THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 122, June 29, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NEBRASKA RESEARCH SAFEGUARDS
SUSTAINABLE CROP YIELDS
By Dennis T. Avery & Alex A. Avery
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH & AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION WITHOUT ADVERSE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: RECENT
DEVELOPMENTS IN THE AREA OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WEED CONTROL DISPROVE THE CLAIMS OF
ENVIRONMENTALISTS & ANTI-HERBICIDE ACTIVISTS -- DEVELOPMENT OF CROP TOLERANCE FOR THE HERBICIDE
DISCAMBIA WILL PERMIT CONTINUED EXPANSION OF SUSTAINABLE, LOW-EROSION, HIGH-YIELD FARMING DURING THE
NEXT FORTY YEARS OF SURGING WORLD CROP DEMAND -- A BODY BLOW IS DELIVERED TO POLITICAL
ENVIRONMENTALISM & THE MOVEMENT TO BAN GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CROPS
FULL STORY:
The journal Science editorialized on May 23, 2007, that the world is becoming too dependent on Roundup-Ready
biotech crops. It claimed agriculture had become as dependent on glyphosate for weed control as human medicine had
become on antibiotics. The journal predicted: “There is going to be an epidemic of glyphosate-resistant weeds.”
In the very same issue of Science, however, the University of Nebraska reported that it has developed crop
tolerance for the herbicide dicamba, adding a new genetically engineered weed control option to our arsenal. This will
permit continued expansion of sustainable, low-erosion, high-yield farming during the next 40 years of surging world
crop demand.
“We can now spray dicamba [a phenoxy herbicide] on a number of different [crop] plants and have no visible symptoms
at all,” says Nebraska molecular biologist Donald Weeks. He found that dicamba-resistant soybeans could withstand
five times the typical field application of the herbicide. Dicamba features a low toxicity — about one-third as high in mice
as the organic pesticide pyrethrum — and low soil persistence.
Giving up herbicides and low-till would lead to more soil erosion, driving lower yields and eventually ruining much of the
world’s cropland. Conservation tillage has cut soil erosion in crop fields by up to 90 percent through low-till and no-till
farming. Both use herbicides to kill weeds, rather than relying on traditional plowing. Organic, which bans low till, is not
a solution. It takes nearly twice as much land to produce a ton of food because the fields must produce their own
nitrogen as well as the food.
Until now, only the tolerance for the Roundup has been bioengineered into crop plants. Roundup kills all weed types, and
that’s a big reason why glyphosate-tolerant crops are now being planted on more then 220 million acres per year,
worldwide. They’ve been the fastest-spreading farm technology in history.
Nebraska’s new dicamba resistance effectively ends the mini-panic over glyphosate, however. Now, the industry has two
effective all-weed herbicides that can be bred into crops and rotated — or even stacked in the same seeds — to prevent
any major resistance. In addition, farmers can also utilize Bayer’s Liberty-Link, a non-biotech breeding intervention that
relies on gluphosinate and a different mode of action than glyphosate. There are also sprayed-on weed killers such as
atrazine, which offer low costs and low environmental impacts, but without the reduced pesticide sprayings of the
herbicide-tolerant plants.
Even more important, Nebraska’s success in finding a disarming gene for dicamba raises hopes that other disarming genes
can be found to provide tolerance for still more herbicides, thanks to the world’s genetic diversity.
Dicamba tolerance is also a body blow to environmental activist claims that genetically engineered crops should be
banned. Weeks’ creation works through the plants’ chloroplasts, which means the modified crops can’t spread resistance
through pollen carried by wind or insects. Over time, this will even disarm the environmental activist claim that biotech
crops threaten the plantings of nearby organic farmers.
It looks like biotech crops will be with us for the long haul — helping humanity feed a peak human population of perhaps
9 billion people without taking more cropland away from nature.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. and is the Director for Center for Global
Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State.
Alex A. Avery is the Director of Research at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity