Pesticide Use Spikes as GMO Failure Cripples Corn Belt

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/09-6


Published on Tuesday, July 9, 2013 by Common Dreams

Pesticide Use Spikes as GMO Failure Cripples Corn Belt

Midwest farmers douse their fields in chemicals as insects grow resistant to Bt Corn
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Pesticide use is skyrocketing across the Midwestern U.S. corn belt, as biotech companies like Syngenta and AMVAC Chemical watch their pesticide sales spike 50 to 100 percent over the past two years, NPR reported Tuesday.

The culprit? Bt corn—a type of genetically engineered corn with insecticide built into its genes.

Variations of this corn strain—peddled across the world by large multinationals including Monstanto and Syngenta—are giving rise to Bt resistant insects and worms, studies show.

NPR reports that resistant 'pests' are decimating entire cornfields across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska.

..more...

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Mother Nature always bats last....

no matter how much hubris mankind has.

[Berlum]

2. "Move along. Nothing to see here." - Big Ag-Big Chem-Gig GMO, Inc. (R & D)

"Oh year, also: STFU and eat your pesticide-rich, GMO mutant crap foodlike substance rations." -Big Ag-Big Chem-Big GMO, Inc.

[Luminous Animal]

3. K&R

[Mariana]

4. Well, no one could have imagined that would happen.

[hatrack]

16. Yeah, shocking, huh?

[Avalux]

5. E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N

In this case, microevolution. Greedy people think they're so damn smart, trying to outwit nature.

[mathematic]

6. BT is approved and used in organic farming

So I guess they'll have to find another pesticide to use too.

Also, I'm not seeing how this is a "failure". I'm pretty sure the scientists that developed BT corn know about the theory of evolution. Is the pesticide resistance happening much sooner than expected? Is the extent of the resistance much greater than anticipated? If so, are there any reasons why (speculation or otherwise)?

[truedelphi]

7. Herre' is something you might want to know about Bt -

When it is used by organic farmers, it is sprayed on the crop itself. Within a few weeks, it is no longer part of the crop.

So then when the farmer takes that crop to market, the person buying that ear of Bt sprayed crop is not eating the Bt. [h2][font color=red]However when the Bt corn contains the Bt inside its molecular structure, when you buy that GM corn, you are eating the damn Bt.[/h2][/font color=red]

[quaker bill]

9. But there is the thing about BT

You could sprinkle it on your cheerios straight up from the bottle every morning. It would not be tasty, but you would not become ill.

You see this bacillus produces a protein which just so happens to be configured in a way that locks neatly into the enzyme a number of insect specific gut commensal bacteria use to hydrolyze cellulose polymers into component sugars that the insects can then utilize for food. Our gut is not adapted to use these commensals. When BT does its job the larvae bloat with undigested cellulose, but die of starvation.

This is unlike the acetocholine esterace inhibitors so often used in neurotoxic pesticides a pathway where we share a much more similar biochemistry with insects. These compounds are far more similar to sarin gas, and quite deadly to humans. The compounds are so similar that the same equipment can be used to make both. These were the "dual use" facilities Saddam had which were paid for with US ag dept money and were later converted to chem weapons.

[truedelphi]

12. Gee I have never heard thst argument before, except wait a minute -

It is in fact the same exact argument that was offered to me about the malathion aerial spray that laced the Santa Clara County area of Calif. back in 1981 and 1982.

So safe that one local legislator drank some - or at least he claimed he did.

Within nine months of being sprayed every single week, I developed vitaligo. I have had to spend the rest of my life out of the sun. No days at the beach. No days at the pool, uunlss the pool is under the shade of trees. . Meanwhile research studies showed that babies who were in utero at the time the malathion stuff was sprayed ended up with serious disruptions to their stomach linings (An indication for potential cancer of the stomach. I have never heard of any follow up studies, so don't know how the babies fared as children or adults.)

Then there was the MTBE lobby. "I would let my kids brush their teeth with it," said one over zealous lobbyist, who sat across from me in the audience when hearings on MTBE's safety went on.

I have more doubts and concerns than most people. Since the onslaught of RoundUp being sprayed an almost everything, I am unable to eat many many things that I ate back in the early 1990's and some of those things used to be my favorite snack foods. Sun Chips for instance - I will never know if it is the GM and formaldehyde in the product or the Bt in the corn end of those chips. Once I wa sable to eat themby the bag; now I wouldn't have a handful.

I do know that a slew of Stanford Hospital skin specialists told me that the human immune system was largely not understood (circa 1984.) Now on account of AIDS, there is a bit more understanding. But I am totally leery of hearing that since my such and such a system differs from that of some other creature (or plant life) in the world, that I have no possibility of having a problem with something.

In fact, I had lots of problems with RoundUp, and it only was after successfully getting the city I lived in to ban RoundUp from the local playgrounds that I found out the reason for my difficulties with RoundUp is not because of the glyphosate per se, but due to the aldehyde that is inside the molecular structure of the product. (Without an aldehyde being added to RoundUp, the glyphosate would remain un-sprayble and in cake form.) So there for all I know there may be some additional tweaking inside the Bt GM corn that doesn't agree with me, but I do know that the "experts" love this talking point, and they have loved this talking point for the last forty years, while everyone in the USA is becoming sicker and sicker.

My parents' generation - almost no one had acid reflux. (if they did, an anti acid like Tums did the trick.) Almost no one had Crohn's disease. Growing up, I did not know a single person with MS, or Lupus. Or fibromyalgia. Now every other person in my life is suffering from one of these conditions, because we are all eating CRAP that the experts say is fine. So far, my body has never been able to agree to trust this talking point of "brush your teeth with it, sprinkle it on your Cheerios, etc." Fool me once, shame on you, fool me a dozen times or more and shame on me.

[mathematic]

11. What's that got to do with the evolution of resistance in pests?

As far as I can tell this article is about the use of BT as a pesticide and the increased frequency of resistance by the pests BT is supposed to kill.

On second thought, I'm curious about what you're saying. In particular, you seem to be saying that the genes to produce BT are BT itself. It seems to me that a factory that produces cars is not a car itself and once it stops producing cars, you'll no longer get any new cars from the factory. I don't see how it's any different when the factory is a genetically modified crop and the car is BT.

I do think it's interesting that there is nothing actually wrong with sprayed BT. I think it's more interesting generally to ask the question, "Are there any other sprayed pesticides, like BT, that are safe a few weeks after application?" and "What is it about BT that makes it safe after a few weeks and other pesticides unsafe?" The two questions are related, of course. If we can actually answer the questions in detail then perhaps we can synthesize a more effective, more safe pesticide! I'm not so naive to think that scientists haven't already been asking these questions so perhaps if I have some spare time I'll go searching to see what they came up with.

[truedelphi]

13. If Bt was safe, organic farmers would not have followed strict guidelines about

When to spray it on a crop, in relationship to when they planned on harvesting the crop.

[quaker bill]

15. Fascinatingly

The problem with the corn crop is not BT resistance. It is a root boring larvae that never was susceptible to BT in the first place. The problem is that BT is effective against the major pests and has replaced a broader spectrum pesticide which also killed the root borer. Since they aren't treating with broad spectrum stuff, the root borer is going to town.

[L0oniX]

8. K & R

[reformist2]

10. So now we have GMO-food *and* pesticides. Disgusting. F* these biotech seed companies.

[DeSwiss]

14. K&R

[marmar]

17. k/r

[HuckleB]

18. Except, of course, that it wasn't true.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629

Organic farmers use plenty of Bt, btw!