Thirty-three different species of weeds are now reported to have developed resistance to herbicides commonly used in Australian farming systems, says Dr Chris Preston, programme leader for the Weeds CRC.
The worst offenders are annual ryegrass, wild radish and wild oats.
And of the thirteen ‘families’ of chemicals used to control weeds, resistance to ten has now been found in various agricultural weeds, Dr Preston says.
“Those ten groups of herbicides, as you’d expect, are the ones that are most commonly used in our cropping systems,” he adds.
In a few areas of Australia the herbicide resistance problem has become so acute that there are no longer any herbicides available to control particular weeds – such as annual ryegrass – in some crops.
You can read more here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Herbicide development is a race against evolution, just like human antibiotics. Nature isn’t friendly and genetic engineering is the only way out. As we’ve done for umpteen millennia, we’ve got to be smarter than bloody mother nature, and we just might make it if we’re smarter than Her.
It is a funny statement that nature isn’t friendly. She provides : clean air, clean water, food and somewhere to live. I call that a real friend.
I personally find her very friendly – i guess its an attitudinal thing – a bit like ‘is the glass half full or empty’.
Since the development of ag chemicals we have not eliminated hunger and pollution – we have seen enormous profits for some companies and a huge increase in the numbers and types of dis-eases such as cancer. coincidence?
We have not yet been unable to define the complexity of nature nor the impacts of the myriad cocktail of chemicals on one of natures components (us). now, some see gm as the next ‘solution’.
Personally, mate, i reckon if you want a way out, try a spacecraft and go to Mars – you may find it more friendly there !!!
I have heard the yanks can buy tickets to Moon and Mars…
Glyphosate is a broad spectrum herbicide used to kill crop weeds. Monsanto’s trade name for this is Roundup.
Roundup Ready crops are engineered to withstand exposure to glyphosate.
The introduction of crops engineered to be resistant to glyphosate could have two particularly damaging effects.
Firstly, it will increase the use of the herbicide, and secondly it may encourage the emergence of herbicide resistant weeds.
http://www.safe2use.com/poisons-pesticides/pesticides/organo/glyphosate.htm
Schiller usually you argue that humans ARE part of nature hence everything that’s happening to the environment is natural. Now we have to be smarter than (unfriendly mother) nature? Smarter than ourselves? You got residual unfriendly mother issues as well as logic issues?
Ann, it is the use of herbicides that leads to resistance. You need to remember also that many crops are naturally tolerant of a lot of herbicides. This means these herbicides can be used in the crops.
In Australia, our main problem is that farmers have been dependent on a small number of herbicides for weed control, particularly for wheat. This has resulted in intensive use of these herbicides and consequently the evolution of resistance.
The introduction of glyphosate-tolerant crops can lead to over-dependence on glyphosate and the evolution of resistant weeds like it has in US soybean production. There resistance has evolved where growers have used glyphosate as their sole weed management tactic.
You don’t need to have the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant crops to evolve glyphosate resistance. Here in Australia, we have a problem with glyphosate resistance in vineyards. In these vineyards, tillage of the soil has been phased out because of the damage that it does to the vine roots and soil structure. Instead a cover crop or permanent sward is introduced into the mid row and glyphosate used in winter to clean up weeds under the vines. As glyphosate is the only herbicide used in winter, resistance is evolving.
Equally, you can introduce glyphosate tolerant crops without getting glyphosate resistance. In Canada, they are in their 11th year of growing Roundup-Ready canola and have no glyphosate resistant weeds yet. The difference between Canadian canola and US soybeans is the way the herbicides are being used. There is continuous glyphosate use in the US, but herbicide rotations in Canada.
It is the way the herbicides are used that matters, not whether you grow a herbicide tolerant crop.
Your comment about increased glyphosate use being a problem is simplistic. Yes the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant crops does lead to more glyphosate use, but this can be a good thing. What happens is that glyphosate is substituted for other herbicides, usually herbicides that have persistent soil activity. The reason farmers like to get away from these herbicides is because they can interfere with crop rotations. Some of the products being replaced also had problematic environmental profiles as they moved off farm.
John,
If you want to find out how friendly nature is, strip yourself naked and run bare-handed into the bush. Don’t use any technology. Report back to us in a month or so.
While you’re in the bush, you can wrestle with the notion of what “technology” is. Building a fire is of course forbidden. Sharp implements, like stones chipped to form an edge, are also not allowed. Which makes a spear out of the question.
Like the rest of the natural animals, you get to use your teeth and fingernails. To hold off the chill, you’ll have to rely on as much of a pelt as you can grow.
Some birds are known to use levers, so you are allowed to use a lever. Chimpanzees are known to use clubs when killing each other, so you may use a club.
After a band of chimps has successfully concluded a war on another tribe, the victorious band eats the brains of the vanquished. So you can eat human brains, but only if you do it in the bush. Whacking urbanites will amount to using technology, i.e., springing at them around artifacts such as dumpsters or finding them in alleys.
Dude, your notion of nature being friendly to non-techno humans is totally whacked.
