Better Know a Farmer: No-Till Guru Bill Crabtree

In this issue of “Better Know a Farmer”, I contacted Bill Crabtree to learn about “no-till farming”. If you’re saying to yourself, “No-till? What are you waiting for? Till when? It doesn’t make sense” then you’re not alone. Bill has an awesome website which highlights his expertise in this field (get it?? Field? Because he’s also a farmer? Amazing pun!!). He lives in Western Australia (WA), but he provides consulting services worldwide helping farmers adopt no-till farming. He’s actively engaged in social media using the very apt twitter handle @NoTillBill, so we “met” through Twitter. I learned a lot in this interview and the spouse added a few questions, too. I read it with Bill's Australian accent in my head :)

Q: What’s your background and training? What do you grow on your farm?

A: I grew up on the land, I was doing night shift ploughing our very sandy fragile soils to 3 AM with no cab, no lights, and a modest jacket at the age of 14 on the south coast of WA. I went to University of Western Australia twice - B.Ag.Sci and M.Sci and now enrolled in a PhD in No-Till at same university. Eight years ago after energising the no-till movement for most of my life and helping farmers make lots of money at 47 years old, I realised I needed a retirement plan as $200,000 in assets was not going to go far.  So, with the help of Rabobank, I borrowed very heavily, bought a farm in the driest region of the globe, and have been 100% cropping on the desert’s edge not far from Yalgoo - East of Geraldton in Western Australia.  It was risky but it has paid off. The only profitable crop in this heat and dry is just wheat.  So, in contrast to my agronomic training, I have been growing continuous wheat for 8 years and it has been a huge success with no-till and full stubble retention. I grow a little of canola, triticale and lupins, but 95% wheat [BioChica's Note: if you don't know what triticale and lupins are, you're not alone :) I had to look those up!]

Q: What’s no-till farming? Why is it important?

A: It is seeding with less than 20% topsoil disturbance with narrow metal openers (sharp 12 mm narrow points or discs) and with no soil cultivation after the last crop. [BioChica’s note: I wanted to add a picture of tilling equipment for farming but couldn’t find a freely available image, so you can see one here on the John Deere website]. Tillage, or cultivation, used to be needed to soften the soil enough to be able to evenly place seeds at the right depth in the soil and for mechanical weed control. Neither of these factors are now required due to better mechanical tools and herbicides. Within a few years of no-till the soil softens through organic residue retention that feeds the bugs in the soil which make the soil spongy and ready to rapidly soak up heavy downpours of rain.  This softer/spongy soil can then store more water at depth and mitigate against droughts. Symbiotic plant root relations also form that are otherwise destroyed by tillage, fungi are increased as the decomposition of the organic matter becomes more of a steady release of energy into the soil food web that is very complex and not well understood but well appreciated by farmers. [BioChica’s Note: Bill has a YouTube video on this topic which you can view here.]

No-till has many other immediate farm benefits also, including less fuel use, better timing, higher whole-farm yields and greater economic efficiencies.

Field of wildflowers on Bill's farm

Q: So basically, you harvest the crop from the previous season, you leave all the stems and roots behind, and the next season you plant right on top of that? Does no-till work with only some types of crops? I imagine that it wouldn’t work in regions of the world where they don’t have a winter/rainy season?

A: No-Till works for all crops really, but some horticultural crops, like potatoes, onions, carrots etc, need tillage to harvest these crops. But, perhaps greater than 99% of global cropland could be no-tilled.  Some soils and environments do not necessarily give yield increases to no-tillage, however, all soil in all environments are protected and conserved by no-tillage practices.  In some places it takes longer for no-tillage to give a yield benefit. In most places the whole farm yield benefit can be immediate and significant - like in my state!  One region where no-till struggles to reward farmers is the wet Red River Valley in Manitoba, Canada (and this likely extends into Minnesota as well). The heat units are limited, the season is short, the valley floods to some degree in April/May most years and the minute the snow melts the race is on to get a crop out of cold wet soil before the season is over again in cold September. The land is fertile and the residue that no-till helps to maintain can keep the soil cool and damp when the race is on to get the crop ‘making hay while the sun shines’.

