GM pollution by invasion

April 2016

America is just beginning out to find out the hard way that growing GM crops with no wild relatives to share their genes with doesn't actually mean they'll stay in the field and under control.  Even after very few years' cultivation, GM alfalfa is now flourishing on US road verges and spreading its genes far and wide [1].

Europe has an interestingly different version of the same problem.

Real-life GM alfalfa contamination

April 2016

The GM alfalfa grass saga continues ... [1]

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has long maintained that GM crops can co-exist with conventional and organic agriculture.  To keep GMOs in the field where they've been planted, all that's needed is for neighbouring farmers to sort things out between themselves, follow "best management practice", and sue each other if things go wrong. 

But, GM alfalfa, is blowing that narrative apart.

Gene pollution update 2013

November 2013

Wheat growing in Oregon, USA. Photo Gary Halvorson
Oregon State Archives [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

The chance discovery of illegal GM wheat growing in a field in Oregon highlighted some uncomfortable home-truths (see GM CONTAMINATION DÉJÀ VU - June 2013).

Despite its wholesale move to GM agriculture and widespread field-trials of experimental GM plants, America isn't monitoring gene 'escapes': the rogue herbicide-tolerant wheat only became obvious when it survived spraying with Roundup herbicide, and its source has never been pin-pointed. While it seems unlikely that a single field could become so widely contaminated accidentally, no other similarly polluted areas have been identified.

Why was GM alfalfa grass ever developed?

January 2012

Round bales of alfalfa in a Montana field, USA.
Picture from Wikimedia Commons

In 2005, the US government approved the growing of a 'Roundup Ready' (herbicide-tolerant) GM fodder grass, 'RR alfalfa'. Since people don't eat grass, this might seem one of the less controversial GM crops to go on sale. Or, is it?

One US farmer, Philip Geertson, who has spent 30 years raising a diversity of crops and 25 years as a partner in alfalfa breeding programmes is having trouble understanding why anyone would want herbicide-tolerant alfalfa. He said:

“When Roundup Ready alfalfa was first suggested I did not think that it would be developed and introduced because most alfalfa fields are never sprayed for weed control. And, if a chemical weed control was needed, there is a long list of off-patent low-cost herbicides that are effective if used properly.”

American fig-leaf 'regulations'

October 2011

Round hay bales of alfalfa in a Montana field, USA
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

America has no regulations with which its authorities can control GM plants. Neither the consuming public, nor the environment, nor farmers are protected from any harmful consequences of the novel plants.

You'll have heard repeated industry claims that its GM crops have been approved. This is true, but they refer to a purely voluntary process described by GM-critics as a “fig-leaf”. The only purpose of the voluntary GM approval system is to give an illusion of regulation: it suggests the government is doing its job, and lets the industry demonstrate how safety-conscious it is. It will also let industry well and truly off the hook when GM goes wrong.

How did the US administration achieve this industry-friendly, every-one-else-unfriendly set up?

The dark side

February 2011

Refuting any suggestion that Mayan predictions claim the world will end in December 2012, one Mayan elder (a priest and spiritual guide) has a very different version of what the world is heading towards just now.

He tells us we are in a time of cosmic transition.

“As we pass through transition, there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.” 

Considering the recent unprecedented droughts, floods, snow-storms, gales, tsunamis, fires, sub-zero temperatures, volcanic eruptions, political upheavals, financial crises, declining human fertility ... he may have a point.