Nature strikes back at Monsanto
Article from the August 2013 issue of Noseweek Magazine.
Nature strikes back at Monsanto – with megaweeds and superbugs!
Suddenly stories about the declining effectiveness of GMO-seed giant Monsanto’s flagship products, engineered to resist insects and withstand herbicides (weed killers), are hitting the mainstream press in America.
Genetically engineered or modified crops were supposed to improve yields, lower costs for farmers and reduce agriculture’s environmental impact. Yet nearly 20 years after their introduction, they have not provided the benefits promised by the companies that patented them, the US consumer organisation Food & Water Watch says in a report released on July 1.
The study concludes that the rapid proliferation of GE crops and affiliated pesticides in the US – and the interdependent relationship between the two industries – is fuelling a crisis of weed resistance.
Data from the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds reveals a burgeoning of herbicide-resistant weeds caused by agriculture’s over-reliance on glyphosate (generally known by its brand name, Roundup) for their broad control. And that, as weeds have become increasingly resistant to Roundup, farmers are increasingly reverting to using (ever larger doses of) a particularly nasty older weedkiller, called 2,4-D. But the problem of herbicide-resistant weeds will not be solved with the intensified use of older, more toxic herbicides, the organisation warns.
Until now, says Mother Jones’s Food and Agriculture specialist Tom Philpott, most public attention has focused on the super insects that have evolved to shrug off copious doses of Roundup – the herbicide that’s supposed to make Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops immune to weed problems. The superbugs have taken the media spotlight off the superweeds which, meanwhile, have been gaining ground – and farmers have been responding with a “chemical deluge”.
Philpott cites The Wall Street Journal piece, “Pesticides Make a Comeback”, in which it was reported that many maize farmers were going back to using chemicals “as Mother Nature outwits genetically modified seeds”. It said a surge in insecticide sales after years of decline, meant a genetic modification, derived from a bacteria and designed to protect the crop from pests had started to lose effectiveness – a positive indicator for shares in big pesticide and herbicide makers. In 2010, University of Illinois researcher Michael Gray had found that in Iowa, for example, farmers were needing to apply a pre-emergent residual herbicide to help control Roundup resistant weeds that are beginning to show up in their fields. In the South, the super- weeds are rampant.
If Monsanto’s seeds are failing, Philpott asks, why are farmers still buying them? Part habit, he guesses – “easier to plant Roundup Ready corn and supplement Roundup with a harsher herbicide than to try a whole new weed-control system” – but the answer, he suggests, “may also, at least partly, lie in the GMO seed giants’ dominance of the seed market. In many states farmers reported that cheaper, non-GM seed was simply not available.
“Last year, the US Department of Justice unceremoniously halted its antitrust investigation of Monsanto and its peers without taking action .. .Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, and Dow together control 80% of the corn (maize) seed market and 70% of the soy market.” Philpott points out that in seven US counties a third of farmers said they had no access to high-quality corn seeds that weren’t genetically modified with Monsanto’s Bt insecticide trait.
At any rate, as Food & Water Watch notes, the withering of herbicide-tolerant and Bt-infused crops hasn’t hurt these companies: “indeed, they also sell pesticides where sales are booming”.
Philpott warned last year that Dow had engineered a corn strain that withstands lashings of its 2,4-D herbicide. “The company’s pitch to farmers: Your fields are being choked by weeds resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. As soon as the USDA okays our product, your problems will be solved.”
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