You're always singing the praises of GMOs, veganblue - are you getting sucked in at your uni?
Last year's report by the Cotton Research & Development Corporation (CRDC) found a 45% reduction in chemicals sprayed onto Bt cotton for caterpillar control, compared with the conventional crop - a net saving of less than 15% over the whole cotton crop - not the 80% claimed.
Cotton is not an environmentally friendly crop. Yet a large cotton industry is planned in fragile environments right across Northern Australia, based on false promises of big reductions in synthetic chemical use on Bt varieties. Monsanto is now also licensed to sell Roundup tolerant cotton that can be sprayed more often and at higher doses with Roundup weed killer.
Who benefits most from GE cotton? Monsanto owns the patented Bt and Roundup tolerance genes and charges $200/hectare for Bt cottonseed. That price is set to increase when two Bt genes and the Roundup gene are stacked in one seed. Yet Australian growers (through CRDC) and taxpayers (through CSIRO) who funded most of the research on Bt cotton get minimal returns. Almost as many growers lost money on Bt cotton as made a profit, last year.
Insects may also thrive on Bt toxins. Scientists at Imperial College London reported in March that Bt tolerant diamondback moth caterpillars were fed cabbage leaves - normal and treated with Bt toxin. Those on the Bt-treated leaves grew 56% faster and bigger. They "are able to digest and utilise" Bt toxin and may use it as "supplementary food" so: "Bt transgenic (GE) crops could therefore have unanticipated nutritionally favourable effects, increasing the fitness of resistant populations."
I believe the Northern Territory are standing up to Monsanto and will not grow cotton there, though it is grown in NSW, and I believe in Qld.
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