WHO KNEW the Environmental Downside to Some GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) Crops?

With the advent of GMO plants and animals, more than 120 different plant seeds have been genetically modified. Some have been altered for benign purposes, such as disease or fungus resistance, vitamin content, or flower color. Since the approval of GMO crops in 1996, eleven major vegetable crops have been altered genetically for resistance to broad-based herbicides, allowing for the widespread spraying of herbicides to kill weeds without harming the desired crop; it’s much easier to spray fields than to weed them.

GMO seed has provided industrial-scale agriculture with greater yields and profits by avoiding losses from weeds and pests. By 2019, 90% of corn, 95% of soybeans, and nearly 90% of sugar beet, alfalfa, canola and cotton grown in the US were genetically modified. Many of these crops now have multiple genetically engineered traits, combining herbicide resistance with insect poisons.

Weed-control chemicals are often sprayed from airplanes or large mist blowers. Drifting spray threatens hedgerows, milkweed and other native pollinator plants in farm country. Non-target plants have drastically declined over large areas, along with the insects that depend on them and the birds that need the insect’s caterpillars to feed their young. As herbicide use exploded in the decade 2002-2012, milkweeds declined by 81% in Midwestern agricultural lands. Monarch butterflies, which depend exclusively on milkweed, declined in these regions more than in other parts of the country. The effect was compounded by the Energy Independence Act of 2007, which required the production of the 'renewable', corn-derived, ethanol gasoline additive to ramp up to 36 billion gallons per year. In response, corn cultivation increased to 92 million acres, an area the size of Minnesota.

While insecticide use has declined with the advent of GMO crops, herbicide usage has grown significantly, especially the use of glyphosate (Roundup), a leading choice because it is systemic, binds to soil rather than leaching into groundwater, degrades fairly quickly, and has been found to be non-toxic to most animals. Between 1992 and 2016, the use of glyphosate increased 40-fold. Evolution responded. The number of ‘super weed’ species resistant to glyphosate skyrocketed from 0 to 45, and up to 100 million acres of cropland became infested with herbicide resistant weeds, according to USDA figures.

As a result of the rise in superweeds, glyphosate is being replaced by even more toxic legacy herbicides: Dicamba and 2,4-D (aka Agent Orange, and a major culprit in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring). Farmers call this ramping up of herbicides the 'pesticide treadmill’.

The ease of herbicide use has greatly reduced or eliminated more labor intensive, but sustainable agricultural practices. Such practices use the knowledge of weeds and pests to control the damage they might have on crops, while maintaining a diverse and healthy ecosystem that is environmentally and economically viable.