That is the point always overlooked by proponents, glyphosate tolerant crops use less if any of the heavy duty herbicides than non-glyphosate tolerant crops.
Prior to glyphosate powerful herbicides such as 2,4-D, paraquat and atrazine were used, these all can have harmful effects. I have searched high and low and found that the negative effects of glyphosate are more perceptual than actual. There have been some concerns that the wetting agent used reduces the protective mucus membranes on some animals, such as frogs.
Improper and/or indiscriminate use of glyphosate can lead to plant resistance, applications need to be timed properly.
Roundup has been used since 1974 and has a wider window of
application than other herbicides, has no soil activity, which provides flexible crop rotations, and has low environmental and human health risks. There are no replacement herbicides being developed so proper usage is critical.
If using Round Up Ready is more costly farmers would not be using it.
OK Schiller – which state are you in – is it Arkansas ?
Luke,
I live in that state where we wear clothing, and use tools and all sorts of things to avoid having to live like animals. Around these parts, nature is simply too nasty to make an all-natural lifestyle survivable.
In fact, nature is so nasty that the best way to get along is with geneered crops–about 80 percent of soy and 60 percent of maize is geneered. The war against weeds and insects before we got them was expensive, with lots of collateral damage.
If you want a sense of how difficult and expensive this war has been, visit
http://www.weedscience.org/summary/MOASummary.asp
for weed resistance and
http://www.irac-online.org/resources/resdb.asp
for insect resistance.
The state I live in is the one where we’re agricultural tech-heads. With biotechnology, we’ve beaten Nature at her own game and living better than ever. Fields of crops that meet the horizon without a weed in sight. Corn borer moths are increasingly rare. At the same time, we are seeing hawks and eagles where they’ve been absent for a generation. Deer and fox abound, and there are far more owls and rabbits. The creeks and rivers don’t have the chemical stench of pesticides and herbicides–and for a while, it was bad. Walking near a watershed during the mildest flood, your nose would tell you it was wise to walk away.
That’s history now, and I am very proud of the state I live in, and I am glad that corporate scientists cooked up geneered crops in their labs. I even saw a cloud of finches today–for the first time since I was about 7 years old.
Luke, it’s *that* state.
Goddam boy – sounds like you’re one of those Iowa farmers or is it Michigan.
Have you ever taken a moment to reflect on what you’ve written. Lots of collateral damage!! – you’ve been a right lil friggin eco-vandal haven’t you. And the chemicals have gone to your brain. You just lost every ounce of credibility in my mind.
You might be agricultural “rev-hards” but you are neither tacticians nor strategists. And you’ve pissed away all your chemical resources in species resistance by your unrestrained profligate use. Your whole agriculture has been propped up by your government’s predatory protection policies in cahoots with the agri-chemical complex. All at the expense of your wildlife – sounds like Rachel Carson was writing about your community by your self-description.
Don’t worry Schills – nature’s finding a way to get through the genetic engineering every day. And you’re gonna need more technology before it’s over.
Thanks Chris,
So what about “superweeds” that we hear so much about in GM crops?
What to do?
How to eliminate those superweeds, do we need to go back to old more toxic herbicides to get rid of them?
Ann, I assume you mean the outcrossing from the crop to weeds, which is what we here so much about as a danger? For most crops, except rice and sunflowers, it does not seem to be much of an issue. There are either no compatible wild relatives, or the few that do exist only infrequently cross in the wild.
There is very little outcrossing to weedy plants in the field. Selection of resistance in weeds through use of the herbicide is a much more likely scenario.
In any case, most wild relatives cannot be controlled by selective herbicides in crops. This is one of the advantages of herbicide resistant crops. If the wild relatives were to become resistant to the herbicide used, farmers will simply be back where they were before they used the herbicide tolerant crop. Other methods of weed control will need to be used.
The evolution of herbicide resistance can mean that more herbicides are used. However, simply focussing on the amount of active ingredient used is not a fair reflection of the environmental impact. A low rate persistent herbicide might end up having much more environmental impact that one used at higher rates, but which dissipates more rapidly.
John McBain’s comments about a possible connection between ag chemical use and disease are nonsense. The fact that two statistics increase does not mean there is a connection between them. The responsibility for hunger in the world today can mostly be sheeted home to politics. There is certainly capacity to produce enough food to feed everyone alive today. However, the World’s population has more that doubled in the last 50 years. Without the Green Revolution and the increases in production due to ag chemicals and modern farming methods, there is no way we could feed the current World population.
‘there is no way we could feed the current World population.’ –
We aren’t feeding the current world population and the agro-chemical industry is not interested in feeding the world, regardless of politics.
It exists to sell products, if third world countries struggle to afford them, tough.
If the WTO is weighted in favour of the developed world, tough.
The developed world does not have a superior culture merely superior fire power, that’s why neoconservatives place so much importance on technology.
The agro-chemical industry is unconcerned by plants developing resistance to herbicides because it is not in the business of solving any problem permanently, merely in developing and selling patented products to meet the next ‘problem’ and the next, ad nauseam.
It’s like the ‘war on terror’ conveniently unwinnable but a lot of corporations are going to make a huge amount of money out of it.
