WESSEX
WESSEX
Roundup Ready corn offers no advantage to farmers
(The address of this page is www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/RRcorn.htm )
Whilst a great deal of evidence has come through over the last year or two on the poor agronomic performance of many GM crops (see - http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/gmagric.htm ) there has been little or no such information available on Monsanto's Roundup Ready (RR) corn which was only introduced in 1998.
This deficiency has now been remedied by research carried out by the University of
Kentucky released in January (copy downloadable from http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Agronomy/files/news/agvl32_2.pdf
) relating to 1998 and 1999.
The following interesting points relating to annual weed control arise out of this study:
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1. Compared to use with other herbicide regimes RR corn varieties gave no improvement in
yield when a Roundup herbicide regime was used.
2. Compared to use with other herbicide regimes RR corn varieties gave no savings in costs
(variable plus fixed) when a Roundup herbicide regime was used.
3. None of the trials involved a single application of Roundup to corn crops (either two
applications of Roundup or Roundup plus one or more chemicals were used) confirming that
(as with other RR crops) such a regime (in contrast to what was originally promoted by
biotechnology advisers) does not give weed control comparable to other chemical
strategies.
4. Although significant differences in weed control were detected between the various
herbicide regimes trialed, no significant differences were observed in yield or return
above fixed and variable costs for any treatment.
These results demonstrate that 100% weed control was not necessary to obtain top
yields. This means that in-crop biodiversity in some cases is being destroyed by
excessive weed control without any economic benefit.
In 1999 some Roundup and some non-Roundup herbicide regimes achieved 100% weed control.
5. The study did not examine the issue of the fact that RR corn varieties may command a
lower price in the market than non-GM varieties with a consequent damaging effect on net
returns compared to non-gm varieties.
6. The UK government is currently considering entering the first GM crop on its National
Seed List. If approved this would allow the commercialisation of the first GM crop in the
UK. Interestingly the variety under consideration is a also a herbicide
resistant maize from Aventis.
According to Friends of the Earth one of the criteria that the crop must fulfil in order
to gain list approval is that it must, legally, show "a clear improvement" for
agriculture.
If Aventis's herbicide resistant maize produces similar results to Monsanto's, or worse,
there would seem to be little or no case for including it in the list.
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It's not just market rejection that is making US farmers think twice about planting GM
crops in 2000, according to Emerson Nafziger, a crop scientist at the University of
Illinois (Chicago Tribune Online, January 24, 2000):
"They are reading the tea leaves and seeing that there are not many advantages to
genetically engineered crops, so they will perhaps go the other way."
NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@bigfoot.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex
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Will GM crops deliver benefits to farmers? - some realities
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