No-till actually works best in regions globally where the rainy seasons are unreliable and spasmodic. The ability of the long-term no-till soil-biology complex to suck up rainfall quickly helps to drought-proof the crops. Additionally, arbuscular mycorrhizae and similar symbiotic bug activity in the rhizosphere (root zone), enable the crops to partner with soil-biology to extract more water than is normally available to crops from the soil. While not miraculous it is not what happens when farmers do tillage and it can result in some very nice and increased water use efficiency by crops over tillage based farming systems.

Q: What do GMOs have to do with no-till farming?

A: GMO’s can have nothing to do with no-till farming, as in South Australia where they are illegal and no-till adoption is about 90% adoption. However, these farmers would love to have GMO crops as they allow them to use less herbicides and manage herbicide resistance better.  In Canada both RoundUp Ready canola and Liberty Link (glufosinate ammonium tolerant) GMO types has ensured their herbicide resistance issues have been better managed than in most countries who have abused them agronomically by over-relying on one type. [BioChica’s note: I’ve written about the RoundUp Ready trait here].

Q: Then why do GMO advocates claim that GM Round-Up Ready crops allow for no-till farming?

A: Because it is technically true. GM Round-Up Ready means that farmers can seed straight into undisturbed soil and control their weeds in-crop with Round-Up, which is no-till.  But ‘easy come, easy go’. It is my experience that when farmers, by default, have no-till happening for them and they do not adopt it thinking about the technique and understanding the benefits that it offers that they can then easily jump back into the tillage habit. Some of these farmers do not learn the long-term benefits of the no-till system. While Round-Up Ready crops sure are of valuable assistance in helping farmers adopt no-till as it can give excellent weed control, but it does not necessarily guarantee high quality no-till.

A clear example of this is in Argentina where, due to government policies, farmers grow soybean continuously season after season. Being a legume the soy fixes lots of nitrogen and effectively this ‘lights a fire’ in the soil of fast microbial activity and this burns up the soil carbon quickly and leaves the soil with very little soil cover. The soil is then readily exposed to soil erosion and there are more nitrates for loss to the environment. The microbes effectively cultivate the soil. So, you could easily argue that a common Argentinian no-till practice is only a small step up from tillage based farming.

Q: Are there any aspects or practices from no-till farming that people could adopt in their backyard gardens or planter-boxes?

A: Sure, just like the mulch on the surface of the soil is magic, it stops evaporation and feeds the soils bugs! No-tillage, and the mulch that it maintains, makes earthworm numbers explode. Earthworms are reported to be on top of the soil food chain and this gives us great comfort that no-till, even with herbicide use, is good for the soil microbial hierarchy. Similarly for no-till farmers, backyard gardeners also need to keep an eye out for crop nutrient deficiency symptoms! Particularly for NPKS - the big four nutrients in soil science. [BioChica’s note: NPKS stands for nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur, and is an abbreviation used for labeling fertilizers]

Field of Wheat on Bill's farm. Or is it a field of dreams?

Q: The  International Agency for Research on Cancer’s recent assessment of glyphosate (the active ingredient in RoundUp) classified the compound as a probable carcinogen? Why are you trying to kill us all by forcing farmers to adopt this compound and how much is Monsanto paying you to do this?

A: The idea that glyphosate is a probable cancer causing agent is fanciful in the context of its registered use pattern.  But, it could probably be right if you are going to inject glyphosate into our cells nucleus or vacuole.  In this context it probably does cause DNA damage - similarly to injecting sodium chloride, detergent or dozens of commonly used household products, into the same place.  So the idea of suggesting that using glyphosate over a crop is the same as injecting glyphosate into our cells is quite misleading and points to activism by those who suggest it.  For the Cancer branch within WHO to come to this conclusion is almost disillusioning.  It suggests to me that someone is being quite mischievous and unscientific and has an agenda and it equates to fearmongering. I have emailed them for clarification and they responded!  I asked them for the specific information lead them to conclude this. They then said I should read the whole 92 page document. I could find nothing that supported the idea that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen. But most concerning is that they have referenced the discredited research by Seralini and indeed they have used 7 of his papers in their study. Seralini is a known anti-GM and and glyphosate activist.

No farmer on the globe is forced to use Monsanto’s technology, they have the choice, if the technology does not benefit the farmer then he walks away from it - well that’s true for most of the farming world anyway! :)  Although in Russia they are banned from using the technology.  Some other countries have followed their lead.

I have not received any funding from Monsanto, ever!  I have visited their facilities, as any person interested or working in agriculture should.  But I have visited John Deere many more times.

