Coalition drops opposition to a Dow engineered crop
September 13, 2012
Corn crop (credit: Jim Champion/Wikimedia Commons)
Save Our Crops Coalition, a group representing fruit and vegetable growers and canners, has dropped its opposition to regulatory approval of genetically engineered crops resistant to the powerful herbicide 2,4-D, The New York Times reports.
The group said Dow Agrosciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, the crops’ developer, had agreed to take steps to reduce the chances the herbicide would damage fruit and vegetable crops.
Dow is awaiting approval of genetically engineered corn that would allow farmers to spray 2,4-D on their fields to kill weeds without harming the crop. Soybeans and cotton that can withstand 2,4-D are also in the works.
Some consumer and environmental groups oppose approval, saying it would lead to a vast increase in the spraying of 2,4-D, a chemical they say is harmful.
The coalition’s concern was that if 2,4-D were sprayed on millions of acres of corn, soybeans and cotton, some of the chemical would drift onto fruit and vegetable farms, destroying those crops, which would not be immune to the chemical. Also, 2,4-D can vaporize — or volatilize — days after it has been sprayed and travel miles in the air.
Comments (32)
by EM
Short sighted, profit and control oriented people and corporations are killing the planet. Even if Kurzweil’s superhuman become possible in the next 20 years, what kind of planet will it inherit? Sorry, but I for one don’t believe this will turn out for the better of anything living except maybe bacteria. We are a inherently arrogant, greedy, and stupid species and that’s not going to change.
by ELy
I agree on your first sentence (short term profit killing us), but please do not despair: we can solution the greedy stupid human’s problem! GM humans can be less stupid. And money can be destroyed, because all works can be done by robots. Machines and computers are causing unemployment? Great! No need to work ever. As Paradism dot org explains this would be a paradise on Earth. No money means no greed. Love would be our motivation.
by EM
OMG, I wish I had some of your koolaid
by Bri
G M crops are the past and future. We have been modifying crops since the beginning of agriculture. What we need to do is genetically modify the morals of the corporations that invent this stuff. I’m serious. Can we make them totally unable to be immoral? Ok so I’m joking. It would be nice.
by Kevin Haskell
They’ve smartened up. This is excellent news.
by John Alley
I think the potential of GM crops is truly limitless.
Instead of pesticide resistance though (Which is in fact, a mechanism to sell pesticides and lock farmers into a given company’s product lines in perpetuity), I would like someone to engineer around the idiotic design flaw that has crops fruiting only once a year. (That ‘feature’ was obviously designed by a moron that needs to be fired.)
I want a ficus sized houseplant (4′ high) that sits in my kitchen in a pot. It should use human and domestic animal waste as fertilizer (it has a complement of symbiotic bacteria that completely eliminates the foul odor and instead emits (your choice) a fragrance of chocolate, cinnamon, lemons or freshly baked bread),
This plant flowers in the early evening – every day – and by morning generates an assortment of pears, apples, bananas, mangoes, almonds and avocados that provide nutrition and calories sufficient for a family of 4.
Nutrients would need to be periodically added to the soil in the pot to make up for various depletions – but that’s a solvable problem. Various foods would be added for variety of course, but the Polyfruit (TM) plant would provide baseline nutritional needs for a population without the need to rape billions of acres of the planet.
This of course, is just a baseline idea. but this is the sort of thing GM needs to lead to.
The downside is that that moronic engineer who did the once-a-year thing, is actually a master orchestrator of interactions that do not cause cascading failures that can devastate the biosphere. We have as yet, no such mastery.
An example: Suppose Majifood Corp creates a species of harvester ants that eat weed species in fields. These ants excrete waste which is harmless to humans. Unfortunately it causes birth defects in bees and over several seasons decimates the local bee species, leading to cascading crop failures by the obvious mechanism.
This example is very simple and fairly easy to test for, but there are an infinity of more complex possible problems that are impossible to predict or test for.
So this GM stuff is filled with both promise and peril. (surprise!)
This arguing we are doing is important and necessary. As a civilization we have to explore this and plot a viable path through it.
Its gonna be kind of tricky.
by A4i
Obviously you don’t understand plant’s genetics. It is more complicated than animal genetics (humans included). A simple wheat seed contain x3 the Human genome in each of it’s cells . Domesticated wheat is extremely far from it’s wild grass ancestor. So nowadays wheat is a complex organism , that is a product of 5000 years human assisted evolution. So many generations of farmers have contributed to it’s present qualities. Now , some company “X Ltd” did’d increase wheat productivity by a single %, but induce 2-3 genes from bacteria or see animal in the wheat genome, making it resistant to oil based pesticide from “Y Ltd”. That puny contribution is enough to steal the work of countless farmers through the ages. If “X Ltd” want’s to patent something life – let’s invent new organism, that can be classified as new spaces.
by alliwant
I have to agree with the GMO skeptics. I don’t think this technology is inherently a bad idea, but the implementation has been more than a little suspicious. Monsanto is openly claiming than no farmers can save seed for soybean planting in the US, because their genetic modifications have made their way into all soybeans and so they can claim the right to sell ALL soybean seed, and sue anyone who plants their own. Getting customers hooked on your product is an old tactic, and what’s being done in this instance.
