Use of herbicides such as Monsanto's Roundup is on the rise. As weeds become resistant, environmental activists blame genetically modified cropsIt's been 12 years since the first genetically modified crop was sown in the U.S., and controversy has raged since. Now, another salvo has been launched, in the form of a new report from environmental activist organization Friends of the Earth International and the Center for Food Safety, a Washington (D.C.) advocacy group. Called Who Benefits from GM Crops?, the study examines the emergence of "superweeds" that have developed a resistance to conventional herbicides such as Monsanto's (MON) Roundup. The culprits, says the report, are plants like corn, soybeans, and cotton that have been genetically modified to survive Roundup. Farmers can spray their fields and the weeds will die but the crops will thrive.
As more acres of "Roundup Ready" crops are planted, the use of the pesticide has increased. The increased application has led some weeds to develop a resistance to glyphosate, the generic term for the chemical in Roundup. And, in turn, farmers have had to apply stronger doses of pesticide to kill the superweeds.
According to the report, the amount of weed-killing herbicides used by farmers has exploded, rising fifteenfold since biotech crops were first planted. The report lists eight weeds in the U.S.—among them horseweed, common waterhemp, and hairy fleabane—that have developed resistance to glyphosate, the most commonly applied pesticide. The next generations of biotech seeds include some that have been modified to withstand stronger doses of herbicides, while another strategy has been to develop tolerances to different herbicides and to combine multiple types of resistance in the same seed. "It's a chemical arms race against these weeds," says Bill Freese, a policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety and a co-author of the report.
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