Field of Wheat on Bill's farm

Q: As we all know, nothing on the internet is false. I’ve read many times that Round-Up used on wheat is leading to leaky-guts, is increasing gluten allergies, and is killing us all. If there’s no GMO wheat on the market, why is Round-Up used on it?

A: There is no GMO wheat on the market! Although it looks like drought tolerant genetically engineered wheat will be released in 2016 in Argentina. Round-Up is not killing us, despite a concerted campaign to convince people otherwise!  Over-eating and smoking definitely kill people, in contrast glyphosate use in no-tillage has greatly increased food production, lowering the price of food, allowing people to eat more and therefore killing them with obesity - haha :).  But seriously, Round-Up has been safely used on wheat pre-harvest in Canada since the late 1980’s. It is used to control weeds in a 100 day crop growing window and for more information on why and how farmers do it see; http://www.nurselovesfarmer.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-glyphosate-and-wheat/.

Q: It sounds like no-till farming is amazing: builds the topsoil, reduces erosion, environmentally friendlier, etc. It even seems to me like there’s less work involved, because you don’t have to till the land. Why wouldn’t a farmer adopt the method? Are there any drawbacks to no-till farming? Or is no-till farming like puppies, i.e. everyone thinks they’re awesome?

A: No-till was demonised 30 years ago in my state by experts saying that “it did not work before and it will not work now” and “all your nice new no-till machines in two years time will be parked under a big tree, behind a big shed and going rusty”. Indeed, it took a huge effort and a lot of courage by a few to remove those philosophical obstacles. Most of the technical obstacles have been removed and no-till works all over the globe but it is challenging in wet and cold areas that lack heat units. In these areas the soil can get real cold and wet and stay wet and cold for a long time and no-till, with residue retention, slows evaporation and helps to keep the soil wet and cold for longer. This makes it a bit harder for crops to get growing fast. Soil disturbance, or tillage, can blacken the soil and help it absorb heat and get the crop growing faster sooner. For different reasons there are times when tillage is also needed in my hot and dry state on a small portion of the land, and I have blogged on this here: http://seedhawkseeder.com/blog/is-soil-tillage-ever-justifiable-no-till-bill-checks-in

Q: My spouse is from West Texas, where they famously had the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Some people think it might come back with Texas’ drought. Do you think no-till farming can help?

A: Sure, and it does, I have farmer friends on Twitter in that region and I have also visited there several times. There are some very good farmers doing a great job of no-till there. Each year no-till farmers congregate at Salina, Kansas and share their knowledge together, indeed I have spoken at this event in the past http://www.notill.org/

I got 99 Problems but a GMO Ain't One

In the past, I’ve written a short list of problems that are attributed to GMOs, but are actually problems with modern agriculture. Well, I’m going to expand the list to “9 Reasons Why GMOs are Opposed that Aren’t Really About GMOs”, or as the spouse aptly entitled this post "I got 99 Problems, but a GMO Ain't One". But it's really only 9 problems. As I've written before, transgenesis, or the method used to make most GMOs, is a tool and it makes no sense to oppose a method with broad applications. It's like opposing electronics as a category because you don't like the fact that your Roomba chews up your computer cable (which is happening this very instant...) or that iPhones cost too much.  In fact, an article was just written in the NY Times about GMOs, and in the comments section, you'll see the reasons below being listed time and time again.

So, here we go.

9) "GMOs are patented". Yes, many of them are patented, but so are many non-GMO crops. Pluots didn't just drop out of the sky: someone had to work for years to develop those tasty treats, so there are patented varieties. Not all GMOs are patented: there are open-source GMOs, and there are also GMOs where organizations have worked with private enterprises to give away seeds on humanitarian grounds, such as Golden Rice. So using the "GMOs are patented" excuse makes no more sense than saying that you don't like electronics because Windows is under a copyright. 

8) "GMOs cause superweeds". GMOs that carry traits for herbicide tolerance can lead to weeds that develop tolerance to the herbicide, known as "superweeds", and I've reviewed this topic here. Superweeds are far from being an issue unique to GMOs, and even pulling weeds by hand can lead to weeds that look like the crop itself (known as mimicry). The issue of superweeds is a serious one, and this database tracks herbicide resistant weeds as they develop across different nations. Reducing it to a "GMO-specific" problem and severely narrowing the scope of the issue, deters the efforts of finding genuine solutions to the problem. So using the "GMOs cause superweeds" excuse makes no more sense than saying that you don't like computers because they can lead to electric shocks, when the issue is much broader in scope.

