Monsanto Corn Plant Losing Bug Resistance

Posted on by

MEDIA ROOTS- If there is one thing that’s been constant over the course of this planet’s evolution, it’s nature’s resilience. Even if a pesticide is designed to eradicate a weed or insect species native to a particular area, nature will eventually bounce back and become resistant to the poison.

Similar to the heavy use of antibiotics leading to supergerms, a recent epidemic of super weeds have started to take over farmers’ lands that have been spraying crops with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready weedkiller. According to the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts, the built up resistance to these pesticides is “the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen.”

For the first time, Monsanto’s BT corn crops in Iowa are now falling prey to the very bug they’re engineered to resist: the rootworm.

This could be very bad news for Monsanto, a company that has monopolized both the pesticide and genetically modified food industry for more than a decade. Since Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GM seeds are engineered to withstand their Roundup Ready pesticide, American farmers have gotten accustomed to using both products hand in hand. However, if Monsanto’s seeds are deemed useless, what incentive will farmers have to spend the extra money for seeds that no longer kill weeds or bugs?

Monsanto is a monolithic and ruthless corporation that will do anything to meet their bottom line of profit maximization. Hopefully this is the beginning of Monsanto’s disintegration into irrelevancy. For more about Monsanto’s callous domination over the global food market read Media Roots Original – Monsanto’s Global Food Domination.

Abby Martin

***

WALL STREET JOURNAL– Iowa State University entomologist Aaron Gassmann’s discovery that western corn rootworms in four northeast Iowa fields have evolved to resist the natural pesticide made by Monsanto’s corn plant could encourage some farmers to switch to insect-proof seeds sold by competitors of the St. Louis crop biotechnology giant, and to return to spraying harsher synthetic insecticides on their fields.

“These are isolated cases, and it isn’t clear how widespread the problem will become,” said Dr. Gassmann in an interview. “But it is an early warning that management practices need to change.”

The finding adds fuel to the race among crop biotechnology rivals to locate the next generation of genes that can protect plants from insects. Scientists at Monsanto and Syngenta AG of Basel, Switzerland, are already researching how to use a medical breakthrough called RNA interference to, among other things, make crops deadly for insects to eat. If this works, a bug munching on such a plant could ingest genetic code that turns off one of its essential genes.

Monsanto said its rootworm-resistant corn seed lines are working as it expected “on more than 99% of the acres planted with this technology” and that it is too early to know what the Iowa State University study means for farmers.

Read more about Monsanto Corn Plant Losing Bug Resistance.

© 2011 Wall Street Journal

Photo by Flickr user Hadie

2 thoughts on “Monsanto Corn Plant Losing Bug Resistance

  1. One thing never considered is that the GMO is in fact a covert implementation of the eugenic tactics by power to be. Amazing as it is, it looks to me that only Americans (comparing with other nations) are unable to shake of the genocidal tendency of Illuminati.

Leave a Reply

RELATED NEWS

  • Media Roots Radio: Cambridge Analytica Private Mercenaries, Blue Planet & Jones/Stone/Neocon Alliance
  • Monsanto, America’s Monster
  • The Climate Change “Debate” and Marketization of Nature: Everyone Loses
  • How Words Absolve Pillaging and Mass Murder
  • ABBY'S VIEWS

  • Abby Martin Confronts Nancy Pelosi Over Pentagon Spending at COP26
  • Empire Files LIVE – Election Special with Abby Martin
  • Abby Martin: Abolish the Supreme Court!
  • Tech Censorship Helps Trump Campaign
  • Abby Martin Election Update: $10B Reality Show
  • GOP Sabotages Mail, Biden vs Trump Foreign Policy
  • Abby Martin Election Update: Trump Gets COVID
  • Abby Martin: Telling Our Own Stories, Cultivating Our Own Narratives
  • United States Of Distraction: Fighting The Fake News Invasion (2020)
  • Empire Files: Afghanistan War Exposed––An Imperial Conspiracy
  • Empire Files: The Forever War – From The Killing Fields
  • Media Roots Radio: Cartoon Fascism, The Lesser of Two Republican War Criminals
  • Media Roots Radio: Abby Sues Georgia in Historic Free Speech Lawsuit
  • Abby Martin Sues Georgia Over Israel Loyalty Oath Law [Full Press Conference & Interviews]
  • Abby Martin on Biden: The Sexist the Media Ignores