12-05-2008 14:44

Citing decreased yields and increased pesticide use in gmo crops. How will they save the world? 
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php 
 
Data consistently show that GM crops reduce profit for farmers and increase pesticide use  
 
GM crops are neither profitable for farmers nor do they result in less herbicide use. Data from the USDA and US universities have consistently shown that GM crops gave no increase in crops yields or profitability, and more often a reduction in both, while increasing rather than decreasing the use of pesticides (reviewed in The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World [6]. Both the two major GM traits that make up nearly 100 percent of all GM crops, Bt and glyphosate tolerance, have decisively failed at least as far back as 2005 [7, 8] (Scientists Confirm Failures of Bt-Crops and Roundup Ready Sudden Death, Superweeds, Allergens..., SiS 28), and promoting them can be a recipe for ecological and agronomic disaster.  
 
The Friends of the Earth report [9] released January 2008 confirms those findings. It highlights the more than 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate herbicide on the major crops - soybeans, corn and cotton - from 1994 (when GM crops were first introduced) to 2005, based on data from the USDA. The increase in glyphosate is not compensated by a decrease in other herbicides. While farmers growing glyphosate tolerant Roundup Ready crops initially used lower quantities of herbicides other than glyphosate, that trend soon reversed. Increasingly, farmers have found it necessary to apply larger amounts of both glyphosate and other herbicides to kill weeds that have become resistant to glypohsate. From 2002 to 2006, the use of the second leading soya herbicide 2,3-D more than doubled from 1.39 to 3.67 million lbs, while glyphosate use on soybeans increased by 29 million lbs (a 43 percent rise). Similarly, glyphosate on corn increased 5-fold from 2002 to 2005 simultaneously with a rise of atrazine by nearly 7 million lbs (12 percent up). Atrazine, the most heavily used herbicide on corn in the US, is banned in Europe because of its links to serious health problems such as endocrine disruption, breast and prostate cancer.  
 
Finally, a 4-year study just completed by researchers at the University of Georgia and the USDA concluded that the use of transgenic cotton does not provide increased returns to the farmer [10]. They found that no transgenic technology system produced significantly greater returns than a non-transgenic system in any year or location.

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