Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants by Goodall Jane & Hudson Gail

Author:Goodall, Jane & Hudson, Gail [Goodall, Jane & Hudson, Gail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gardening, Gardening / General, Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection, Science, Nature / Plants / General
ISBN: 9781455513222
Amazon: 1455513229
Goodreads: 15791140
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2013-04-02T07:00:00+00:00

The more I learn about the GMO industry, the more concerned I become. First there is the scourge of “superbugs”—it sounds like science fiction, but is horribly real.

Through complex genetic engineering, scientists have created crop plants that have specific pesticides inserted into their genes. Monsanto has created insect-resistant crop plants (corn, cotton, potato, and rice, with others in the pipeline) by inserting a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) into the DNA of the seed—the pest should then die when it eats the genetically modified plant.

One example of how the industry advertises its products is Monsanto marketing its “Nature Mark” Bt potato in Canada as using “sunshine, air and soil nutrients to make a biodegradable protein that affects just one specific insect pest, and only those individual insects that actually take a bite of the plants.” In fact, this potato plant, like other genetically engineered crop plants, has been violated. The “biodegradable protein” is a toxin that is continuously formed during the entire growing season of the plant. And the natural “soil nutrients” on fields of GM monocultures have usually been depleted and must be boosted by increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers—as in all monoculture-intensive farming.

And, like other Bt crops, this Monsanto potato affects many insects other than pests, including beneficial ones, such as bees and ladybugs.

Cornell University researchers found that the caterpillars of monarch butterflies had slower growth patterns and experienced higher death rates than controls when fed on milkweed leaves sprinkled with pollen from Bt corn. While the study was criticized for exposing the caterpillars to unnaturally high levels of Bt corn pollen, a subsequent field study confirmed the finding of higher mortality in caterpillars exposed to natural levels of Bt corn pollen.

Meanwhile the insect pests themselves are, as was predicted, becoming increasingly resistant to the GM plants. As I write, in 2013, it seems that at least five species of “superbugs” have now become resistant to Bt toxins, in the field or laboratory. A recent article in Nature Biotechnology noted that the number was possibly higher, as reports of resistance from the field are typically published at least two years after they have first been detected. The most recent of these insects that have adapted to a diet of toxins is the tiny Western corn rootworm, which, like the other super pests, is outsmarting the genetic engineering technology that was supposed to kill it.

Of course, the emergence of superbugs has forced farmers to resort to increased use of pesticides, since the plants designed to repel insects have, to a significant extent, failed. In India, for example, the use of chemical pesticides has increased thirteenfold since Bt cotton was introduced. Bill Freese, a policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, was quoted as saying, “The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide-dependent agriculture, and we need to be going in the opposite direction.”

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