Cynical? Absolutely.
‘Nature isn’t friendly….we’ve got to be smarter than bloody mother nature’ –
Last time I checked ‘mother nature’ was our only life support system in an otherwise genuinely hostile universe and has been since long before Homo sapiens evolved.
This planet will continue to evolve regardless of whether it is capable of supporting civilisation as we currently enjoy it or indeed mankind at all.
Once we stop deluding ourselves that we are ‘special’ and can therefore safely ignore or ‘beat’ nature; we might just make some progress in understanding how everything is interconnected because until that is taken into account, technology will hinder not help.
Lamna,
I don’t know if I buy all your generalization on technology…
Greenpeace’s opponents often label us as ” technology-hostile”. We counter back that the fact is actually the opposite..
For example, in the energy issue, our opponents promote old-fashioned nuclear power, we on the other hand rely on newer technology and wish improvements will me made in the technology field…
And everyone who ever has attended a biology class knows that viruses are always ahead of humans…
Hi Ann,
I apologise if my standpoint was unclear, my comment – ‘we might just make some progress in understanding how everything is interconnected because until that is taken into account, technology will hinder not help.’ – was supposed to articulate exactly the sentiments you have expressed. Nuclear power is an example of flawed technology, renewables are an example of technology designed to work with nature, not against it.
I am not hostile to all technology, merely technology designed around unsustainable practises and technology that is disingenuosly promoted as some kind of ‘magic wand’ that will solve a global problem at a stroke, but in reality does nothing of the sort.
GE technology is promoted on its own terms to fulfill very narrow requirements and no legal responsibility is taken by GE or GM corporations if anything goes wrong, these issues are classed as ‘externalities’.
Indeed most GE, GM and chemical corporations go to great lengths to ensure they cannot be held legally accountable for ‘accidents’; just ask the citizens of Bhopal (Methyl isocyanate the chemical that was produced at Union Carbide’s facility in Bhopal is used in pesticides).
Rachel Carson in ‘Silent Spring’ was concerned not just with the quantities of chemicals being used by the intensive agriculture industry but that corporations do not test the effects of combinations of chemicals, merely the regulationary ‘safety’ requirements for their own individual products.
People are now exposed to a vast number of man-made chemicals in all aspects of their daily lives and the fact is very little study is dedicated to how combinations of those chemicals effect us long term.
Tobacco corporations spent decades and millions on ‘scientific’ propaganda that there was no link between their products and cancer.
The concept that no winds or fauna occur around GM farms is another classic example of corporate propaganda.
The suggestion that it is impossible to have cross pollination between GM and non-GM crops is a scientific fallacy.
This of course is of no concern to GM corporations since it expands their market share by covertly destroying their competition, while at the same time those corporations claim that they are happy to compete with non-GM products on ‘merit’ alone. However they also consistently campaign against labelling that allows consumers to make an informed choice.
If GM corporations achieve sufficient market share in a farming community, they quite simply win by contamination.
Any suggestion that GM corporations are unaware of this, would require a level of stupidity amongst their scientific experts which would prevent them from identifying the significant difference between their a*** and their elbow.
All GM products are designed to lock customers (and by extention the consumer) into an exclusive commercial relationship with the supplying corporation.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nN10436446&from=business
“What you’re seeing,” he explained, “is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain.”
– Monsanto representative, Robert Fraley, describing his company’s corporate strategy in the magazine ‘Farm Journal’ in 1996.
Roundup (glyphosate) and genetically engineered ‘Roundup Ready’ crops are simply a revenue stream, Monsanto’s patent on Roundup ran out in 2000 so to protect revenue before that happened, Monsanto patented genetically modified crops that were resistant to glyphosate, thus perpetuating their patent by other means.
In 1997 the New York attorney-geneneral’s office forced Monsanto to withdraw adverts claiming that Roundup is “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly”.
According to the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, glyphosate is the third most commonly-reported cause of pesticide illness among farm workers and the commonest cause among landscape maintenance workers.
‘Scientists’ funded by Monsanto to produce a study of their growth hormone ‘Posilac’ reported that cows treated with the hormone suffered only a minor increase in udder infections. But when the results were re-examined by independent researchers, they found to their astonishment that only part of the data had been processed. A complete analysis revealed that the “somatic cell count” (that is pus, to you and me) increased by 20 per cent in the udders of cows treated with Posilac.
http://www.unsafescience.com/bgh.html
There is also scientific evidence that cows given growth hormone injections pass elevated hormone levels on in their milk and that this is linked to breast cancer and prostate cancer.
‘among pre-menopausal women increasing levels of IGF-1 in blood were strongly associated with increasing risk of breast cancer in a consistent dose-response relationship. Adjusting for other known breast cancer factors (age at which menstruation began; age at birth of first child; number of children; family history of breast cancer; and weight in relation to height) did not change the results’
– The Lancet (May 1998)
Science (January 1998) reported a four-fold increased risk of prostate cancer “a strong positive association” among 152 men who had elevated, but still “normal,” levels of IGF- 1. The study found that men, aged 60 and older, with high levels of IGF-1 (300-500 nanograms/milliliter) were eight times more likely to develop prostate cancer than men with the lowest levels (100-185 ng/ml).
