GMO CROPS : MORE TROUBLE THAN IT'S WORTH?

GMO CROPS : MORE TROUBLE THAN IT'S WORTH?

courtesy; brucestutz.com

Has the luster fallen off GMO crops?  One of the arguments that allowed the adoption of GMO crops by the then president of the United States, George Bush sr., was that it would provide the world with better production yields.

Here in one neat little package was the answer to the world's rising food demand, and even possibly winking at ending famine worldwide.

But since then, and despite the best efforts by the seed producers, the GMO crops have come under fire for many reasons.  Some have even argued that the reason GMO crops have been promoted was that the company who produced the seeds also produced the weed killer to which the plants had been given immunity.  Others, and with seeming reason, yell that GMOs, which are banned in many countries pose serious health risk, environmental risks and long term ecological risks to farming itself.

The new finding however, would debunk the theory that is at the very core of the GMO crop's existence:  its 'miraculous' yield.

But people who have taken the time to measure exactly what those yields could be, have found some startling information.  Not only have scientists at Washington State University found that GMO have increased greatly the use of toxic chemicals, whose use has had to be increased year on year due to the weeds' increased resistance to Roundup,  but scientist at the department of Agriculture also have found that when comparing crops of GMOs and non GMOs seeds in the past two decades, that in most cases the yields of GMOs have been negligibly higher and that in some crops the yields have actually fallen. 

The latter scientists have called the phenomenon 'yield drag' , an event that occurs when a plant's genome is manipulated and the results vary from the projections due to unintended changes in the growth of the plant.

Source: bio.org/mother jones 2.13.13