Roundup Ready Sugar Beet Not Sustainable
Return to
Monsanto Investing News web page.
[Excerpted from Natural Law Party, Wessex]
So desperate is Monsanto to promote genetic engineering as
the answer to global resource problems it has declared in
its most recent annual report that "current agricultural
technology is not sustainable", according to the New York
Times Sunday magazine (Oct 25 '98).
....
In what will come as no surprise to any agricultural college
graduate, research on the Monsanto GM sugar beet, now at
last harvested, showed that leaving the weeds to grow to an
advanced stage had had a depressing effect on yields
compared to similar crops which were sprayed with
glyphosphate soon after weed emergence.
The New Scientist article points out that for those farmers
who are interested in maximising yields (which farmers
growing GMOs won't be?) early applications of Roundup are
required to
prevent yield-sapping weed competition with the crop. The
conclusion from this research for those farmers chasing
yields is - "get the Roundup on quick".
Perhaps even spray more than once with Roundup to catch late
germinating weeds, because Roundup has only "contact", and
no "residual", action (see footnote 2)
Good-bye weeds, good-bye mulch, good-bye insects, good-bye
biodiversity. Good-bye Monsanto's version of sustainability.
As the New Scientist concluded: "The biotech industry is
developing two very different sales pitches for its products
- one for farmers and one for the rest of us."
Footnote 2:
Research by Cyanamid shows that Roundup-Ready soyabeans may
need multiple applications of glyphosphate in order to
achieve a similar level of weed control to existing residual
herbicides (see
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/cyanamid.htm ).
(Natural Law Party Wessex - Nov '98)
nlpwessex@bigfoot.com
This item plus general information on GM agronomic and other
problems available from our web site.
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex