New Study Shows Genetically Modified Crops Produce Less

[marmar]

from AlterNet's PEEK:



New Study Shows Genetically Modified Crops Produce Less

Posted by Manila Ryce, The Largest Minority at 4:22 AM on May 9, 2008.

Frankenfoods aren't so miraculous after all.



While many studies have shown that GM foods pose serious health and contamination risks, a new study carried out for three years at the University of Kansas has shown that genetically modified crops also produce less food. This dispels the great corporate myth, perpetuated by the Department of Agriculture, that GM technology is necessary to solve world hunger.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, began the study when farmers who had switched over to the GM crop had noticed that even under optimal conditions their yields were not as high as expected. The yields of GM soybean were 10 percent less than those of an almost identical conventional variety grown in the same field.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

The Kansas study suggested that genetic modification hindered the soya’s ability to absorb manganese from the soil. However, even when additional manganese was added, the GM soya yield was only able to equal that of the conventional crop, failing to surpass it as promised.

Low yields have also been seen with other GM plants, such as cotton, where the total US crop declined as GM technology took over the industry. To counter the embarrassing results, Monsanto falsely claimed that the GM soybeans used in the study were not modified to increase yields, but said it was now developing one that would. Last week, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger.


http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/84900/

[OneBlueSky]

1. genetic modification of crops has never been about increasing yield . . .

or any other altruistic purpose . . . GM crops were, are, and always will be about providing agribusiness with complete control of the food supply, starting with the seeds . . . and the U.S. Congress, the courts, and we the people have let them get away with it . . . seed saving and propagation -- the traditional methods of crop farming -- are fast being outlawed, even if the farmer hasn't planted GM seeds . . . if a crop has been contaminated with GM seeds blown in by the wind, agribusiness says the farmer has to pay royalties for seeds that they didn't buy and never wanted . . . and the practice is being upheld by various courts . . .

even in Iraq, Order 81 (issued by the U.S.) essentially prohibits the age-old practice of seed saving . . . under the directive, all Iraqi farmers must buy new seed each year -- from Monsanto or one of the other U.S. agribusiness giants . . . not only have we killed a good portion of Iraq's population, made millions of refugees, destroyed their infrastructure, and contaminated huge areas of the country with depleted uranium, we have also told their farmers that what they and their ancestors have been doing for centuries to survive is no longer permitted . . . of all the abominations the U.S. has heaped upon that country, this may well be the most egregious . . .

[izquierdista]

2. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!

Who's the fool now? Mother Nature, who always has a new genetic modification to try out, or the scientist in the lab, who thought that he had all the variables under control?

It was a foolish move by the Patent Office to change the long standing tradition that living organisms could not be patented. Instead of sticking to that principle and disallowing claims for hybrid crosses in the first place, they let the intellectual claim jumpers run riot, listening to them yell "mine!, mine!, mine!", when they should have kicked them out on their ass.