According to the researchers, these re-sults “raise concern” that an intake of rBGH or IGF-l, over time (and especially so for the elderly), “may increase the risk of prostate cancer.” Researchers suggested that IGF-1 levels in the blood might be a useful predictor of prostate cancer risk.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:2VJnU8RJSo0J:www.corporations.org/cancer/r598.doc+posilac+study+Samuel+S.+Epstein&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=10
http://www.ejnet.org/rachel/rhwn382.htm
Viruses will always be ahead of humans because they are driven by the laws of evolutionary survival not commercial profit and neatly demonstrate mankinds’ supreme folly and arrogance in believing we can become immune to and seperate from the natural world.
Hi Ann,
I apologise if my standpoint was unclear, my comment – ‘we might just make some progress in understanding how everything is interconnected because until that is taken into account, technology will hinder not help.’ – was supposed to articulate exactly the sentiments you have expressed. Nuclear power is an example of flawed technology, renewables are an example of technology designed to work with nature, not against it.
I am not hostile to all technology, merely technology designed around unsustainable practises and technology that is disingenuosly promoted as some kind of ‘magic wand’ that will solve a global problem at a stroke, but in reality does nothing of the sort.
GE technology is promoted on its own terms to fulfill very narrow requirements and no legal responsibility is taken by GE or GM corporations if anything goes wrong, these issues are classed as ‘externalities’.
Indeed most GE, GM and chemical corporations go to great lengths to ensure they cannot be held legally accountable for ‘accidents’; just ask the citizens of Bhopal (Methyl isocyanate the chemical that was produced at Union Carbide’s facility in Bhopal is used in pesticides).
Rachel Carson in ‘Silent Spring’ was concerned not just with the quantities of chemicals being used by the intensive agriculture industry but that corporations do not test the effects of combinations of chemicals, merely the regulationary ‘safety’ requirements for their own individual products.
People are now exposed to a vast number of man-made chemicals in all aspects of their daily lives and the fact is very little study is dedicated to how combinations of those chemicals effect us long term.
Tobacco corporations spent decades and millions on ‘scientific’ propaganda that there was no link between their products and cancer.
The concept that no winds or fauna occur around GM farms is another classic example of corporate propaganda.
The suggestion that it is impossible to have cross pollination between GM and non-GM crops is a scientific fallacy.
This of course is of no concern to GM corporations since it expands their market share by covertly destroying their competition, while at the same time those corporations claim that they are happy to compete with non-GM products on ‘merit’ alone. However they also consistently campaign against labelling that allows consumers to make an informed choice.
If GM corporations achieve sufficient market share in a farming community, they quite simply win by contamination.
Any suggestion that GM corporations are unaware of this, would require a level of stupidity amongst their scientific experts which would prevent them from identifying the significant difference between their a*** and their elbow.
All GM products are designed to lock customers (and by extention the consumer) into an exclusive commercial relationship with the supplying corporation.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlebusiness.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nN10436446&from=business
“What you’re seeing,” he explained, “is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it’s really a consolidation of the entire food chain.”
– Monsanto representative, Robert Fraley, describing his company’s corporate strategy in the magazine ‘Farm Journal’ in 1996.
Roundup (glyphosate) and genetically engineered ‘Roundup Ready’ crops are simply a revenue stream, Monsanto’s patent on Roundup ran out in 2000 so to protect revenue before that happened, Monsanto patented genetically modified crops that were resistant to glyphosate, thus perpetuating their patent by other means.
In 1997 the New York attorney-geneneral’s office forced Monsanto to withdraw adverts claiming that Roundup is “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly”.
According to the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, glyphosate is the third most commonly-reported cause of pesticide illness among farm workers and the commonest cause among landscape maintenance workers.
‘Scientists’ funded by Monsanto to produce a study of their growth hormone ‘Posilac’ reported that cows treated with the hormone suffered only a minor increase in udder infections. But when the results were re-examined by independent researchers, they found to their astonishment that only part of the data had been processed. A complete analysis revealed that the “somatic cell count” (that is pus, to you and me) increased by 20 per cent in the udders of cows treated with Posilac.
http://www.unsafescience.com/bgh.html
There is also scientific evidence that cows given growth hormone injections pass elevated hormone levels on in their milk and that this is linked to breast cancer and prostate cancer.
‘among pre-menopausal women increasing levels of IGF-1 in blood were strongly associated with increasing risk of breast cancer in a consistent dose-response relationship. Adjusting for other known breast cancer factors (age at which menstruation began; age at birth of first child; number of children; family history of breast cancer; and weight in relation to height) did not change the results’
– The Lancet (May 1998)
Science (January 1998) reported a four-fold increased risk of prostate cancer “a strong positive association” among 152 men who had elevated, but still “normal,” levels of IGF- 1. The study found that men, aged 60 and older, with high levels of IGF-1 (300-500 nanograms/milliliter) were eight times more likely to develop prostate cancer than men with the lowest levels (100-185 ng/ml).