7) "GMOs are drenched in pesticides". Yes, pesticides (be they herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides) are used on GMOs, as well as any other form of modern agriculture unless it specifically states "pesticide-free". That includes the U-Pick farm I went to last week for cherry picking and the organic peach farm next to it. That includes the fields of corn that we drove by to get there. It took me a while to come to the realization that no form of agriculture is perfect. If we insist on going pesticide-free, crops will be lost which will increase costs to consumers and we will have to dedicate more land to get the same output. Pesticides are expensive. Farmers don't just decide to spray their fields with pesticide because they feel like it, nor do they "drench" their fields in it. There are laws and regulations on how much can be applied, and why on earth would anyone use any more than necessary when its use can cut from your profits? Here's an excellent post written from a farmer's perspective on the topic of pesticides and why they're used. PLEASE read it. Some GMOs are designed to resist pests so that pesticide doesn't have to be applied, such as the Rainbow Papaya which is designed to resist the ring-spot virus and saved Hawaii's papaya industry.

6) "GMOs are monocultures". When I was preggers, the spouse and I went on a road trip around California. I was miserable. I was one of those people who had morning sickness well into the 3rd trimester. Anyway, I was on medication to control it because I was losing weight, but the medication made me horribly drowsy. So the road trip ended up being more of a sleeping trip. Somewhere between Sequoia National Park and Fresno we drove through orange farms. And we drove. And drove. And drove. I don't know how long it was but it felt like every time I woke up, we were still driving by orange trees. And GMO oranges don't exist on the market. So yes, there are vast fields of GMO corn in places across the US, but there are also vast fields of non-GMO spinach and giant orchards of fruit. When I lived in Venezuela, we lived across from a valley that was a giant sugarcane farm. It was enormous and it belonged to the local sugar refinery. Every year, they'd harvest sugarcane about 3 times. It never changed, there was no crop rotation, and it just went on for miles. There's no GMO sugarcane. Monocultures can lead to crop resistant pests, and farmers are encouraged to rotate their crops from one year to the next so that this risk can be minimized. So, again, reducing the issue of monocultures to a GMO-specific one is highly disingenuous.

5) "GMOs are being made by Big Ag to line their pockets". Unless your problem is with making money in general, then this doesn't make much sense. Of course ag-businesses want to make money. Why would any corporate enterprise embark on a project where they think they'd lose money? Again, the "Big Ag" argument doesn't apply to all GMOs. Arctic Apples were developed by a small company up in BC, Canada that only had 7 employees. AquaBounty, which developed the transgenic salmon (not yet commercialized) only had 12 employees on staff in 2012. And of course, many transgenic crops are being developed by public sector scientists, some of which address undernurishment such as biofortified bananas to address vitamin A deficiency. This reason for opposing GMOs is like saying that you oppose electronics because Apple makes too much money from the iPhone.

4) "GMOs place restrictions on seed saving". This is tied to #10 on this list. Farmers who plant GMOs sign a contract where they state that they will not reuse seeds. In the same way that you're not supposed to copy and give away that Maroon 5 song that you just downloaded from iTunes because it's a copyright violation, farmers are supposed to respect the intellectual property rights of the companies with whom they have signed a contract. Many farmers have written about the plethora of choices they have when it comes to seeds (here's one of my favorite articles). Basically, if farmers do not like the restricted seed use, they don't have to buy the seeds. It's as simple as that. The fact that they do and that they buy the seeds on a fairly regular basis suggests that there's something about GMO seeds that they prefer. Not only that, but there are non-GE crops where farmers have to sign agreements as well (this includes non-GE sunflowers, which Chipotle switched to when they adopted more integritiness). So this has little to do with GMOs: it has to do with patents. If you can think of a better way that companies can recover the dollars they spend on making a product after the first year, by all means, make the suggestion. Farmers who do not use GMOs generally buy their seeds from one year to the next, too, because the seeds they plant are often hybrids. Recalling Mendel's pea experiments, this would mean that if farmers reused the seeds, only a portion of the following year's crop would have the traits they want.

