In response to the Associated Press (AP) article: “EPA decision could boost use of popular weed killer”, published in the Daily Telegram on Saturday, August 15.

In response to the Associated Press (AP) article: “EPA decision could boost use of popular weed killer”, published in the Daily Telegram on Saturday, August 15.

I intended to write a small essay on my own but then found the below article that pretty much covers 80% of what I intended to write – so I only needed to add the last piece of my essay…

“Dow & Monsanto in deadly race on the pesticide treadmill”

You’ve all heard the news: farmers across the country are losing their fields to superweeds so formidable and fast-spreading that they break farm machinery and render millions of acres of farmland useless. These superweeds have evolved as a direct consequence of Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide-seed package. Now superbugs are emerging, resistant to Monsanto’s transgenic insecticidal crops. Ecologists predicted this ecological disaster 15 years ago.
The big question is, can we possibly learn from this ecological and agronomic disaster? The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monsanto’s rival, Dow Chemical, apparently cannot.

Read more at: http://www.panna.org/blog/dow-monsanto-deadly-race-pesticide-treadmill

The AP article also cites the strongest argument for the use of genetically modified (GM) crops brought up by the developers of GM crops time and time again: “We need the high yields of GM crops to feed the ever-increasing human population”. This argument is, however, severely flawed. Not only are GM crops much less productive as advertised – in contrary, yields decrease continuously due to resistant weeds, and pesticide use that should be minimized increases (Gurian-Sherman 2009; International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (Project) and McIntyre 2009; Shi and others 2013). You may still think this is the price we have to pay to feed the world – but this is again a fallacy: Organic agriculture could easily feed the world using today’s imperfect organic practices – and could most probably feed an increasing world population even without increasing today’s cultivated agricultural land (Badgley and others 2007; Kremen and Miles 2012; Seufert and others 2012). So why would be continue to pollute our water and soils that are already challenged by climate change and other human activities? This makes no sense but for the short-term interest of stockholders of GM developers. The freedom of corporations to make profits does not weigh more than the freedom to lead healthy lives of billions of people!

References Cited

Badgley C, Moghtader J, Quintero E, Zakem E, Chappell MJ, Avilés-Vázquez K, Samulon A, Perfecto I. 2007. Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22(02):86-108.

Gurian-Sherman D. 2009. Failure to yield : evaluating the performance of genetically engineered crops. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists.

International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (Project), McIntyre BD. 2009. Global report. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Kremen C, Miles A. 2012. Ecosystem Services in Biologically Diversified versus Conventional Farming Systems: Benefits, Externalities, and Trade-Offs. Ecology and Society 17(4).

Seufert V, Ramankutty N, Foley JA. 2012. Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture. Nature 485(7397):229-232.

Shi G, Chavas J-P, Lauer J. 2013. Commercialized transgenic traits, maize productivity and yield risk. Nat Biotech 31(2):111-114.

What caused the Water Pollution with Microcystis Toxins in Toledo?

With all the news reports on people running out of water in Toledo and flooding regional stores buying every gallon of bottled water on the shelves, there is no mentioning about what caused this alarming pollution of Toledo’s water supply. This information, however, is crucial to prevent worse from coming!

The toxin producing cyanobacterium Microcystis is NOT growing due to Detroit’s waste water – as a WTOL reporter misleadingly reported, but because of massive amounts of fertilizer, especially phosphates, entering through the rivers Raisin and Maumee.
The major source of this fertilizer is agriculture, especially large monocultures of corn, which requires large amount of fertilizers that are often applied in excess and at the wrong time of year. In addition, many farmers ignore the recommendations for buffer zones around drains and creeks and other recommended measures to minimize fertilizer runoff. (1, 2)

But we also have to consider another player behind this water crisis that is big business in Lenawee County and the surrounding areas in Michigan and Ohio. These are CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) housing 1000s of dairy cows, swine, and poultry producing so much waste that the operators often have to get rid of it improperly as shown in the increasing number of violations confirmed by the Michigan DEQ (3).

The animal waste adds to the agricultural fertilizer runoff and over-fertilizes the “algae” (cyanobacteria) in Lake Erie that in return produce toxins poisoning our drinking water.

When will we wake up from our slumber of oblivion and realize that we are sawing off the very limb that we are sitting on?

Sources:

      (1)    Harmful Algal Bloom Monitoring System of The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Sciences: http://www2.nccos.noaa.gov/coast/lakeerie/bulletin/bulletin_current.pdf

      (2)    Michalak AM, Anderson EJ, Beletsky D, Boland S, Bosch NS, Bridgeman TB, Chaffin JD, Cho K, Confesor R, Daloğlu I et al. . 2013. Record-setting algal bloom in Lake Erie caused by agricultural and meteorological trends consistent with expected future conditions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/28/1216006110.abstract

     (3)    Confirmed Violations/Discharges from CAFOs and Liquid-System Livestock Operations to Bean/Tiffin Watershed and River Raisin Watershed: http://nocafos.org/violations.htm