According to the researchers, these re-sults “raise concern” that an intake of rBGH or IGF-l, over time (and especially so for the elderly), “may increase the risk of prostate cancer.” Researchers suggested that IGF-1 levels in the blood might be a useful predictor of prostate cancer risk.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:2VJnU8RJSo0J:www.corporations.org/cancer/r598.doc+posilac+study+Samuel+S.+Epstein&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=10
http://www.ejnet.org/rachel/rhwn382.htm
Viruses will always be ahead of humans because they are driven by the laws of evolutionary survival not commercial profit and neatly demonstrate mankinds’ supreme folly and arrogance in believing we can become immune to and seperate from the natural world.
Lamna, it is easy enough to take on bashing corporations, but at the end of the day it is how we use the products they deliver that really matters. If a corporation produces a product that nobody wants it quickly disappears from sight. Yes advertisers have been quite good at convincing people to buy products that they don’t really need, but as is the case elsewhere in our society the onus is on the individual to make their own choices. Farmers do and most have a pretty low tolerance for products that don’t perform.
There is no doubt that pesticides have played a major role in allowing increased food production. The major beneficiaries have not been the agrichemical corporations, but consumers. Food is now cheaper in relative terms than it has ever been. If there was a successful way of managing weeds and staying profitable without the use of herbicides you can bet that Australian farmers would be doing it. One of the constant complaints I hear from farmers is of the amount of money they have to spend on chemicals. The fact that they continue to use herbicides every year is testament to the failure of current alternatives to deliver effective weed control at a comparative price.
The evolution of chemical companies into ‘life-science’ companies owes a lot to the relatively slim pickings to be made in the agrichemical industry. Once these were chemical companies manufacturing pharmaceuticals, agrichemicals and industrial chemicals. About a decade ago, the chemical companies spun off the agrichemical divisions because they perform much worse than the pharmaceutical divisions.
While the GM corporations might like to lock their customers into exclusive relationships, it does not work that way. Farmers have a choice about whether they grow one cultivar of a crop or another. It just turns out that in the US, the majority of soybean growers have opted to use Roundup Ready soybeans. Other varieties are available, but are not grown by the majority of farmers, because they offer lower value. The same is true of canola growers in North Dakota. Cotton growers in Australia have done the same with Bt cotton. In contrast, Navigator canola (a GM product) never really got off the ground in Canada because it was not as good as its competitors on the market. Formers simply chose not to use it. BXN cotton had a slightly bigger impact, but is now virtually defunct. Again this is because farmers chose not to grow it.
Hi Chris,
Please give my regards to David Moore (Monsanto/ CropLife Australia)
http://www.weeds.crc.org.au/glyphosate/index.html
‘The new malting barley variety Flagship™ is expected to set a new standard for malting quality for the Japanese, Chinese and South-East Asia malting and brewing markets. The University of Adelaide’s commercialisation arm, Adelaide Research and Innovation, today announced its commercialisation partner for the new varieties – leading Australian agribusiness, ABB Grain Ltd. A third barley from the program (known as WI3586) will be put through a final testing regime by ABB to determine its market fit.’
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news10641.html
In view of the ‘much worse’ performance of the agrichemical industry, surely the University of Adelaide should be concentrating its best minds on pharmaceuticals, rather than the ‘slim pickings to be made in the agrichemical industry’?
It is most reassuring to know that projects will be ‘completed to budget, to specification, to deadline’ but isn’t ‘Master of the Universe’ an old 1980s merchant banking term?
http://www.ecic.adelaide.edu.au/
‘Bashing corporations’ is made considerably easier by the behaviour of the corporations themselves:
‘Monsanto fined $1.5 million for bribery’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4153635.stm
‘Roundup Ready® canola is like other canola. It’s nutritional qualities and food safety are equivalent to conventional canola.
In a paddock, it looks the same as other canola. With the exception of glyphosate based herbicides (such as Roundup®) unwanted plants can be effectively controlled with the same herbicides as conventional canola.’
http://www.monsanto.com.au/layout/canola/rr_canola/default.asp
So to sum up the only benefit to Roundup Ready® canola is that it is glyphosate resistant but since persistant use of the same pesticide causes ‘weeds’ to develop resistance, this is not a benefit either.
Monsanto somehow forgot to mention that the yields from their GM product are lower than conventional canola.
‘The success of RR soybeans is remarkable in light of the magnitude of the so-called Roundup Ready “yield drag.” Under most conditions extensive evidence shows that RR soybeans produce lower yields than possible if farmers planted comparable but non-engineered varieties.’
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/RRS-Yield-Drag.htm
So bearing all this in mind why the rush to use GM products by famers? Simple, at the current time intensive agricultural processes are the only way for agricultural suppliers to meet the demands of ever lower prices by corporations like WalMart.
Farmers are increasingly unable to afford more agriculturally sustainable practises like proper crop rotations and varied chemicals because the drive for ever cheaper food is destroying normal farm economics and intensive farming methods are the only way of delivering the necessary economies of scale.
