| inbluevt | Date: Wednesday, 2013/07/10, 7:23 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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Ah, high summer. Time to read stories about the declining effectiveness of GMO-seed giant Monsanto's flagship products: crops engineered to resist insects and withstand herbicides.
Back in 2008, I felt a bit lonely participating in this annual rite—it was mainly just me and reporters in a the Big Ag trade press. Over the past couple of years, though, it's gone mainstream. Here's NPR's star agriculture reporter Dan Charles, on corn farmers' agri-chemically charged reaction to the rise of an insect that has come to thumb its nose at Monsanto's once-vaunted Bt corn, engineered to
contain the bug-killing gene of a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis:
It appears that farmers have gotten part of the message: Biotechnology alone will not solve their rootworm problems. But instead of shifting away from those corn hybrids, or from corn altogether, many are doubling down on insect-fighting technology, deploying more chemical pesticides than before. Companies like or that sell soil insecticides for use in corn fields are reporting huge increases in sales: 50 or even 100 percent over the past two years.
And this, from a veteran observer of the GMO-seed industry who—in my view—sometimes errs on the side of being too soft on it.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Wednesday, 2013/07/10, 7:25 AM |
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