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SW: →What Increased Yield?: adding info
"Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis. The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.... The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.... A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over.... Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted – the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger. Professor Bob Watson, the director of the study and chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked if GM could solve world hunger, said: 'The simple answer is no'" [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html?startindex=10].
Monsanto of course disputes this conclusion by implying that somehow their genetic engineering can inherently cause each individual plant to produce more food than it could naturally. India's Devinder Sharma, Food Policy Analyst and author, however, takes exception to that claim by pointing out that rather than ''increasing yields'', what GM crops were actually designed to do through the use of copius amounts of their herbicides and the inclusion of BT pesticide is to ''reduce crop losses'' from from insects and weeds - and that's when working as designed (increasingly not the case) [http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2009/03/do-gm-crop-increase-yield-answer-is-no.html].
<blockquote>''This is not amusing. It can't be taken lightly anymore. I am not only shocked but also disgusted at the way corporations try to fabricate and swing the facts, dress them up in a manner that the so-called 'educated' of today will accept them without asking any question ... In scientific terms, these are called crop losses, which have been very cleverly repacked as yield increases. What Monsanto has done is to indulge in a jugglery of scientific terminologies, and taking advantage of your ignorance, to build up on claims that actually do not exist ... When was the last time you were told that herbicides increase crop yields? Chemical herbicides are known to be reducing crop losses. This is what I was taught when I was studying plant breeding. And this is what is still being taught to agricultural science students everywhere in the world ... If GM crops increase yields, shouldn't we therefore say that chemical pesticides (including herbicides) also increase yields? Will the agricultural scientific community accept that pesticides increases crop yields? ... whenever the crop yields are higher the scientists and the companies take credit. But when the crop yields are lower the blame invariably shifts to weather. And it makes me wonder why don't the scientists pat the weather at times of bumper harvest? You guessed it right''.</blockquote>
Interestingly, Monsanto director of public affairs Brad Mitchell, has recently made the following comment: "The main uses of GM crops are to make them insect tolerant and herbicide tolerant. ''They don't inherently increase the yield''. They protect the yield." {emphasis mine). His comments were in response to a major Union of Concerned Scientists report [http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-to-yield.html Failure to Yield] which, after reviewing "two dozen academic studies of corn and soybeans, the two primary genetically engineered food and feed crops grown in the United States", concluded that GM offers no inherent benefit in yields, especially as compared to other, less contoversial methods. See also [http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-to-yield-FAQs.html this FAQ].
<blockquote> ''It ... makes little sense to support genetic engineering at the expense of technologies that have proven to substantially increase yields, especially in many developing countries. In addition, recent studies have shown that organic and similar farming methods that minimize the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers can more than double crop yields at little cost to poor farmers in such developing regions as Sub-Saharan Africa''.</blockquote>
As a side note, the UCS refer to two Monsanto advertising posters. While [http://www.monsanto.com/pdf/sustainability/advertisement_now_what.pdf one] states that their "advanced seeds ... significantly increase crop yields" [http://www.monsanto.com/pdf/sustainability/advertisement.pdf the other] says "our goal is to develop seeds that significantly increase crop yields". There is a difference.
==The rise of the superweeds==