If farmers can use the agricultural equivalent of ‘Agent Orange’ (another chemical Monsanto used to produce) then they do not have to apply it as often (initially) and this saves money (initially) although these benefits are rapidly eroded.
‘Food is now cheaper in relative terms than it has ever been’ –
It certainly is in the developed world, because the consumer is not being informed of the real cost of all that ‘cheap’ food in biosphere degredation or the way the farming community is being impoverished by the corporations supplying food to consumers at bargain basement prices.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4742949.stm
There is no such thing as a free lunch and there never will be.
Some may wonder why Monsanto has remained in the struggling agribusiness:
‘Monsanto made $4.9 billion in sales in the fiscal year ended 31st August 2003.
Of that, $1.9 billion came from biotech seeds, such as corn and soybeans genetically modified to resist certain insects and withstand applications of Roundup or generic glyphosate weed-killer.
Sales of Roundup were $1.8 billion. And the company made $1.2 billion in revenue from other agricultural productivity products, primarily its Posilac growth hormone for dairy cows.’
‘For the full fiscal year, the company made a profit of $68 million’ after taking a one time hit to pay ‘$396 million to help settle a liability lawsuit over decades-old contamination of Anniston, Ala., with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.’
– St Louis Post
Perhaps by encouraging international government investment in R&D through educational channels, Monsanto will weather the storm.
North Dakota State University and biotechnology company Monsanto have agreed to work together on ways to improve oilseed crops for biodiesel fuel and other products.
School officials say the partnership makes sense because the state leads the nation in the production of canola, a preferred ingredient in biodiesel.
“This is a great big deal for us,” said Ken Grafton, dean of agriculture at NDSU. “In talking to my colleagues across the country, we don’t see this level of partnership with private industry.”
http://www.northerncanola.com/
Certainly biotech R&D has an added benefit for Monsanto, through its patent on the 35S promoter, a genetic mechanism used extensively in the biotech industry.
‘All biotech companies using the promoter must pay Monsanto a technology use fee. By 2004, the company had a 29.82 percent share of all research and development in the biotech industry.’
– Center for Food Safety, 2005
‘BXN cotton had a slightly bigger impact, but is now virtually defunct. Again this is because farmers chose not to grow it.’ –
Are you sure Chris? Wouldn’t the fact that BXN cotton was produced by Calgene, a company that Monsanto bought in 1997 be a fairly direct cause of its replacement by Roundup Ready product?
Would Monsanto’s spending $8 billion acquiring, or establishing relationships with, US and foreign seed companies have anything to do with the popularity of its products and farmers ‘choice’?
Certainly the 2005 report by the Center for Food Safety stated that one of the factors contributing to Monsanto’s cornering of the GM market is its control of these seed companies.
“These companies (often owned or indirectly controlled by Monsanto) had to agree that 90 percent of the sales of herbicide-tolerant soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology.
This requirement was later dropped to 70 percent after Monsanto came under scrutiny from government regulators. Through this sort of ownership and control of seed companies, Monsanto has been able to ensure that competition [will] remain small and that its patented genetically engineered crop varieties [will] be the ones most readily available”.
http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=seeds_tmln&startpos=0#gm-3
The UK Soil Association’s 2003 report, Seeds of Doubt, shows that virtually every benefit claimed for GE crops since 1996 has not occurred.
‘Instead farmers using GE seeds are reporting lower yields, continuing dependency on herbicides and pesticides, loss of access to international markets and a loss of profitability.
The Soil Association estimates that GE soya, maize and oilseed rape could have cost the US economy US$12 billion since 1999 in farm subsidies, lower crop prices, loss of major export orders and product recalls.’
‘One of the stranger findings of the report is that rats may be fussier than humans when it comes to eating these products.
“A student placed two bales of maize in a rodent infested barn. One was Roundup Ready and the other was conventional. Apparently the rodents would not touch the Roundup Ready crop”
– Greenpeace
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/ed0930aa86103d8380256aa70054918d/a72f34ecca9b64e880256cd70037de0a!OpenDocument
‘Bashing corporations’ is made considerably easier by the behaviour of the corporations themselves:
‘Monsanto fined $1.5 million for bribery’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4153635.stm
‘Roundup Ready® canola is like other canola. It’s nutritional qualities and food safety are equivalent to conventional canola.
In a paddock, it looks the same as other canola. With the exception of glyphosate based herbicides (such as Roundup®) unwanted plants can be effectively controlled with the same herbicides as conventional canola.’
http://www.monsanto.com.au/layout/canola/rr_canola/default.asp
So to sum up the only benefit to Roundup Ready® canola is that it is glyphosate resistant but since persistant use of the same pesticide causes ‘weeds’ to develop resistance, this is not a benefit either.
Monsanto somehow forgot to mention that the yields from their GM product are lower than conventional canola.
‘The success of RR soybeans is remarkable in light of the magnitude of the so-called Roundup Ready® “yield drag.” Under most conditions extensive evidence shows that RR soybeans produce lower yields than possible if farmers planted comparable but non-engineered varieties.’
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/RRS-Yield-Drag.htm
So bearing all this in mind why the rush to use GM products by famers? Simple, at the current time intensive agricultural processes are the only way for agricultural suppliers to meet the demands of ever lower prices by corporations like WalMart.