3) "GMOs use the carcinogenic Glyphosate". Glyphosate use is not restricted to GMOs. That by itself is enough to earn it a place on my list. In fact, we just used it this week to get rid of a particularly thorny wild blackberry that we couldn't control and was right in Baby Boy's biking path along the driveway. Regarding the label "carcinogenic", I think that Dr Andrew Kniss wrote one of the most balanced pieces I've read on this topic, and I'd like you all to head over there to take a look. An important point to keep in mind is the time at which herbicides such as glyphosate are applied. Think about it: glyphosate is being applied so that corn/soy can grow heartily without getting choked out by weeds. Does it make sense to apply glyphosate when corn is several feet tall? Here's Pioneer's recommendations for glyphosate application, and they recommend using glyphosate when the plants are just a few weeks old. Between that time and harvest, it might rain, the sun will have beaten down on the crops, and the crops will have been watered. So saying that the corn we eat is "drenched" in glyphosate doesn't make sense to me. Regarding the amount of glyphosate used, I love this graphic by Sarah Schultz where she explains that approximately one soda can-sized amount of glyphosate is applied across an entire acre of crop in one season. More importantly, there are MANY GMOs that are not glyphosate resistant: the Arctic Apple or Innate Potato, for example, could be grown using organic practices (without the organic label), and again, all those GMOs that are being made for humanitarian purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with pesticides.

2-1) "Monsanto". I give Monsanto 2 spots on this list, because there are different aspects to the "I hate GMOs because of Monsanto" reason.

2) "GMOs promote a monopoly." Every time I see this, I think that someone over at Dow Agro is cackling. I work in a field in biotech right now where a single company has between 70-80% of the market. Google web searches are used almost 70% of the time. Android has 80% of the market in operating systems for smartphones. But strangely enough, I've never seen a "March against Google". I tried to find out how much of the seed market Monsanto owns, and the numbers are all over the place, because it's such an easy number to rig to portray your point. For example, Monsanto says that it has 5% of the world market in seeds. The Organic Consumers Association says that Monsanto has 80% of the US GM market on corn. However, GMOanswers.com explains the latter by stating that they license the trait to other independent companies, so they're not sold by Monsanto. Commercial licensing agreements are set up between companies ALL the time, so the stat from OCA is blurring the real numbers. This would be equivalent to saying that the Lenovo laptop I'm typing on was sold by Microsoft because it has a Windows OS on it. No: the laptop and the sales go to Lenovo, which then pays Microsoft a licensing fee. So I honestly don't know how much of the seed market Monsanto owns. Keep in mind that organic and non-GM farmers have to buy seeds from somewhere, and Monsanto does sell organic seeds. Unless you know what seeds your local farmers used when you buy your veggies, you have no guarantee that you're boycotting Monsanto if you boycott GMOs.

The problem with monopolies is a tough one and I don't know what the solution might be. Since it takes such a long time to get a GE product through the regulatory process, it's difficult for a small company to last very long. During that time employees need to be paid, logistics need to be taken care of, and the product pipeline needs to continue its development while no revenue is being generated. By no means is this a problem unique to the agricultural biotech sector. Small tech companies are gobbled up by larger behemoths every day. So the issue of monopolies is far from being a problem about GMOs.

1) "Monsanto made (place your favorite scary chemical here)". This is a topic that I'm struggling with myself. I know that Monsanto has a very checkered past, particularly when it comes to Agent Orange. Very briefly, Agent Orange is an herbicide that was used by the US during the Vietnam War to deprive the guerrillas on the ground of food and cover. Agent Orange production during the Vietnam War contained a contaminant which caused severe health problems in the local inhabitants. The US government placed orders from many companies for Agent Orange, and Monsanto was one of them. I don't know how it came to be that Monsanto is exclusively blamed for Agent Orange. As I see it, there are multiple people to blame, primarily the US government. I'm assuming that all the companies involved could have turned down the US government contract, and I'd like to believe that in an ethical world, they would have. But to blame Monsanto for this issue makes no more sense than to blame Boeing for military airstrikes, and I have yet to see a "March against Boeing". The Monsanto that exists today has gotten rid of its chemical division, however there's no denying that the company is built upon the revenue generated by the company that existed back when it made chemicals. There are many companies that exist today that were built decades or centuries ago under very shady circumstances (see the Hugo Boss brand as an example, where they provided uniforms during Hitler's Germany; here's a short list of companies that benefited from slavery. When the spouse read this section, his degree in Political Science kicked in and he started rattling off companies that benefited from times of war, including IBM). I believe that these companies should acknowledge their past and make amends. GMOanswers addresses the topic of Agent Orange and Monsanto, but they have a very PC statement basically pointing the finger elsewhere. Ultimately, this issue has very little to do with GMOs, but is a discussion that we need to have in our society.



