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| Farmer manually weeding a cotton field in Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh, South India. Picture by jankie on Flickr |
Government report reveals desperation of Indian cotton farmers
September 2012
Close on the heels of the publication
of a German study which concluded that “Bt cotton has created large
and sustainable benefits, which contribute to positive economic and
social development in India” (see ANOTHER Bt SUCCESS STORY - September 2012) comes a government report which reached
a very different conclusion.
Another Bt cotton success story
September 2012
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| Agricultural labourers working in a cotton field Andhra Pradesh, South India. Picture by jankie on Flickr |
The 'success' or 'failure' of Bt
cotton, now widely grown in India, continues to be steeped in
controversy.
Biotech industry trials and short-term
economic studies on these GM crops with built-in insecticide describe
their performance in glowing terms. However, serious doubts about
the long-term impacts remain.
A new study of Bt cotton, aiming to
address the “uncertainty about longer term effects”, has been
published.
Fighting with DNA
September 2012
What better way to create resistance to
a pesticide than by growing vast monocultures of plants able to
suffuse themselves perpetually with the same, single chemical?
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| Adult stage of the Western Corn Rootworm which damages plants' ability to absorb water. Picture from Wikimedia Commons |
This logic didn't escape the biotech
industry when it created commodity crops genetically transformed to
generate 'Bt' insecticidal proteins. However, by using simplistic
modelling and peddling a few glib assumptions regarding the science
of evolution, it was possible to persuade regulators that
Bt-resistant insects could be kept at bay.
GM quality costs
September 2012
In the 1990s as the first Roundup Ready
GM soya crops were entering our food chain, Monsanto enthusiastically
broadcast to the public that:
“Roundup Ready soyabeans are just like any other soyabeans in safety, nutrition, composition and the way they process into high-protein animal fed and ingredients in the food we eat, such as margarine, salad dressings and bakery products.”The Company website quoted “1800 evaluations” concluding RR soyabeans are the same as other commercially available varieties.
Despite
the fact that glyphosate interferes with the biochemical pathways
involved in the synthesis of lignin in plants, this important
material was not analysed. Only the total fibre
content of the GM soya was measured as part of Monsanto's thousands
of tests.
Permanent built-in stress
September 2012
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| Rice research. Photo by IRRI images on Flickr |
Cutting-edge science is revealing layer
upon layer of adaptive mechanisms within the cell which can be passed
on to future generations, but which don't alter the genetic code.
Research on lower animals is showing
how the expression of DNA (genes and non-gene sequences) triggers a
cascade of events and feed-back loops in the cell: the cascade not
only alters the RNA messenger molecules and proteins, but comes back
full-circle to re-formulate the DNA's own structure (but not its
base sequence) and the chromosomes which carry it.
Sense in pollution
September 2012
Australian farmers have had eight years
to learn that GM canola (oilseed rape) isn't wanted. Most have
learned the lesson well, but in Western Australia they've learned the
hard way.
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| Canola field in Western Australia. Photo credit: I [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons |
Once upon a time, manufacturers
supplied retailers with what the end-customer wanted, and the
end-user paid for the goods. The system flowed and everyone lived
happily ever after.
Down-under, this supply-and-demand
logic seems to have been stood on its head.
Sprayed to death by Glyphosate
September 2012
'Roundup' weed-killer for use on Roundup Ready GM crops is also registered for pre-harvest application on many other crops. The purpose of spraying with the herbicide shortly before harvest is to prevent the harvesting machinery clogging up with green material (weeds and crop leaves, especially if applied fungicides have preserved them), and to clear the ground for the next planting. Some farmers also use Roundup to try to dry down their crop and speed up the harvest time, although there's not much data supporting this tactic.
'Roundup' weed-killer for use on Roundup Ready GM crops is also registered for pre-harvest application on many other crops. The purpose of spraying with the herbicide shortly before harvest is to prevent the harvesting machinery clogging up with green material (weeds and crop leaves, especially if applied fungicides have preserved them), and to clear the ground for the next planting. Some farmers also use Roundup to try to dry down their crop and speed up the harvest time, although there's not much data supporting this tactic.
Glyphosate, the major active ingredient
of Roundup, is used as a pre-harvest treatment on many
food crops including wheat, soya, oats, lentils, flax, oilseed
rape, beans, barley, chickpeas and potatoes.
In March this year, GM-free Scotland
reported how glyphosate is increasing in our food. This is happening
courtesy of GM soya, maize, oilseed rape, and sugar-beet all designed
to accumulate glyphosate
without damage therein.
Viptera GM corn fiasco
September 2012
Monsanto gets a lot of bad press for
its GM-promoting tactics, but are the other biotech giants any
better?
GM-free Scotland recently reported that
Syngenta is facing criminal prosecution in Germany for with-holding
evidence about one of its GM maize crops which has been linked to
illness and death in cow feeding trials on both sides of the Atlantic
(See DEAD COWS UNDER THE CARPET - August 2012).
At the end of last year, Syngenta was
also in hot water in America after it gave away bags of its new
'Viptera' GM corn seed throughout the Midwest.