Farmers are increasingly unable to afford more agriculturally sustainable practises like proper crop rotations and varied chemicals because the drive for ever cheaper food is destroying normal farm economics and intensive farming methods are the only way of delivering the necessary economies of scale.
If farmers can use the agricultural equivalent of Agent Orange (another chemical Monsanto used to produce) then they do not have to apply it as often (initially) and this saves money (initially) although these benefits are rapidly eroded.
‘Food is now cheaper in relative terms than it has ever been’ –
It certainly is in the developed world, because the consumer is not being informed of the real cost of all that ‘cheap’ food in biosphere degredation or the way the farming community is being impoverished by the corporations supplying food to consumers at bargain basement prices.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4742949.stm
There is no such thing as a free lunch and there never will be.
Some may wonder why Monsanto has remained in the struggling agribusiness:
‘Monsanto made $4.9 billion in sales in the fiscal year ended 31st August 2003.
Of that, $1.9 billion came from biotech seeds, such as corn and soybeans genetically modified to resist certain insects and withstand applications of Roundup or generic glyphosate weed-killer.
Sales of Roundup® were $1.8 billion. And the company made $1.2 billion in revenue from other agricultural productivity products, primarily its Posilac® growth hormone for dairy cows.’
‘For the full fiscal year, the company made a profit of $68 million’ after taking a one time hit to pay ‘$396 million to help settle a liability lawsuit over decades-old contamination of Anniston, Ala., with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.’
– St Louis Post
Perhaps by encouraging international government investment in R&D through educational channels, Monsanto will weather the storm.
North Dakota State University and biotechnology company Monsanto have agreed to work together on ways to improve oilseed crops for biodiesel fuel and other products.
School officials say the partnership makes sense because the state leads the nation in the production of canola, a preferred ingredient in biodiesel.
“This is a great big deal for us,” said Ken Grafton, dean of agriculture at NDSU. “In talking to my colleagues across the country, we don’t see this level of partnership with private industry.”
http://www.northerncanola.com/
Certainly biotech R&D has an added benefit for Monsanto, through its patent on the 35S promoter, a genetic mechanism used extensively in the biotech industry.
‘All biotech companies using the promoter must pay Monsanto a technology use fee. By 2004, the company had a 29.82 percent share of all research and development in the biotech industry.’
– Center for Food Safety, 2005
‘BXN cotton had a slightly bigger impact, but is now virtually defunct. Again this is because farmers chose not to grow it.’ –
Are you sure Chris? Wouldn’t the fact that BXN cotton was produced by Calgene, a company that Monsanto bought in 1997 be a fairly direct cause of its replacement by Roundup Ready® product?
Would Monsanto’s spending $8 billion acquiring, or establishing relationships with, US and foreign seed companies have anything to do with the popularity of its products and farmers ‘choice’?
Certainly the 2005 report by the Center for Food Safety stated that one of the factors contributing to Monsanto’s cornering of the GM market is its control of these seed companies.
“These companies (often owned or indirectly controlled by Monsanto) had to agree that 90 percent of the sales of herbicide-tolerant soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology.
This requirement was later dropped to 70 percent after Monsanto came under scrutiny from government regulators. Through this sort of ownership and control of seed companies, Monsanto has been able to ensure that competition [will] remain small and that its patented genetically engineered crop varieties [will] be the ones most readily available”.
http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=seeds_tmln&startpos=0#gm-3
The UK Soil Association’s 2003 report, Seeds of Doubt, shows that virtually every benefit claimed for GE crops since 1996 has not occurred.
‘Instead farmers using GE seeds are reporting lower yields, continuing dependency on herbicides and pesticides, loss of access to international markets and a loss of profitability.
The Soil Association estimates that GE soya, maize and oilseed rape could have cost the US economy US$12 billion since 1999 in farm subsidies, lower crop prices, loss of major export orders and product recalls.’
‘One of the stranger findings of the report is that rats may be fussier than humans when it comes to eating these products.
“A student placed two bales of maize in a rodent infested barn. One was Roundup Ready® and the other was conventional. Apparently the rodents would not touch the Roundup Ready® crop”
– Greenpeace
http://www.soilassociation.org/b/sa/saweb.nsf/ed0930aa86103d8380256aa70054918d/a72f34ecca9b64e880256cd70037de0a!OpenDocumentwe
Hi Jennifer,
Apologies, I sent this post twice before realising the final link did not work, I have now fixed it.
‘Bashing corporations’ is made considerably easier by the behaviour of the corporations themselves:
‘Monsanto fined $1.5 million for bribery’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4153635.stm
‘Roundup Ready® canola is like other canola. It’s nutritional qualities and food safety are equivalent to conventional canola.
In a paddock, it looks the same as other canola. With the exception of glyphosate based herbicides (such as Roundup®) unwanted plants can be effectively controlled with the same herbicides as conventional canola.’
http://www.monsanto.com.au/layout/canola/rr_canola/default.asp
So to sum up the only benefit to Roundup Ready® canola is that it is glyphosate resistant but since persistant use of the same pesticide causes ‘weeds’ to develop resistance, this is not a benefit either.
