Genetic Literacy Project: There’s No Such Thing As ‘Superweeds’
April 17, 2015 Read the latest “analysis” on GMOs from Consumer Reports and you’ll “learn” that glyphosate, the chemical developed by Monsanto (its patent is now expired), as Roundup–often but not exclusively paired with herbicide tolerant GM seeds—has led to an “explosion” in what are popularly known as “superweeds.”
From the Consumer Reports article: The use of genetically modified seeds has … led to about a 10-fold increase in farmers’ use of glyphosate. But that in turn has created a new problem for farmers to battle: a rising number of “superweeds” that have now become immune to glyphosate. “This defeats one of the major reasons why GMOs were introduced in the first place,” says [Michael] Hansen, Ph.D., senior scientist at Consumers Union.
Doug Gurian-Sherman, a activist scientist at the Center for Food Safety, made identical claims when he was a lead scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists before he was eased out of UCS almost a year ago. Superweeds are a “plague”, he has contended: “It sounds like a bad sci-fi movie or something out of The Twilight Zone. But ‘superweeds’ are real and they’re infesting America’s croplands, Overuse of Monsanto’s ‘Roundup Ready’ seeds and herbicides in our industrial farming system is largely to blame. And if we’re not careful, the industry’s proposed ‘solutions’ could make this epidemic much worse.”
Well, Gurian-Sherman and Consumer Reports are over the top wrong.
Let’s start with the use of the term “superweed.” You now see it in stories all the time, even in the mainstream media and in usually reliable sources. But for the most part it’s a meaningless term.
Andrew Kniss, associate professor of weed biology & ecology at the University of Wyoming, responding to a story in the journal Nature: “I was a little disappointed to see the term “superweeds” in any type of scientific publication. I have repeatedly expressed my displeasure with this term, and my graduate students know better than to ever use the word around me. To see it in a publication as reputable as Nature is exceptionally frustrating.”
Many activists use the word to describe a weed that can out compete with other plants, particularly food crops, in ways never seen before on farms. They conjured images out of the Little Shop of Horrors: monstrous, hideous creatures leaving carnage in their wake, as Missouri Farm Bureau head, Blake Hurst once wrote. But that’s not the case. In fact, attempts by farmers to stave off bugs, fungus and weeds reach back thousands of years. Hardy weeds that have developed resistance to herbicides, including organic herbicides, have always “plagued” modern farming.
Read the full article on www.GeneticLiteracyProject.org.
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