GM farm scale trials



Some thoughts:
2003 is the final year of the farmscale GM trials in the UK. The trials compare the effects of herbicide use on GM crops and on conventional crops. This is because
one
of the environmental concerns about herbicide tolerant GM crops was that farmers would use the opportunity to wipe out everything that wasn't a GM crop. Herbicide tolerance means that the GM crops are resistant to a broad spectrum herbicide such as roundup or glyphosate ammonium (coincidentally made by the same companies that produce the GM seed . These are chemicals which kill virtually all plants. Up till now non-organic farmers have used a variety of herbicides to kill different types of weed.

The biotechnology companies claim that herbicide tolerant GM crops will cause farmers to use less herbicide. This is like McDonalds claiming that people would eat less junk food if they swapped KFC for big macs. In practice it hasn't happened in the USA (despite what the biotech lobby has been claiming).
Also consider long term effects. A farmer grows Roundup resistant oil seed rape (OSR). OSR is a weed in the wrong place. "Volunteer" plants will spring up in any subsequent crop. If the farmer is sensible and rotates his crops, he will have herbicide resistant oil seed rape growing in his next crop, which will probably mean he uses some other herbicide to eradicate it. Maybe the farmer will choose crop rotations with successive crops resistant to different herbicides! So much for only using one herbicide. Alternatively he can just grow roundup ready year after year on the same soil (which is probably what the biotech companies want). This will innevitably lead to a build up of pests and disease which will have to be zapped with a whole cocktail of insecticides, nematicides, fungicides etc.

Anyway, from looking at the GM fields, it seems as though in some cases the weeds have been allowed to flourish, while in the conventional crop they have all been zapped. Why might this be? Perhaps the trials are actually comparing the biodiversity in a GM crop which has had one light application of herbicide late in the season, and the biodiversity in a conventional crop which has had lots of herbicide sprayed on it. Looking in my crystal ball, I see a government minister announcing the results of the trials, claiming that GM crops are good for wildlife, and maybe blustering something about improved diversity of Rumex and Taraxacumspecies [docks and dandylions to the uninitiated]. This will give the go ahead for commercial planting of GM crops, by farmers who will not of course let their crop get choked by weeds, but instead spray the whole field at the earliest possible stage, and wipe out everything except the herbicide resistant plants.

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