Posted on 05/05/2010 6:44:13 AM PDT by dennisw
The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.
But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward,” Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.
“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,”
The problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton, corn.
Roundup — originally made by Monsanto but now also sold by others under the generic name glyphosate — has been little short of a miracle chemical for farmers. It kills a broad spectrum of weeds, is easy and safe to work with, and breaks down quickly, reducing its environmental impact.
Sales took off in the late 1990s, after Monsanto created its brand of Roundup Ready crops that were genetically modified to tolerate the chemical, allowing farmers to spray their fields to kill the weeds while leaving the crop unharmed. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I use a mixture of full strength Roundup and diesal fuel that works pretty good.
They have even bought up heirloom seed companies surreptitiously, and continue to do so, even though that market offers very little profit margin.
They send out lawyers into the country to harrass and sue farmers, even when their case has no merit, in a (successful) attempt to intimidate said farmers.
I consider them to be the enemy.
This is a kind of misrepresentation. If a plant survives application of the herbicide, its resistant properties already exist. They do not evolve.
Already happening.
And yet, in spite of the doom and gloom from the NYT, it looks like the American Farmer is going to produce the largest crop of corn and soybeans ever seen on earth.
See tagline.
Interesting idea. I will try it.
Canola? Good old Canadian oil? Or did you mean rape?
Some farms use steam to kill them.
Canola, but we do grow rape too
I read years ago that there was no such thing as canola. Marketers were concerned they would have a hard time selling something called rape oil so they invented the word canola. Are you telling me I have been mis- informed all these years?
I hate say it but yes you were mis-informed there is fall and spring canola and winter Rape and spring rape. canola oil is used more for cooking oil, rape seed oil is more of a intdustrial oil.
Ever notice how we call them ‘stories’ and not news?
I hear the word story, I think fiction. I think plot, characters, conflict, story arc, crescendo, denoument.
News, to me, is a report of the facts of something. Findings of fact. I use to read news, and sometimes still do in the WSJ, where you hit the end of an article and feel like, “Wow, the end sort of happened here very suddenly.”
Then I think, “That’s what you should expect from news - here’s the facts as they are today - you want a story, go to a book store.”
One really important aspect of the series “From Earth to the Moon” was their treatment of the Apollo 13 incident. NASA couldn’t get the news media interested in the moon anymore - they had made spaceflight look as easy as airplane flight.
Then Apollo 13 hit. Now you had a story.
One of the writers commented in the backstory of how the series was made that reporters started asking the question, “How do you feel?”
He noted that the question was puzzling in that it doesn’t have anything to do with the facts, but that’s where journalism had changed forever - the triumph of feelings over facts.
Many stories have morals to them. Almost every news story has a moral. It’s part of the formula - the hero’s fatal flaw. News is dying because all the stories now sound the same, and the facts have been standing in the way of selling fiction from 1960 or so until today.
With the internet, fiction is free, as is propaganda. One no longer has to turn to “Dan Rather” or “Katie Couric” for their entertainment mixed with facts.
Entertainment is ubiquitous. Fox isn’t much better, but they are the only thing on the right you can turn to.
Drudge is king in journalism right now because the stories are pared down, and the news isn’t something you can readily find in one place somewhere else.
According to Wikipedia, I would have been correct prior to the early 70s. As usual I have trouble keeping up.
Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn't kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.It's called staying one step ahead. Geez. I've been seeing a lot of whining and incoherent paranoid squawking about Monsanto over this stupid non-issue. One farmer I know very well has been using this combo for years already, and it has continued to work, and his fields are beautiful.
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