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Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds

www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?scp=1&sq=Farmers%20Cope%20With%20Roundup-Resistant%20Weeds&st=cse

Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds

Christopher Berkey for The New York Times

Jason Hamlin, a certified crop adviser and agronomist, looks for weeds resistant to glyphosate in Dyersburg, Tenn. By WILLIAM NEUMAN and ANDREW POLLACK

Published: May 3, 2010


On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

"We’re back to where we were 20 years ago," said Mr. Anderson, who will plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring, more than he has in years. "We’re trying to find out what works."

Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices, lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and water.

"It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen," said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.

GE SOY - THE GREATEST THREAT TO ALL HUMANITY

Shocking Stealth Cause of Birth Defects

Posted By Dr.

10 reasons why we don’t need GM foods

With the cost of food recently skyrocketing – hitting not just shoppers but the poor and hungry in the developing world – genetically modified (GM) foods are once again being promoted as the way to feed the world. But this is little short of a confidence trick. Far from needing more GM foods, there are urgent reasons why we need to ban them altogether.

Bayer Blamed at Trial for Crops ‘Contaminated’ by Modified Rice

By Andrew M. Harris

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Bayer CropScience AG is responsible for financial damage sustained by Missouri farmers when their rice crops were contaminated by genetically modified seeds, the growers’ lawyer told a federal court jury in St. Louis.

Their trial is the first of a series the Bayer AG unit is defending against farmers from five states making similar claims. More than 1,200 such cases have been filed.

GM food can cause cancer - French scientist Seralini

Thursday, 22 October 2009 19:48

GM food can cause cancer
Down to Earth, October 31 2009
http://downtoearth.org.in/full6.asp?foldername=20091031&filename=inv&sec...

French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini unmasked the dangers of genetically modified brinjal, almost approved for commercial production in India. He shared with Savvy Soumya Misra his findings on Bt brinjal and Roundup Ready soybean

*On the data submitted on Bt brinjal by Mahyco for approval from the Indian government

The data submitted to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (geac) of the Union environment ministry is not valid; it has not been signed by the scientist who conducted the tests. What is more scandalous is that the studies on the effects of Bt brinjal were conducted for just three months.

If the product is to be consumed by humans, the tests should have been for a period of at least two years—the lifespan of a rodent.

MADGE calls for Investigation: GM and Allergies - Body of Evidence

Conclusion:

There is an urgent need to investigate whether GM foods are involved in the
phenomenal rise in allergies and anaphylaxis in Australia.

Are GM foods contributing to the huge rise in food allergies and anaphylaxis?

Source: http://www.madge.org.au/health.php
See also http://www.madge.org.au/Docs/allergy-report.pdf to read the updated full report into allergies in Australia (Updated 2008-09-25)

MADGE looked at the approvals of GM foods in Australia and compared them to Australian hospital admission rates for anaphylaxis. Our graph shows a strong correlation between the two.

We are calling for:

* An urgent investigation into the possible link between food allergies and GM foods
* Full labelling of all GM foods to allow traceability of possible adverse health effects

MADGE research has uncovered:

1. A study predicting that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready canola (GM) could prove allergic to people with sensitivities to red shellfish (prawns, shrimp, lobster).

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