

If true, this is hardly good news for bees, especially the comments about the vastly increased use of insecticides.

My issues with GM technology have always been around the virtual monopoly control by just a handful of companies.
Is this really true that GM technology has failed to increase the yield of any food crop?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/19/gm-crops-insecurity-superweeds-pesticides?INTCMP=SRCH

[chris]

My issues with GM technology have always been around the virtual monopoly control by just a handful of companies.


Yes,along with the elimination of many older varieties.
It is also my understanding that one of the motivations behind certain GM varieties is to produce crops that rather than being resistant to pests, are in fact resistant to the pesticide. That way, the big bad boys cash in twice. If this is the case, it is possible that *genetic pollution* of wild varieties near the GM crops has also rendered these *weeds* resistant to the pesticides. Then again, I may be totally off target.
Well, if that doesn’t bring Gavin back to post, nothing will.

[Jon]

Well, if that doesn’t bring Gavin back to post, nothing will.

LOL. He didn't bite at my post. Too busy talking to his potatoes.

[gavin]

LOL!! OK guys ... it was in the Grauniad so it must be true. And in a report by food and conservation groups so it definitely must be true. Bt crops somehow make farmers apply more pesticides. GM crops somehow will never produce as much as conventional. Farmers will get tricked into growing something that yields less, needs more costly pesticides, costs significantly more as seed and .... (here is the serious one) ... will struggle to find a market because of ... the Grauniad, reports by conservation groups, beekeepers .....

If only we could bottle some of that amazing power the biotech industry seems to have to force farmers to grow stuff that is worse than what came before.

Its not the GM crops, its the mobile phones I tell you. :p In this case they may actually have a real effect given the ease with which growers can now buy stuff..

Right: 'In China, where insect-resistant Bt cotton is widely planted, populations of pests that previously posed only minor problems have increased 12-fold since 1997. A 2008 study in the International Journal of Biotechnology found that any benefits of planting Bt cotton have been eroded by the increasing use of pesticides needed to combat them.'

Give me a reasonable mechanism that explains how that can be? Here is the only one I can think of. Whenever you grow a large area of any crop, problems emerge and get worse. It is like a treadmill - you have to keep running by either breeding resistant types or changing agronomy (organic, chemical, whatever) to keep up. If the Chinese had bred one new super-variety (a non-GM one) and increased their cotton area on the back of that, pest and pathogens would increase over time. My hunch is that is what is happening - success breeds the little parasites that live off success.

There are three big achievements of the anti-GM campaigners in the last couple of decades. One is that big agribusiness had a shock, stopped its world domination drive, and divested itself of some of the companies it had bought up. Globalisation was slightly delayed. The second is that public work on GM, the kind of stuff you guys might welcome, was stopped dead in its tracks. No government dared fund research with the explicit aim of bringing GM varieties to the public. The third is that the public were and are totally confused on what technologies like this can offer. No need to think about it any more, it must be bad and that is that. Technological advances in agriculture are bad and we don't have to be sensible about risks and benefits if we don't want to.

[Neils]

It's been a interesting shift from the Anti-GM crowd Gavin and one that the industry doesn't seem to have done a huge amount to counter.

When it kicked off it was about not wanting potatoes that were half jellyfish and how did we know that the sprouts weren't going to rise up and kill us. Over the past 10 years or more that side of the argument has slipped quietly away to be replaced with the far more reasonable suggestions that GM crops don't offer significantly higher yields, aren't significantly more resistant to weeds or pesticides and that the companies pushing them are effectively creating near monopolies in seed supplies and that basically what the "Miracle of GM" boils down to is creating a company creating a plant resistant to its own herbicide product so they get 2 for 1 on the sales.

The Companies themselves have to shoulder some of the blame for this, I can reel off the major criticisms that are aimed at GM in a heartbeat but I'm hard pushed to think of much that's been put out to counter the critique in any meaningful sense.

[gavin]

Part of the trouble is that it is hard to get across a middle way when those shouting just want to polarise things.

I'm not sure that companies should be leading a re-education drive. They have a vested interest in making money out of the technology, but what society needs is a broader understanding of what the technology can do, what it can't, what the real risks might be, and how it compares with what happens in nature anyway. These are issues for non-company scientists to tackle I think ... but such scientists are inhibited from entering the fray because that is what it is, a fray. Put your head above the parapet and someone will take a pot-shot at you and try to claim (Eric McA anyone?) that you are on some hidden payroll of agribusiness. So you need a thick skin, clarity of thought, enough time and energy, and a strong desire to counter the nonsense peddled by those with agendas. Not many can do that.

[gavin]

Put your head above the parapet and someone will take a pot-shot at you and try to claim (Eric McA anyone?) that you are on some hidden payroll of agribusiness.

Nice timing considering the motion for the SBA Council meeting in three weeks, just published in the Scottish Beekeeper.