In conclusion: there are many legitimate concerns about modern food production. There are many legitimate concerns about the corporate nature of our society and the undue strength they exert over the American political system. These are the things we should be opposing. But whether you realize it or not, when you yell "No GMO!" and list one of the reasons above, the crops that are designed for you and I as consumers, the crops that are designed for humanitarian efforts, all suffer as a consequence. I know it doesn't make for a catchy slogan, but why not try voice your concerns by stating "No to the patenting of all seeds, regardless of technology used for their development!!" or "Increase funding so that our public institutions have the resources to commercialize and license crops!!". I'd recommend focusing your efforts on the REAL reason why you oppose GMOs, and not on the technology as a whole.

Jeopardy Category: "Things that are often blamed on GMOs, but are much broader in scope"

In my discussions about GMOs, I've come to the realization that many of the issues that are raised are not about GMOs at all, rather, are about modern agriculture. Of course, GMOs should be part of the discussion because these crops are an important component of our food, but it's disingenuous to believe that non-GMO and/or organic farming don't cause the same problems and these forms of farming shouldn't be part of the conversation. In the two weeks that I've been working on this while Baby Boy sleeps, two similar articles have been very recently written, supporting the hypothesis of multiple discovery :) One is an excellent piece by @savortooth in Grist, and the second is a thorough analysis of superweeds by @realfoodorg

Before I forget, I just added a subscription to the blog, in case you want to get an email notification when a post gets published.

So here we go: BioChica's List of "Agricultural Issues that are Often Blamed on GMOs". It would be awesome if I could have presented this with a Family Feud animation... Let's do it Jeopardy-style!!

1) Q: This issue is often attributed to GMOs, when critics state that farmers shouldn't be forced to buy seeds. A: What are patented seeds/crops?

As discussed previously, many plants are patented, including decorative plants. Plants generated through traditional methods, including mutagenesis, take years of research to produce and breed, and patents are the only way to safeguard those investments. The author of this Huffington Post article interviewed several farmers and asked them about their seed choice, and the overall conclusion is that farmers can select what they'd like and actually have a lot of options before them, many of which are from companies such as Dow, Monsanto, and Syngenta. If farmers are choosing to grow patented crops, perhaps it's because they like the products (see this excellent post from The Farmer's Life on this topic. This article from GLP, written by a farmer from Iowa, walks readers through the decision process of selecting a seed).

2) Q: This issue is often attributed to GMOs, when critics state that GMOs should be labeled so that consumers can avoid harmful toxins. A: What is the use of pesticides?

Glyphosate-resistant crops (the active ingredient in Round-Up) are among the more popular genetically modified plants. However, even glyphosate use isn't limited to GMOs; it "is utilized in a wide range of applications including weed control in vineyards, olive groves, fruit orchards, grass pastures, forestry, parks, gardens and underwater usage in rivers and lakes". As mentioned in previous posts, organic farming practices do not exclude the use of pesticides, so if consumers are advocating for GMO labeling so that they can avoid pesticides, they've been misled. In fact, none of the so-called "dirty-dozen" fruits/veggies are GMOs (keep in mind that the FDA recommends washing your fruits and veggies under running water as an effective means of removing residual pesticides. In Venezuela, we used to wash and soak our raw vegetables for salad in a vinegar solution, but I think we started that practice during a cholera epidemic...).

3) Q: This practice is often attributed to GMOs, when critics state that growing vast areas of crops without any rotation leading to issues including the depletion of nutrients from the soil and crop-specific pests. A: What are monocultures?

