{"id":1318,"date":"2011-12-02T13:50:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T19:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=1318"},"modified":"2012-01-12T14:26:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T20:26:09","slug":"gmo-crops-fail-again-this-time-its-bt-corn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2011\/12\/02\/gmo-crops-fail-again-this-time-its-bt-corn\/","title":{"rendered":"GMO Crops Fail Again–This Time Its Bt Corn"},"content":{"rendered":"

For twenty years biotech companies have been\u00a0promising\u00a0higher crop yields and lower costs if farmers would plant their genetically modified (GMO) seeds; however, studies are showing that GMO crops\u00a0don’t produce higher yields and\u00a0lowered costs.\u00a0 Monsanto has already admitted<\/a> that in India the bollworm has\u00a0become resistant to the Bt<\/em> cotton that was engineered to kill it.\u00a0 In 2009, the Bt<\/em> cotton variety used in four districts in India was found to attract<\/em> the pink bollworm, a major cotton plantation pest. Not only are insect pests becoming resistant to the engineered pesticides, but crops engineered to resist herbicides have produced “superweeds”<\/a> that are highly resistant to the\u00a0GM herbicides.\u00a0 Farmers in South America are using twice as much herbicide <\/a>on their GM crops as they do on conventional crops.\u00a0 Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has greatly increased the cost through use of additional\u00a0chemicals and crop damage.<\/p>\n

Now even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admits<\/a> that the GMO corn engineered to resist the\u00a0corn rootworm may be failing.\u00a0\u00a0 A recent EPA memo said that “resistance is suspected in at least some portions of four states in which ‘unexpected damage’ reports originated.”\u00a0\u00a0The EPA is reviewing documented cases of severe crop damage.\u00a0 The rootworms have apparently developed a tolerance for the insecticide engineered into the Bt<\/em> corn.\u00a0 Rootworms can be very destructive and cost U.S. farmers about $1 billion each year in damages and costs of chemical pesticides.<\/p>\n

In July, an Iowa State University study<\/a> found that corn rootworms had evolved resistance to the rootworm-killing\u00a0Bt protein engineered ito the Monsanto corn.\u00a0 Entomologists in other states are studying the possible rootworm resistance.<\/p>\n

Monsanto’s response to the potential problem is first to deny any scientific confirmation of resistance.\u00a0 It recommends rotating corn crops with soybeans or switching to another Monsanto GM corn called SmartStax, which has two types of Bt <\/em>proteins engineered into it.\u00a0 Monsanto does admit one problem with SmartStax–if the double Bt corn is planted in fields where rootworms have already developed resistance, it probably won’t work.\u00a0 There are other problems with SmartStax<\/a>–early harvests are showing less yield than lower priced seed.<\/p>\n

The EPA recommendation to combat the rootworm resistance is to use conventional pesticide.\u00a0 So, in addition to the farmers’ costs of planting the GMO seeds, which now don’t work as promised, they must\u00a0pay for additional chemicals to kill the rootworms in order to save their crops.\u00a0 Paying twice for rootworm protection doesn’t lower the cost!\u00a0 How can higher crop yields be expected if the engineered protection doesn’t work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For twenty years biotech companies have been\u00a0promising\u00a0higher crop yields and lower costs if farmers would plant their genetically modified (GMO) seeds; however, studies are showing that GMO crops\u00a0don’t produce higher yields and\u00a0lowered costs.\u00a0 Monsanto has already admitted that in India …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,17,19],"tags":[25,64,405,31],"class_list":["post-1318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmos","category-local-farming","category-real-food","tag-food-rights-2","tag-food-safety-2","tag-gmos","tag-sustainable-farming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-lg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}