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Overuse of Bioengineered Corn Gives Rise To Resistant Pests
An anonymous reader writes "Though warned by scientists that overuse of a variety of corn engineered to be toxic to corn rootworms would eventually breed rootworms with resistance to its engineered toxicity, the agricultural industry went ahead and overused the corn anyway with little EPA intervention. The corn was planted in 1996. The first reports of rootworm resistance were officially documented in 2011, though agricultural scientists weren't allowed by seed companies to study the engineered corn until 2010. Now, a recent study has clearly shown how the rootworms have successfully adapted to the engineered corn. The corn's continued over-use is predicted, given current trends, and as resistance eventually spreads to the whole rootworm population, farmers will be forced to start using pesticides once more, thus negating the economic benefits of the engineered corn. 'Rootworm resistance was expected from the outset, but the Bt seed industry, seeking to maximize short-term profits, ignored outside scientists.'"
Are those bioengineers creationists who didn't think nature would adapt to those new genes? crazy.
YA RLY
And the corporations selling this stuff cannot care less about it, all they care about is that we transition to patented and sterile seeds so we perpetually depend on them. All the fuss surrounding GMO is about this.
Needless to say, the corporations should be prosecuted as fraudsters unless those buying the seeds sign a contract which clearly states they assume all responsibility for what the seeds do to their environment and the nearby fields. Because if something bad happens it's the fault of either one.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
is this: agricultural scientists weren't allowed by seed companies to study the engineered corn until 2010.
surely with the help of our corrupt lawmakers.
How in the hell can scientists NOT be allowed to study IN DETAIL, and from the get-go, something as fundamentally groundbreaking and new as genetic engineering applied on a planet-wide scale for the first time ever in the history of life itself?
We need a revolution to overthrow the current government structures the world over, and sooner rather than later, if only because some day, Something Bad[tm] will happen that'll cause genuine harm to humanity.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
We need to start outsourcing our problems to Nature. How about we genetically engineer corn which can only be eaten by organisms which excrete efficient batteries, BitCoins and flying cars?
Presumably there are other ways of reducing the pest population and ways of delaying resistance to this and to pesticides. Consider crop rotation, for example. Gardeners know that some plants shouldn't be planted in the same place year after year because the pest population increases over time (and because of the effect on the soil, and sometimes other reasons). I'm sure farmers know this, too. But if maize is the best paying crop and someone offers you these seeds as a way to continue to plant maize on a heavily infested area, what are you going to do?
Such counter-revolutionary feeling is only happening due to yours being a matter of breaking away from a foreign power that was very busy at the time and so didn't come in to wash the streets of New York with blood. You clearly cannot imagine the price. Take a look at revolutions against strong and established governments based where the revolution has happened and you'll get a good idea of the cost. Take a look at the outcomes of those and compare it to what George Washington's revolution gave you.
Do you really think you will get something better and what is wrong with George Washington's ideas in the first place that another revolution is required to replace them?
Why do you think it will turn out better than what Egypt is dealing with now?
unless those buying the seeds sign a contract which clearly states they assume all responsibility for what the seeds do to their environment
Well, I might not have the same perspective on "muh freedom", but you shouldn't be allowed to sign such a contract at all, because the scope obviously surpasses you. In an ideal world with an ideal justice system, such a contract should be void and both those who sold and those who used the seeds are responsible for the damage.
Sterile seeds have little to do with that, by the way, as they have been easy to produce and have been used for a long time already (sterility can be either desired or undesired depending on the crop, but usually it's just a side effect from hybridisation).
"Plant evolves defense."
Stop right there ! There's no such thing as evolution. Pests didn't evolve defense, God created new resistant pests. All those farmers who used GMO crops are obviously gay and are punished for it. *That's the only explanation.*
Years ago (10 years or more)? There was a study about the arms race in agricultural pest control. The subject of this study was a genetically engineered crop that made its own poison, but that was not really relevant to the outcome of the study. Traditional spraying would have the same effect.