Wikipedia defines monoculture as the "practice of producing or growing a single crop or plant species over a wide area and for a large number of consecutive years". A legitimate issue is the spread of diseases, which is actually what led to the Great Famine due to the potato blight. The idea is that by rotating crops (i.e., planting different things every year), crop-specific pests will die out. But the issue is very far from being a GMO-specific problem. Our house in Venezuela faced a huge valley where sugar cane was grown and was owned by the local sugar-cane refinery. They had 3-4 sugar cane harvests each year and would burn the fields between harvests. Huge strands of ash would fall from the sky and we used to call it "lluvia negra" or "black rain". Field burning is not only used to make sugar cane harvesting easier, but it is also used for pest control. In the +20 years my family lived there, sugar cane was the only crop ever grown, so that giant swath of land was the embodiment of a monoculture. I've thought about this specific example quite a bit, and I'm not sure what the appropriate solution would be. Why would a sugar refinery grow anything other than sugar cane in South America, so how would they rotate their crops? Leasing the land? Many consider monocultures to be a symptom of corporate farming where are food is owned by large, multinational corporations, but in fact, 96% of farms in the US are family farms. Definitely a complex issue, but reducing it a GMO-specific problem doesn't capture the extent of this global issue.

4) Q: These organisms are touted as examples of how GMO-pesticides are failing. A: What are pesticide-resistant insects? An equally valid answer is: What are superweeds?

Superweeds and pesticide resistant insects are examples of evolution in action, and as discussed in question 3, are often a result of monocultures. If you're an avid fan of X-men, you'll know that the very first line in the movie is "Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward." Such a great movie... But I digress!

Given the fact that the life cycle of a bug or a weed is much shorter, particularly when we consider them pests and try to squash them, we don't have to wait thousands of years to see them evolve. If a plant or an insect gains a mutation that gives them a selective advantage (in this case, the ability to survive in the presence of a pesticide), then it will survive and spread. We see the same thing happening with antibiotic resistant bacteria, and of course, viruses. Every year, the formulation for the flu vaccine changes because the little suckers evolve to try to beat us. With HIV, patients use drug cocktails, because the odds of the virus becoming resistant to a variety of different drugs is much, much lower than the odds that it will gain resistance against a single drug.

Again, both issues are not specific to GMOs. This article gives plenty of examples of superweeds that evolved from the use of pesticides in non-GM crops and points out that the issue is not specific to GMOs, yet it's a convenient narrative for GMO opponents to exploit. There's a whole database dedicated to tracking pesticide resistant weeds.

Even handweeding can cause superweeds. This article suggests that handweeding in rice fields in Asia has led to a superweed that closely resembles rice, a phenomenon known as "crop mimicry".

A strategy for beating superweeds is to create crops that are resistant to 2 pesticides (BTW, pesticides is the umbrella term for insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc. They all eliminate pests). The idea is that the odds that a plant will naturally evolve to become resistant to 2 herbicides is pretty low (same basic strategy as the HIV drug cocktail). Dow Agro has the Enlist Duo product line, which allows for the use of two pesticides (glyphosate and 2,4-D choline). They're currently waiting for the combination-pesticide to get approved by the EPA. However, there are others that argue that this will also be a short-lived strategy (see last section of this great article from NYT - thanks to @wyoweeds for pointing it out).

When it comes to pesticide resistant insects, farmers generally have insect refuges if they're growing insect-resistant crops (such as Bt-crops, which are resistant to worms). This requirement is outlined in their Stewardship agreement (explained here). Basically, a small area next to the field with the GM crop is supposed to be planted with non-GM seeds. The idea is that if an insect develops resistance to the pesticide, then it will mate with a "normal" bug because they'll be found in abundance in close proximity. Their babies will be "normal" babies, not mutants, so they'll eventually die because of the pesticide and the mutation won't spread too broadly. Here's a diagram outlining how the refuge works (it might bring you flashbacks of Mendel's peas :) ). The worms in blue are the mutants that are pesticide resistant. The red ones are "normal". The example on the left is a farm where there's an insect refuge. The one on the right doesn't have a refuge.

However, Bt-resistant bugs have emerged, partially because some farmers do not grow insect refuges. The onus is on the farmer to abide by their contract, but I do think that biotech companies could do a better job enforcing this. If they have the resources to police seed saving, then they could enforce the refuge requirement as well, particularly since it has a bigger impact on their bottom line in the long term. But even with refuges, it's a numbers game: it's only a matter of time before a pesticide-resistant insect emerges.


All of these questions are legitimate issues and I hope to investigate each one. I imagine that they require coordinated efforts to address, including farmers, scientists, and biotech companies at the table. Reducing it to a GMO-specific issue is not only disingenuous and misleading, but it also deters efforts of finding real solutions.