[margalabargala]

I think you might be confusing herbicides and pesticides.

Some GMO crops can lead to less pesticide usage as the plants can sometimes be engineered to be resistant to the pests targeted.

Weed plants don't generally attack the crop plant directly, instead they merely grow nearby and compete for various resources that the crops would otherwise be able to use.

GMO crops can be engineered to be resistant to specific herbicides. This leads to more of that herbicide (generally glyphosate) being used, since more herbicide = fewer weeds, and amounts of glyphosate that would kill non-GMO crops are tolerated by GMO crops.

[sjg007]

Nope I meant herbicide. Look it up.

[_jal]

No.

If you want your assertions to be taken seriously around here, providing your own citations for your claims would help.

[sjg007]

You all think you know what you are talking about but never look at the research.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14865

[_jal]

I look at research. And in this case, it contradicts your claim.

"A steady, linear trend for increasing number of herbicide area-treatments over the last 25 years was observed for all crops except soybean. The linear trend was not statistically significant for soybean [...]"

[sjg007]

Talk about selective quoting…

Read the whole paragraph. Less herbicide if the crop is roundup ready.

[margalabargala]

That's a misreading of the paragraph. The specific claim is that non-glyphosate herbicide use is increasing faster than glyphosate herbicide use.

Later on, in the conclusion section, the researchers acknowledge that farming is generally a complex system with many reasons for doing things, but nevertheless point fingers at herbicide-resistant GM crops in general (not roundup-ready in particular) as a reason for increasing herbicide usage.

> Some researchers have blamed glyphosate-resistant crops and the resulting evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds for increasing herbicide use in maize, soybean, and cotton2,6. While this explanation is plausible for these three glyphosate-resistant crops, it cannot explain the similar trends for increasing herbicide intensity in rice and wheat, since no glyphosate-resistant cultivars are commercially available for those crops. In fact, herbicide area-treatments increased at a faster rate in rice and wheat compared with the glyphosate-resistant crops, so the claim that glyphosate-resistant crops are the primary driver of increasing herbicide use is at odds with the empirical data. The broader problem of herbicide-resistant weeds (rather than the artificially narrow focus on glyphosate) may certainly have played a role in increasing herbicide use for all of the crops in this analysis. The most likely explanation, though, is probably a combination of inter-related factors and is far more complex than any single driver.

[_jal]

To recap, you contradicted drewmal above, who said:

> it leads to loads of herbicide usage (glyphosate). The process of desiccation also leads to loads of glyphosate being used just prior to harvest, on non ‘Roundup Ready’ (glyphosate resistant) crops

You replied "Ummm no, less herbicide actually".

The Nature study you claimed supported your assertion said herbicide usage was steadily up, and more was used on non-roundup-ready crops.

I don't know if you meant "no" to reply to one or the other of those claims or both, but it doesn't matter because they both agree with drewmal.