SUPERWEEDS : AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH OR AN AGRICULTURAL DISASTER IN THE MAKING?
courtesy Hearland.com
The appearance of 'super weeds', weeds resistant to the most common herbicides has been spotted ever more frequently on agricultural land.
Last year, agricultural land was beset my several woes. The most important: a gripping, seemingly never-ending drought.
However harsh the drought however, some plants are still flourishing. Those would be the super weeds, that is. Not because of their adaptation to drought, but because of their new found resistance to weed killers.
Such a trend was first observed in fields where genetically modified crops were harvested a few years back. Genetically modified crops are crops that have been modified to be resistant to the herbicide employed to combat weeds and raise yields.
In the old days, herbicides had to be used sparingly: too much and the harvest would die with the weed. Too little and yields would drop due to the weed overtaking the culture.
Genetically modified crops therefore, can be freely doused with herbicides, since they are inure to them, making the herbicide residuals much more prevalent in the food chain, but also, in virtue of that most powerful feature of nature's power, evolution, it is allowing the weeds to evolve and become resistant to the herbicide that was sprayed to combat them.
It seems that the incontrovertible balance of nature is just that. Nature, in essence, needs a balance, and when we humans decide to toy with it, it outsmarts us faster than our best minds can conjure up ways to fool her.
More ominously, these super weeds are also spreading faster than their normal counterparts and they are on a gallop towards the West, quickly conquering the vast divide of the American plains.
According to Stratus, an agribusiness research group, in 2012 almost 49% of ALL U.S. farmers said they have glycophosate resistant weed, the compound that is most commonly used in gmo farming, on their land, up from just 34% in the previous year. The expansion seems to have no specific coordinates. It is spreading north and south, east and west. It is also found to be moving ever faster each year. Lastly, the presence of weeds might be multiple, where more than one type makes its landing on new farming cultures.
Of course the main producer of such herbicides is already trying to convince farmers to try its silver bullet, or the next 'line of attack' of herbicidal resistant seeds. Trouble is, the new herbicides that would need employment in the next generation of gmo crops are much more toxic and would also translate in ever more resistant weeds.
However, the approval from the FDA to the new gmo's seeds has been stalled by the increasing protests of farmers, consumer and health advocates.
That translates into the farmer's need to up the quantity of herbicide in gmo crops to try and combat the increasing number of rogue weeds. One of the choices left for farmers is Paraquat, a highly toxic compound banned in 32 countries, including the European Union.
Of course there is another alternative: crop rotation. If farmers diversity their crops on and off season, weeds can be suppressed with much lower application of fertilizer. That would also translate into less herbicide. A much healthier and more natural way to solve the problem.
The herbicide, in fact, is not just present in the crops, but becomes a significant pollutant in streams and the environment at large.
Adapted from source article.
Source: Mother Jones/T.Philpott 2.5.13
No comments:
Post a Comment