{"id":2319,"date":"2014-07-31T23:44:02","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T03:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/?p=2319"},"modified":"2014-07-31T23:48:19","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T03:48:19","slug":"roundup-bred-mutant-pigweed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/roundup-bred-mutant-pigweed.html","title":{"rendered":"Roundup bred mutant pigweed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n<\/a>\r\nWith GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds.\r\nThis has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants.\r\nWe can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying,\r\nusing plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.\r\n

\r\nMark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont,\r\n\r\nCrop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance<\/a>,\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nHerbicide-resistant hybrids and varieties have been planted on a\r\nmajority of corn and soybean acres in the U.S. for many years\r\n(Figure 1). The vast majority of these hybrids and varieties are\r\nresistant to glyphosate.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nOf course these are mostly not just “hybrids”, they’re GM\r\nseed products with a bacterical gene insereted.\r\nBut here’s Figure 1:\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHe emphasises how rapidly this chemical dousing of food crops has happened:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe last 15 years can rightly be referred to as the “glyphosate era”\r\nof weed control. Glyphosate rapidly replaced other herbicides in\r\nsoybean and by 2002 was used on 79% of soybean acres in the U.S.\r\n(Young 2006). A 2003 survey of Indiana soybean growers found that\r\nglyphosate was the only herbicide applied on 74% of\r\nglyphosate-resistant soybean acres (Johnson et al. 2007) and 65% of\r\ntotal soybean acres.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAdoption was slower in corn, but by 2010, glyphosate had become the\r\nmost widely used herbicide in corn as well, with 66% of U.S. corn\r\nacres treated (USDA NASS 2011).\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMany areas are now transitioning into a post-glyphosate era with\r\nglyphosate-resistant weeds now requiring additional or alternative\r\nmanagement tools for satisfactory control. To date, glyphosate\r\nresistance has been confirmed in 24 weed species worldwide,\r\nincluding 14 in North America (Heap 2012).\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHere’s a handy graph of\r\nnumber of species resistant to pesticides over time, by\r\nWeedScience.org<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"#<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhich line is Glpyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup?\r\nAccording to\r\n\r\nGlpphosate Technical Fact Sheet<\/a>\r\nby National Pesticide Information Center,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn plants, glyphosate disrupts the shikimic acid pathway through\r\ninhibition of the enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate (EPSP)\r\nsynthase. The resulting deficiency in EPSP production leads to\r\nreductions in aromatic amino acids that are\r\nvital for protein synthesis and plant growth.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSo, Glyphosate is blue line G, the lowest and most line.\r\nBut it only takes one mutant weed.\r\n

\r\nAndre Gallant wrote for Modern Farmer 18 July 2013,\r\n\r\nPigweed in the Cotton: A \u2018Superweed\u2019 Invades Georgia<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn 2004, a farmer spotted palmer amaranth, also known as pigweed,\r\ninvading his cotton fields in Macon County, Georgia. Given that\r\nalmost all cotton grown in the state is genetically engineered to be\r\nresistant to glyphosate — the main ingredient in Monsanto’s\r\nRoundup herbicide — palmer amaranth’s creep into Georgia\r\ncotton fields meant the weed had built up a resistance as well. And\r\nsoon, palmer had spread across the state.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNothing could kill palmer. It can grow to seven feet in height,\r\ndrowning out cotton plants and destroying farm equipment. A few\r\nfarms lost the palmer battle and closed up shop.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNo wonder they call it a superweed.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWell, something can kill mutant pigweed:\r\ncold steel.\r\nThat article repeats the usual bs about no-till being\r\n“conservation tillage” and then gets on with admitting\r\nthat\r\n\r\nplowing the pigweed under every year<\/a> helped a lot.\r\nBut the article doesn’t continue about cultivation between\r\nrows, as in this\r\nGeorgia Farm Monitor<\/a> report.\r\nThe article instead says:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nOn top of tillage, farmers increased the amount of herbicides used\r\non their crops. Before palmer, herbicide costs hovered around $25 an\r\nacre. In palmer’s wake, that amount increased to $100. In addition\r\nto the $15 million spent on labor to hand-weed rows of cotton,\r\nGeorgia farmers spent well over $100 million fighting one weed in\r\none crop.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSo much for GM proponents’ claims that GM crops reduce herbicide use.\r\n

\r\nAnother thing that runs up local costs is hiring people to pull up\r\nthe mutant pigweed by hand.\r\nPlowing and cultivating seems a lot easier to me.\r\n

\r\nThe article makes a bunch of excuses for why organic cotton\r\nisn’t much grown in Georgia, but doesn’t have any other\r\nsolution for mutant pigweed.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOh, it does get around to talking about winter rye cover crops,\r\ncalling it “a culture change”.\r\nHow soon they forget!\r\nMy father planted winter rye, and so do I.\r\nAnd he didn’t “burn down” the rye by spraying glyphosate on it, either:\r\nhe plowed it under, and so do I.\r\nI don’t grow cotton, but I do grow corn, okra, and other vegetables,\r\nand we have very little pigweed.\r\nAnd we spray zero, no, zilch pesticides.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nCotton was king before and may be again now,\r\nbut it also fell way off in between as other crops became more profitable.\r\nMaybe it’s time for that in Georgia.\r\nOrganic farming of\r\n\r\nother crops<\/a> is indeed booming.\r\n

\r\nCrop rotation, plowing, cultivating: these things are less expensive\r\nthan GM seeds and pesticides, resulting in \r\nmore profit<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nOh, and without poisoning the food supply or the water supply.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds. This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants. We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying, using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead. Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont, Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance,","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,8,88,834,40,174,373,6,374,13],"tags":[24,93,515,2430,1262,3,2804,242,902,23,181,5,2,2822,2760,173,2823,172,179,813,2767,2621,25],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-agrochemicals","category-corn","category-deep-till","category-economy","category-glyphosate","category-no-till","category-okra-paradise-farms","category-plowing","category-soybeans","tag-brown-dog","tag-corn-2","tag-cotton","tag-crop-rotation","tag-cultivator","tag-georgia","tag-glyphosate","tag-gm","tag-gmo","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-herbicide","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lowndes-county","tag-no-till","tag-okra-paradise-farms","tag-organic","tag-plowing","tag-profit","tag-roundup","tag-rye","tag-soybeans","tag-tilling","tag-yellow-dog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-Bp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2323,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/2323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}