A plague of superweeds, created as a result of GM farming, has swamped 60million acres of American farmland, it has been revealed.
A policy briefing issued by America’s Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the weeds in check.
The plants have developed as an unintended result of growing crops that have been genetically modified to withstand spraying with certain powerful weedkillers, such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready, which is also known as glyphosate.
The idea was that the fields could be repeatedly sprayed with these chemicals on the basis they would kill the weeds but allow food crops such as soya to thrive. However, the reality is that the weeds have mutated to become immune to the chemicals with the result they can take over fields.
Biotech companies have suggested the way to deal with the problem is to develop new strains of GM crop and switch to different, even more powerful, chemical weedkillers.
The UCS study – ‘The Rise of Superweeds – and What to Do About It’ – suggests returning to more natural crops and weed control to defeat the problem.
Author of the report, Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientists with the UCS Food & Environment Program, said: ‘It sounds like a bad sci-fi movie or something out of The Twilight Zone.
But ‘superweeds’ are real and they’re infesting America’s croplands.‘Overuse of Monsanto’s ‘Roundup Ready’ seeds and herbicides in our industrial farming system is largely to blame.
These weeds steal nutrients from the crops, which reduces yields, overall productivity, and farmers’ profits.
Mr Gurian-Sherman said: ‘Monsanto and other agribusiness companies are now touting herbicide-resistant crops engineered to withstand older, more toxic herbicides, such as dicamba and 2,4-D, as the ‘solution.’
‘These new herbicides will certainly exacerbate the problem, but increase the companies’ bottom lines.
‘It’s a highly risky move. Increased herbicides use on the new engineered crops will speed up weed resistance, leaving no viable herbicide alternatives. This is a dangerous chemical cocktail, that when combined with the current farming system, it’s a recipe for disaster.’
He said dicamba and 2,4-D pose additional risks to people and nearby crops.
These herbicides have been linked to increased rates of certain diseases, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, in farmers and farm workers.
They are prone to drifting on the wind and dispersing into the air after application, and consequently, the herbicides can settle far from where they were applied.
These herbicides are extremely toxic to many of the most common fruit and vegetable crops, as well as to plants that provide food and habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects.
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