A HARD LOOK AT GM CROPS

Abstract

Palmer amaranth is a particular pain for farmers in the southeastern United States, where it outcompetes cotton for moisture, light and soil nutrients and can quickly take over fields. Since the late 1990s, US farmers had widely adopted GM cotton engineered to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate, which is marketed as Roundup by Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri. [...]GM crop technology delivered an 8.9% improvement to the environmental impact quotient - a measure that considers factors such as pesticide toxicity to wildlife - says Graham Brookes, co-director of PG Economics and a co-author of the industry-funded study, which many scientists consider to be among the field's most extensive and authoritative assessments of environmental impacts.