I mean, its sorta why GMOs exist. To reduce the need of pesticides that are sprayed on farms. I've always considered GMOs to be the lesser evil when compared to standard pesticide usage.
Not all produce have a insect-resistant type however. So pesticides are still needed to protect certain plants.
I do not agree with the current bout of GMO scaremongering, but I think your first sentence is off the mark. I heard from the friends on the biotech side (and sorry, do not have a citation) that many current GMO cultures are engineered specifically for high pesticide tolerance so farms can pump in pesticides to kill all other flora and fauna without killing specific crops.
So, GMO good (or allows for significant benefits), current products kind-of pretty bad. My 2c.
The crops are designed to withstand Roundup, while weeds are not, so farmers can use Roundup to control weeds with crops that would normally be killed by the herbicide.
Roundup (glyphosate) ready is baby stuff compared to the newer stuff that is resistant to 2,4d/Dicamba. Mostly because the weeds have outsmarted the glyphosate.
Drift from 2,4d will wipe out plants (like your garden, or my vineyard, or like, endangered native plants) many kilometres away.
> high pesticide tolerance so farms can pump in pesticides
(I'm sort of in biotech.) This is one way to look at it. But I'm pretty sure one of the mechanisms that allow the plants to survive being covered in certain pesticides also allows them to effectively decontaminate / degrade the pesticide.
A plant engineered to express an enzyme capable of degrading organophosphates [0] could allow for both the plant to be protected from exposure to the toxin & even after harvesting still express low levels of the enzyme which should clean the plant.
That's the idea at least... From experience, it's not nearly that simple. E.g., the degradation products are also somewhat toxic.
No, mainstream popular production GMOs have precisely the opposite purpose. They're there to be be selectively resistant to bucketloads of herbicides while everything around them dies.
Living next door to this and trying to grow things that aren't corn or soy is "fun", let me tell you.
There are several different approaches to GMO crops. One, like you say, is the herbicide-ready crop. Another is the insecticidal crop, like Bt-Corn, that produces insecticides that kill common pests, and works in the way that the other poster suggests. Yet a third is to impart nutritional characteristics to a crop that weren't there before, like vitamin-A-producing rice. Of course, there are also the usual goals of higher yield, drought resistance, reduced waste, ease of harvesting and regularity of product. The hybridization and selective breeding processes have done the majority of work in those areas and are not considered GMO by most activists, but they are nonetheless modified.
it's almost like someone at Monsanto thought this approach might allow them to sell 5000 times more chemicals too. pretty lucky cooincidence they got there after all that science happened to show them that this is the most effective approach to solve world hunger (how is that going btw?)
Nearly all GMO plants out there are engineered to resist some kind of poison (herbicide or pesticide) so people can spray more of it.
The one rare GMO plant engineered to require less poison spraying nearly always does that by producing the poison itself, and having it in large amounts on every tissue. I wouldn't want to eat that stuff pretending that it's an improvement, thank you.
There exist some odd research GMO that resist bugs or require less herbicides due to some effect that does not involve producing poison. I haven't heard of any that left the lab, but I imagine it's possible there is some commercial crop of something like that somewhere.
> I've always considered GMOs to be the lesser evil when compared to standard pesticide usage.
Breeding poisonous crops has its own obvious disadvantages. Is it better to spray poison on your food that can be washed off, or is it better for the food to be naturally suffused with poison?
I'm not equating GMOs and poison. I'm equating pesticides and poison. A plant that doesn't need pesticides is just a plant that produces them internally.
And in fact, the effort to breed naturally pest-resistant crops keeps running into the problem that pest-resistant crops are also human-resistant. It's all the same thing from the plant's perspective.
Sorry, I think I misread/misunderstood your original post or inferred something from it that wasn't there. Often I get frustrated with the extreme anti-GMO crowd, and likely let that emotion cloud my response to you.
That's a pr problem, not a science problem. But you bring up a good point, even if you come up with the perfect technical solution, if people are suspicious, or there are bad actors out there with pseudoscience products to sell, you can get dumpstered for no good reason. The fact that we're struggling to maintain herd immunity in certain population segments tells you how hard it can be to defend good solutions in the face of irrational paranoia.
Why are you conflating RoundUp (NOT even a pesticide) with all GMOs? Attacking GMO technology because of one company's misuse is like attacking electricity because of the electric chair.
We're talking about replacing pesticides. Monsanto is in the business of selling herbicides and pesticides, so of course they're not going to use the tech to neuter their profits. If anything they are benefiting from the negative press and comments like your own as it discourage the public from supporting the necessary government research. I doubt this will come from private corporations as the profit motive just isn't there.
RoundUp is the trade name for glyphosate, which is an herbicide, not a pesticide. RoundUp Ready is the trade name for glyphosate-resistant strains of crops. RoundUp and RoundUp Ready are both copyrights of Monsanto.
I'm not conflating. I'm providing an example of a GMO that's still requires a pesticide. I'd like a counterexample of a GMO that actually REDUCES/ELIMINATES pesticide usage, as the parent claimed that GMOs do.
In theory, GMOs don't need pesticides. I'm asking about practice. Most other comments support my skepticism.
