As part of Biology Fortified’s serious The Promise of GMO‘s, geneticist Anastasia Bodnar, the co-founder of the website, asks: Have GMOs lived up to their promises?
We often hear: “Biotech is helping to feed the world by: Lowering volumes of agricultural chemicals required by crops-limiting the run-off of these products into the environment [and] Using biotech crops that need fewer applications of pesticides.”
Looking at the most up to date EPA data on agricultural pesticide use, we see that use of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and other conventional pesticides (such as miticides) all have a downward trend between 1998 and 2007. The slopes of the linear trendlines are in the legend of the chart to the right. Strangely, other pesticidal substances (such as sulfur, petroleum, and other chemicals used as pesticides) has a strong upward trend, which caused the total to increase. If you were to look at just the total, you wouldn’t get the overall picture.
Verdict: Promise met (for herbicides specifically, insecticides will be covered in another post) .
Read the full original article: The Promise of GMOs: Herbicides
