[THS] Weeds Are Now Resisting Monsanto Weed Killer

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/weeds-are-now-resisting-monsanto-weed


Weeds Are Now Resisting Monsanto Weed Killer, Spurring Crisis in American
Agriculture
By Susie Madrak Wednesday May 05, 2010 3:45pm

fields_7dcd7.jpg

Yep, thanks to Monsanto Roundup, American agriculture is in quite a fix now. See,
Monsanto sells genetically modified seed that's supposed to survive spraying with
their weedkiller. Unfortunately, the weeds learned to resist it - and now their GMO
seed is struggling against the pesticide-resistant weeds that evolved as a result of
their own product.

Wouldn't it be nice if companies thought that far ahead before they pushed their
products into the mainstream? And wouldn't it be nice if we had government
agencies that didn't rubber stamp them?

    DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a strict
adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly technique that all but
eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.

    On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a
rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where
soybeans will soon be planted.

    Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant
supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has
led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

    To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South
are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and
return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

    “We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will plow
about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in
years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”

    Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop
yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

    [...] Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more, choking
out crops; it is so sturdy that it can damage harvesting equipment. In an attempt to
kill the pest before it becomes that big, Mr. Anderson and his neighbors are plowing
their fields and mixing herbicides into the soil.

    That threatens to reverse one of the agricultural advances bolstered by the
Roundup revolution: minimum-till farming. By combining Roundup and Roundup
Ready 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.

    If frequent plowing becomes necessary again, “that is certainly a major concern
for our environment,” Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas, said.
In addition, some critics of genetically engineered crops say that the use of extra
herbicides, including some old ones that are less environmentally tolerable than
Roundup, belies the claims made by the biotechnology industry that its crops would
be better for the environment.