> Bt corn is a variant of maize that has been genetically altered to express one or more proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis[8] including Delta endotoxins. The protein is poisonous to certain insect pests. Spores of the bacillus are widely used in organic gardening[9], although GM corn is not considered organic. The European corn borer causes about a billion dollars in damage to corn crops each year.[10]
> In 2018 a study found that Bt-corn protected nearby fields of non-Bt corn and nearby vegetable crops, reducing the use of pesticides on those crops. Data from 1976-1996 (before Bt corn was widespread) was compared to data after it was adopted (1996-2016). They examined levels of the European corn borer and corn earworm. Their larvae eat a variety of crops, including peppers and green beans. Between 1992 and 2016, the amount of insecticide applied to New Jersey pepper fields decreased by 85 percent. Another factor was the introduction of more effective pesticides that were applied less often.[18]
They could be replaced, but the question becomes which one would be better (or worse). Additionally there are other ways to tackle this problem. Ensure usage is not allowed near residential areas, give warning or make sure everyone dusts only on particular dates. Lots of ways to solve this. Banning things that sound bad won't help. We'll end up banning everything. The concerns are valid, raising awareness is always good, but a solid plan is needed before we change the way we do agriculture.
"Organic" Farmers aren't very well defined unfortunately. They do use pesticides, but "organic" ones. The overriding pattern is that "Organic" farmers use stuff that is all natural. (for some... fuzzy... definition of all natural)
But we all know that Rattlesnake venom is 100% organic and all natural. So I'm personally not sure if the distinction between "synthetic" and "organic" is very appropriate. Nature can certainly mass-produce poisons that can be detrimental to humans.
The Pesticide problem is rather simple: we want to spray a poison onto our plants that kills insects, but doesn't harm humans (or the plants). Whether you use an "organic" pesticide or "synthetic" one, the fact remains that you are consistently spraying poisons. And these poisons haven't been very well tested for long-term low-level exposure levels. Be it organic or synthetic.
Slightly tangential, but regarding the definition of "natural," I personally prefer to think in terms of concentrates. The chemicals in question exist in nature in many cases, or at least there is a similar naturally occurring compound. The main thing that I think makes a useful distinction is the concentration level. Like other drugs, the danger is in the dose, and the extreme levels of potency we can get with a little chemistry is what makes them "natural" or "synthetic" in my opinion (regardless of their actual origin). I'm more cautious accepting highly concentrated substances than I am accepting the same thing diluted with the thousands of other naturally occurring substances that accompany it "in the wild."
Pesticides in organic farming are also highly concentrated (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Pesticides), which would make them synthetic per your definition. Which is fine, but it means that from your perspective organic farming is non-existent.
Yes, that's absolutely correct, and is actually part of the point I was attempting to make. I grow vegetables and fruits at small-farm scale (1-3 acres in production generally) in a way that I'd call organic if the term wasn't already taken - I don't spray anything at all, and use no concentrates for fertility or weed control. This has the predictable effect of reducing my overall yield in the short term, but I've found that I can still produce well as long as I'm careful to choose crops that are adapted to my region and use high biodiversity insectary plantings and trap crops for pest management. Weeding is done mechanically (usually with a hoe or a wheel hoe, occasionally with the walk-behind tractor for large areas).
I know many organic farmers who follow practices similar to mine as well. The organic name is really more of an indicator of intent for a lot of people - you can get away with a lot of things and still be certified, but most of the growers I know actually do make a strong effort to find another way. So, the organic label does actually carry some weight with me despite the fact that it can be abused.
They are different, but not necessarily less toxic to the environment.
Rotenone is a powerful insecticide that was used to control insects (LD50: 132 mg/kg). Despite the high toxicity of Rotenone to aquatic life and some links to Parkinson disease the compound is still allowed in organic farming as it is a naturally occurring compound
Yes, there are things allowed in certified organic agriculture that are poisonous and harmful. That’s a whole separate discussion. I could go on forever about the organic program here in the US, and the standards board being a small group of individuals that mostly represent big-ag at this point (more than half of the board members), and all of the exceptions and rule changes they’ve made to the program.
My point was that organic farmers don’t use organophosphates, which was a response to “Organophosphates are like the primary insecticide used worldwide. How do you replace it? I don't see anywhere where they propose an alternative.”
The monoculture status quo certainly takes some of the blame. In a balanced ecosystem, no one pest can gain a foothold because the ecosystem supports natural predators, and the foodsource is spread out enough that the pest population won't reach a critical mass.
So you mean, grow much less of it, and at greater cost? You know what else presents a risk of "reduced IQs, memory and attention deficits"? Malnutrition, the world's most potent inhibitor of intelligence.
Just a note, the world runs no risk of malnutrition even if we produce less food with cleaner forms of production. The world already produces more than enough for everyone. The problem is distribution, not production.
Essentially, yes. The "green revolution" is an illusion and its effects cannot be sustained. We need to gradually back down to a place where humans can grow enough food for themselves without also poisoning themselves and without exhausting soil fertility.
Or, having children. Natalism -- the positive and negative values constructed around having vs. not having children, the pressure put upon women to reproduce until they biologically can't anymore in most (really all) countries -- as a social reality is almost never thought about, much less discussed as potentially 'adjustable'.
Not all produce have a insect-resistant type however. So pesticides are still needed to protect certain plants.