It was discovered that poison did not only fight pests, it also helps pests. The non-resistant pest bugs were killed, but the resistant pest bugs were given a predator-free environment. This was important, because the poison resistance often comes with lower chances of survival in non-poisoned environments. For example, one poison had an impact on the nerve system, paralysing non-resistant bugs. Resistant bugs had a nerve system that worked much slower, so they would be a "sitting duck" in a natural environment.
the study showed that if a certain portion of the land (recommended was 15% to 20%, which sound like a lot, but is peanuts compared to the 60% loss often found due to resistant pests) was planted with non-poisoned crops, the whole arms race could actually be stopped. The bugs would move between plants, and if they came on a poisoned plant they would be attacked by the poison, and if they came on a natural plant, they would be attacked by their natural predators.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Diversity is the key. (Crop rotation is just one example.) The whole "mega-scale, mono-culture" approach to farming is flawed, and these GMO tweaks are just prolonging its inevitable demise. The future lies with smaller-scale, multi-species farms which more closely mimic the patterns found in nature.
For example, put multiple crops in a single field, alternating several rows of each (depending on what equipment you're using), and interspersed with "islands" of other species whose purpose is to provide habitat for the predators of your pests. You might not get quite as much yield, but if you don't have to spend a dime on pesticide, you'll still come out ahead.
It's a lot more sophisticated than I can explain here, but there are plenty of people doing this already, and it is growing in popularity. There are many different methods being developed, most of which fit under the umbrella of "permaculture" or "holistic management". Look at what Joel Salatin is doing at Poliface Farm in Virginia, or what Colin Seis is doing with "pasture cropping" in Australia, as just a couple of prominent examples.
There are better ways to produce our food and fiber, it's just going to take a while to revolutionize the entire industry.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
The deeper problem, of which all this is a direct consequence, is allowing short term economic considerations of a tiny minority to outweigh the mid to long term environmental and health consequences (with associated dollar cost, of course) for society at large.
FTFS:
The corn was planted in 1996. The first reports of rootworm resistance were officially documented in 2011, though agricultural scientists weren't allowed by seed companies to study the engineered corn until 2010.
Same thing is happening around fracking, companies are disallowing scientists to scrutinize the many chemicals they're squirting down into the earth, because trade secrets.
In a democracy, everyone is responsible and accountable when, decade after decade, private profits are allowed to trump public well being, time and time again.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Okay, I can be pretty dense when it comes to reading between the lines, but even I notice a heavy dose of agenda in this summary. It's a good thing the anti-GMO folks have a crystal ball to see the future clearly.
I guess we need our daily dose of propaganda though.
I'm pro-GMO but I think this is one of the legitimate issues. If you engineer something to resist a pest the pest is going to evolve a response, we've learned that lesson countless times with anti-biotics but the pests evolve faster than human nature.
Perhaps I am missing something but I fail to see the issue? it was completely expected for the pests to overcome it, GE corn was never going to be a solution forever, it doesn't negate all the years of use they got out of not having to use a heap of chemicals to kill the pests. Now they have to go back to chemicals again though, at least until they find the next method to counter them.
YA RLY
And the corporations selling this stuff cannot care less about it, all they care about is that we transition to patented and sterile seeds so we perpetually depend on them.
my biggest concern is that they start creating what can only be described as "generation time-bomb crops", in a pathologically-insane effort to further save money. "time-bomb crops" would be those which you plant once, they grow, seed, plant twice, they grow, place a third time and they FAIL.
now imagine such insanely-dangerous crops pollenating and cross-pollenating world-wide and it's not so hard to imagine a scenario in which world famine occurs within a five to eight year period in which all food crops world-wide completely fail.
i was actually pretty shocked when i first heard of sterile seeds that even have a *single* generation planting. there's no guarantee that nature will not, through its own process of DNA evolution, *accidentally* come up with generation time-bomb crops.
i've said it once and i'll say it again: genetic modifications to crops are so insanely dangerous that i'm beyond understanding why people do not understand this. if there was even the *slightest* risk of killing 7 billion people *why would you even contemplate it*?
The problem with this model is, it's not friendly to automation. You can't harvest from a complex ecosystem with a petrol driven combine.
But you can build custom forests that are filled with massive diversity of food crops, and it's not really any more work to gather your food from one than it is to go to the grocery store.
These forests deliver way, way more food per acre than any conventional farming method, by a huge margin.
Because they're built using perennial plants that will propagate themselves, once they're up, you never have to dig, and you never have to plant the earth.
Because you fill all the available ecological niches with food bearing plants, you never have to weed, and you never have to use pesticides.
Because they are stable ecosystems, once you put them together, barring fire or catastrophic weather events, they'll continue to abide for many generations of man.
All these ridiculous claims about how the Earth is overpopulated are based on the assumption that we will continue to use existing farming techniques.
The truth is, if we transitioned to this method of food production, we could completely abandon oil, increase our population into the trillions and the worlds ecosystems would not only be healthier than they are now, but they would be healthier than if mankind weren't around in the first place.
