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SW: superweed 2010 update
Regarding the need for more study of this Paul E. Arriola, Associate Professor of Biology at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois said in a personal correspondence "Scientists expressing concern about negative consequences for wide scale GM release have recommended for years that GM producing companies make available probes that could be used for long-term monitoring, but the call has fallen on deaf ears in both industry and the federal government". Providing appropriate genetic probes would, he says "violate company policy" regarding Monsanto's "confidential business information" and thus "it is not likely to happen".
Taken from William Neuman & Andrew Pollack, [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?src=busln ''Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds''], New York Times, May 3, 2010:
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near ubiquitous use of Roundup has led to rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds. Farmers throughout the East, Midwest, and South have been forced to spray their fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand, and return to more labor intensive methods like regular plowing as a result of the RR superweeds. “We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Eddie Anderson, a farmer from Tennessee, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years.
Farm experts say such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farms costs, and more pollution of land and water. Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts said, “It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen.”
The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton, and corn. Please see this [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/business/weeds-graphic.html?ref=energy-environment interactive map] of where Roundup no longer works (2000-2009).
The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some GM crops. RR soybeans, corn, and cotton have become standard, but if Roundup does not kill weeds, farmers will have little incentive to spend extra money for special seeds.
Since thee late 1990s, when Monsanto created its brand of RR crops, farmers have sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward,” Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.
Now RR weeds like horseweed and giant ragweed are forcing farmers to go back to more expensive techniques that they had long ago abandoned. Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more, choking out crops; it is so sturdy it can damage harvesting equipment. In an attempt to kill the pest before it becomes that big, many farmers are now plowing their fields and mixing herbicides into the soil.
However, that threatens to reverse one the agricultural advances bolstered by the Roundup revolution: minimum-till farming. By combining Roundup and RR crops, farmers did not have to plow under the weeds to control them. That reduced erosion, the runoff of chemicals into waterways, and the use of fuel for tractors.
Some critics of GM crops say that the use of extra herbicides, including some old ones that are less environmentally tolerable than Roundup, belies the claim made by the biotech industry that its crops would be better for the environment.
“The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture when they’ve always promised, and we need to be going in, the opposite direction,” Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the [[Center for Food Safety]] said.
So far the total amount of land afflicted has been relatively small—7-10 million acres, according to the director of the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds. RR weeds have also been found in several other countries, including Australia, China and Brazil.
Monsanto, which once argued that resistance would not become a major problem, now warns against exaggerating its impact: “It’s a serious issue, but it’s manageable,” said Rick Cole, who manages weed resistance issues for Monsanto. Monsanto argues that Roundup still controls hundreds of weeds, yet the company is concerned enough that it is taking the extraordinary step of subsidizing cotton farmers’ purchases of competing herbicides to supplement Roundup.
See also the report [http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/Contaminating_the_Wild_Report.pdf Contaminating the Wild?] Gene Flow from Experimental Field Trials of Genetically Engineered Crops to Related Wild Plants.