Monsanto somehow forgot to mention that the yields from their GM product are lower than conventional canola.
‘The success of RR soybeans is remarkable in light of the magnitude of the so-called Roundup Ready® “yield drag.” Under most conditions extensive evidence shows that RR soybeans produce lower yields than possible if farmers planted comparable but non-engineered varieties.’
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/RRS-Yield-Drag.htm
So bearing all this in mind why the rush to use GM products by famers? Simple, at the current time intensive agricultural processes are the only way for agricultural suppliers to meet the demands of ever lower prices by corporations like WalMart.
Farmers are increasingly unable to afford more agriculturally sustainable practises like proper crop rotations and varied chemicals because the drive for ever cheaper food is destroying normal farm economics and intensive farming methods are the only way of delivering the necessary economies of scale.
If farmers can use the agricultural equivalent of Agent Orange (another chemical Monsanto used to produce) then they do not have to apply it as often (initially) and this saves money (initially) although these benefits are rapidly eroded.
‘Food is now cheaper in relative terms than it has ever been’ –
It certainly is in the developed world, because the consumer is not being informed of the real cost of all that ‘cheap’ food in biosphere degredation or the way the farming community is being impoverished by the corporations supplying food to consumers at bargain basement prices.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4742949.stm
There is no such thing as a free lunch and there never will be.
Some may wonder why Monsanto has remained in the struggling agribusiness:
‘Monsanto made $4.9 billion in sales in the fiscal year ended 31st August 2003.
Of that, $1.9 billion came from biotech seeds, such as corn and soybeans genetically modified to resist certain insects and withstand applications of Roundup or generic glyphosate weed-killer.
Sales of Roundup® were $1.8 billion. And the company made $1.2 billion in revenue from other agricultural productivity products, primarily its Posilac® growth hormone for dairy cows.’
‘For the full fiscal year, the company made a profit of $68 million’ after taking a one time hit to pay ‘$396 million to help settle a liability lawsuit over decades-old contamination of Anniston, Ala., with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.’
– St Louis Post
Perhaps by encouraging international government investment in R&D through educational channels, Monsanto will weather the storm.
North Dakota State University and biotechnology company Monsanto have agreed to work together on ways to improve oilseed crops for biodiesel fuel and other products.
School officials say the partnership makes sense because the state leads the nation in the production of canola, a preferred ingredient in biodiesel.
“This is a great big deal for us,” said Ken Grafton, dean of agriculture at NDSU. “In talking to my colleagues across the country, we don’t see this level of partnership with private industry.”
http://www.northerncanola.com/
8/1/2006 – New Biodiesel Team
Certainly biotech R&D has an added benefit for Monsanto, through its patent on the 35S promoter, a genetic mechanism used extensively in the biotech industry.
‘All biotech companies using the promoter must pay Monsanto a technology use fee. By 2004, the company had a 29.82 percent share of all research and development in the biotech industry.’
– Center for Food Safety, 2005
‘BXN cotton had a slightly bigger impact, but is now virtually defunct. Again this is because farmers chose not to grow it.’ –
Are you sure Chris? Wouldn’t the fact that BXN cotton was produced by Calgene, a company that Monsanto bought in 1997 be a fairly direct cause of its replacement by Roundup Ready® product?
Would Monsanto’s spending $8 billion acquiring, or establishing relationships with, US and foreign seed companies have anything to do with the popularity of its products and farmers ‘choice’?
Certainly the 2005 report by the Center for Food Safety stated that one of the factors contributing to Monsanto’s cornering of the GM market is its control of these seed companies.
“These companies (often owned or indirectly controlled by Monsanto) had to agree that 90 percent of the sales of herbicide-tolerant soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology.
This requirement was later dropped to 70 percent after Monsanto came under scrutiny from government regulators. Through this sort of ownership and control of seed companies, Monsanto has been able to ensure that competition [will] remain small and that its patented genetically engineered crop varieties [will] be the ones most readily available”.
http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=seeds_tmln&startpos=0#gm-3
The UK Soil Association’s 2003 report, Seeds of Doubt, shows that virtually every benefit claimed for GE crops since 1996 has not occurred.
‘Instead farmers using GE seeds are reporting lower yields, continuing dependency on herbicides and pesticides, loss of access to international markets and a loss of profitability.
The Soil Association estimates that GE soya, maize and oilseed rape could have cost the US economy US$12 billion since 1999 in farm subsidies, lower crop prices, loss of major export orders and product recalls.’
‘One of the stranger findings of the report is that rats may be fussier than humans when it comes to eating these products.
“A student placed two bales of maize in a rodent infested barn. One was Roundup Ready® and the other was conventional. Apparently the rodents would not touch the Roundup Ready® crop”
– Greenpeace
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/ed0930aa86103d8380256aa70054918d/a72f34ecca9b64e880256cd70037de0a!OpenDocument
b0c414b4f981 I bookmarked your site and will read it regularly
weed chemicals of weeds in some filed crops