But, for it to work, people need to stop thinking of food as something that comes from the store, and start thinking of it as something that comes from the forest. People need to go pick their food themselves.
It's not more work. It won't take more time out of your day than the way you gather food now. It's just a change of lifestyle, and the quality of the food you eat goes up, and your health improves as a consequence.
Regardless of what the rest of you do, it's my intention to build such a forest, build a home within it for myself, and another for my daughter and each of my future children. But it would be a much better world for all of us if you were inspired to do the same.
I'm not saying you should download "The Complete Geoff Lawton Permaculture DVD Collection" off the pirate bay or anything, you should definitely buy a legitimate copy... but everything you need to know to get the ball rolling is in there ;)
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Yummy.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Because they are the biggest, and they invented it. Also everyone knows how big a bunch of cunts they are.
I can't see what the actual issue with the situation put forwards by the article is. Farmers have been able to use considerably less pesticide for a decade, the effectiveness of that solution is falling so they'll have to go back to using pesticide. How is that worse than just having used pesticide throughout the whole period and have the rootworm build up a better resistance to that instead?
"1996. The first reports of root worm resistance were officially documented in 2011"
So we got 15 years of pesticide-free corn? And the downside is we have to return to what we used to do, until we get another variety?
If it's 15 years for that one too, I suspect we can out engineer the bugs continually.
Welcome to the dystpoian oligarchy, where the only thing which matters is corporate profits, and where you assume it's safe until someone proves otherwise -- all the while making it impossible for people to study it enough to find out.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
In your Libertarian nonsense, there are no public goods, or Commons. Everything is owned by somebody, including your grandmother. Every bit, byte, and nibble has a price. We have actuaries and accountants to keep track of it all, yep, even the data has a price, those actuaries and accountants do not work for free. In a Libertarian utopia, we'll all have Air Measures installed in our teeth and a monthly bill for how much air you breathe. And you'll have all the firearms and rocket launchers you need to prevent anyone from stealing from your pile of loot. And you'll need them too since not everyone will feel blessed in the Libertarian Paradise.
And when you die, don't forget to settle up or your heirs will be inheriting much more than your mold and spore collection.
"and also seem to be conflating what the GMO industry is doing right now with the underlying technology."
There's a lot of that going around. Isn't that what pretty much every anti-GMO person does?
It's called OVERuse for a reason. If you use these technologies in reasonable ways, you can control pest populations while maintaining the effectiveness of the toxin. If you ONLY use this corn and it's this effective, you are basically breading the corn rootworms for resistance.
If you stupidly sprint at the start of a marathon you burn up your resources too quickly, and the same thing is happening here.
Seed with limited number of generation, simply kick themselves out of any gene pool which has no such limitation.
While in the long run this is true, in the short run the effects of this can be ruinous to an environment.
In a natural setting, such self-limiting organisms would never be able to get a strong foothold; when they inevitably die out, the rest of the plant kingdom easily makes up the slack. Unfortunately, due to human intervention it is quite possible for these suicidal genes to spread far, far beyond what their 'natural' reach. Thus, when plants infected with these genes inevitably die off, the gap they will leave behind could be much larger than would be otherwise expected. Ultimately, there will be other plants - either those never infected with the "suicide" genes or mutants that bypass this repressive bit of DNA - that will take over the rolls played by those limited by their genes. But in the meantime, the plants and animals (including humans and their civilization) would have a rough time of it as their food source suddenly shrivels up and die.
Yes, we - like the rest of the animal kingdom - would eventually adapt. But pity those caught in the period of disruption, no matter how "short-term" it is in the overall scheme of things.
It is like the argument against global warming. Yes, the planet has weathered periods where it was both warmer and colder than it is now, and yes, life will continue if the current conditions change. But our species - and our civilizations - have adapted to current conditions and the transitory periods would bring great hardship. It's all well and good to say "life will go on" but that ignores all the pain and suffering of those living during the transition, which is sort of contrary to the whole point of having a civilization to begin with.
We have the wisdom and ability to avoid these disruptions - whether caused by mismanagement of our seedcrop or the pollutants from our industry - and ignoring the dangers these cause simply because /life/ will surely survive the changing conditions is foolish. It's not just life that is important, but individual lives. It is all the more ridiculous since we are charging recklessly ahead with these dangerous technologies simply with the aim of increasing the shareholder value of a corporation.