The surprising inverse relationship between genetically modified crops and insecticide use in the U.S. (from Mark Lynas).
The surprising inverse relationship between genetically modified crops and insecticide use in the U.S. (from Mark Lynas).
Source?
A quick right click lets you google the image, and that directs me to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/18/the-world-uses-billions-of-pounds-of-pesticides-each-year-is-that-a-problem/
Which quickly directs me to
http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/pesticides/infographic.xhtml
So it’s from science magazine. Google it next time, but yeah, GLP should already have a link to the source.
‘Pesticides’ is spelled incorrectly in the headline.
Interesting study, even though the graphic tells a good story there are some negatives. And the herbicide story isn’t covered though & that seems not so good.
Depends on what you mean by ‘harmful.’ That’s all relative. They still use many tons of chemicals – so the headline may be misleading.
Mainstream scientists do not believe approved pesticides are used in the United at harmful levels even now. But even if they did believe that, the term “less harmful” reflecting less insecticide use would be entirely accurate. The key point is that GMO Bt crops often require almost zero use of insecticides…that is unquestionably “less harmful” when compared to organic farmers or other conventional farmers not using the GMO Bt varieties.
What _exactly_ is on the LH y-axis? The label says kg/ha, but is it normalised to some sort of “standard candle toxicity per kg” in the same way as greenhouse gas emissions are converted to equivalent CO2. Quoting the raw mass of insecticide sprayed, regardless of concentration or active ingredient would be correlated with total toxicity, but not quite the same thing.
Hopefully someone knows — it’s not clear on the original Science mag info graphic either, but a little credit text on the side (cut off above) says “EPA Pesticides Industry Sales & Usage 2006 and 2007; Market Estimates Feb 2011” (punctuation mine, hopefully appropriate)
From the original source http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/pesticides/infographic.xhtml ( **Emphasis** is mine )
“Overall pesticide us on U.S. farms dropped 0.6% a year from 1980 to 2007. The declines were even greater in corn fields, thanks in part to genetically modified varieties with the Bt toxin. **But** resistant insects have led to a recent uptick in insecticides applications. herbicide-tolerant crops and resistant weeds have led to an increase in herbicide use.”
Gee! Where have I seen that kind of scenario before? Hmmm! November 1986, somewhere in a medical microbiology classroom, this 1st year med student is learning the history of…antibiotic resistance. Paraphrasing Professor Diaz here: “There are NO instances in the history of science where the systematic use of toxic substances against highly adaptable species (like bacteria) wasn’t met with the development of extended resistance to said toxic substances…NONE! It’s an arms race and make no mistake about it; we won’t win it!” He then add sotto voce:”We’ll be lucky if we have a prolonged stalemate.”
Res ipsa loquitur?
hi