by Beans1
It Sounds like SOCC got paid off. Chemical companies should be completely band from conducting business within Agriculture. The same companies that produce POISONS should not be meddling with the future of our foods & seeds. Technology is always a double edge blade, and for them its a tool for making more profit & more control not the betterment of humanity. Farmers know how to grow crops, they’ve been doing it for thousands of years without the help of chemical agents. They way to do it is with genetic diversity not buying licensed GE mutant seeds, that transfers its DNA to the bacteria in our gut causing antibiotic resistance deseases. We NEED to limit or get rid of these F’ing corporations, Period!
by Gabriel
I don’t understand all the paranoia with crops like this…like any tech, it will require further refinement, but in the long-run, this stuff will be superior to doing things the ‘old fashioned way’ and feed starving people all over.
by Peter the printer
That’s because you don’t understand the issue. It’s not ‘like any tech’ it’s fiddling with organisms that have evolved over millions of years, and GM pollen is impossible to contain in the countryside. GM is not to increase crop yields and ‘feed the starving’, that’s the spin put on it to deflate opposition, which you have clearly bought into. GM is all about making plants that are resistant to the company’s herbicides, which are then drenched on the soil to kill ‘weeds’. The problem is when the genes get into weeds and they become herbicide resistant [already happening]. The purpose of GM is to lock farmers in to always buying the chemical company’s products, and nothing at all to do with feeding the starving.
by Chrispium
The majority of NGOs today are really just fake shells that have been setup by corporations to fool the public. This all began with the Crook who legalized corporate PACs.
by Peter the printer
Oh really. That’s your theory is it? Not got any proof I expect.
by Chrispium
Proof? YOU got the internet and Google access, why don’t YOU take a look for yourself. As an adult YOU should not need hand-holding.
by A4i
Man, we don’t need to produce annually 200 metric tons of food per individual in US or Europe. A single person need far less food to survive. So , we already have capacity to produce enough food to sustain our own population. Why to use GM crops and induce some unknown to mankind substances in our daily diet. Also who has the right to modify few genes out of billion in a product , that is a pinnacle of 5000 years human assisted evolution and then patented it. That is simply ridiculous. It is as if I took a pencil and write the first letter of my name an the bumper of your new Ferrari and then call it mine, because I did a unique modification to it and now it belongs to me.
by roy
What everyone is forgetting, is that one day WE will be genetically engineered to be resistant to 2,4-D, and the weeds, and to all other harmful outside sources doing their environmental best to survive at our expense.
by Lukas
This is pretty ridiculous. There is so much we could do with GE foods, and yet we use it to make food immune to pesticides? Well, that’s great, but are WE immune to pesticides?
I will grow organic foods myself thankyouverymuch.
by matt
totally agree – plants may be able to survive 2,4D but it’s carcinogenic to humans
by Gorden Russell
Killing broad leaf weeds that come from dicot seeds gets rid of the competition for monocots like corn. With all the water and fertilizer going to the corn, you get more bushels per acre.
by wilson
What a bunch of chicken littles. Why does something new always bring out the wing nuts? GM crops are a savior for countries that can not feed their populace. The next generation will use them without even knowing that they were GM, and they will wounder what our problem was.
by Bri
How about the super weeds that we now have to kill by manual methods? How about the toxic side effects reported around the world from pesticides and accidents in handling. I agree there is a future in GM crops but we have to be sober and not get drunk on our superior tech.
by Peter the printer
That’s why Indian farmers are turning away from them once they realised the real reason was so they had to buy their seed every year from Monsanto rather than saving some of their own. As I’ve already said, they aren’t about enabling countries to feed their starving, they are to make US companies richer and more powerful. That’s why Poland has banned GM Miaze, and the rest of Europe is resisting GM across the board. It’s a US plot to control the world.
by Lukas
Okay, so we’d be eating chemicals, then, just to deliver more profits to shareholders. Wonderful. There is SO much we could be doing with GE foods, and yet we make stuff that is immune to pesticides. What is the point of that? Are WE immune to pesticides??
by Tony
So, as the weeds build up resistance to 2,4-D people will be eating food with larger and larger doses of this toxin spayed on them, as these crops can tolerate these higher doses even if the consumer can’t.
by Bruce
And what about cross pollination to organic crops? How about studying the health effects of GM crops before approving new ones?
by GAUSS
I have three words for you: profit profit profit. Enough said. ;)
by Hoss
Somehow I can see the GM crops passing on their genetic instructions to the weeds, and we’ll have super weeds. Then we’ll have a GM arms race similar to the battle between bacteria and antibiotics, only with our food.
by mpioca
Yes, the GMOs have very weird abilities. I even heard that these plants can pass down their genetic information to animals, producing Corncats and Sunflowerdogs in the process. /sarcasm
In reality GMOs are a huge possibility for humanity. If engineered the right way, very high quality and cheap food can be produced. The downsides are MINIMAL compared to what it can bring to the table.
by Peter the printer
Gullible.
by Peter the printer
Already happening. There is unknown quantities of GM pollen in the stratosphere, moving round the planet and eventually coming to Earth. A giant experiment, using the planetary ecosystem as lab. What a good idea! Thank you Amerika.
by Bri
Well I’m glad the fruit growers are happy. What about the rest of us that have other concerns?
by DrDubious
We don’t count. Serfs never will.