Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Jeremy Portzer <jeremyp AT pobox.com>]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 18:11, Ian Meyer wrote:
> my mom was briefly seeing a farmer for a short while recently, he owns 
> and farms a large area down towards fayetteville, and he uses roundup 
> ready corn. not to avoid using pesticides, but so he can kill the weeds 
> and not harm the corn
> 

It doesn't have anything to do with pesticides.  The reason
roundup-ready corn is helpful to the environment is a several step
process:
        1)  Round-up ready corn/soybeans are resistant to Roundup
        2) Therefore, Roundup can be sprayed on the fields to kill all the
weeds
        3) Roundup is only toxic to weeds/plants when sprayed on their leaves
on a dry day.  If it runs off into streams/rivers, it is completely
inert against all plants and animals.
        4)  The use of roundup REPLACES other herbicides that were previously
used to control weeds.  These older herbicides were much more damaging
to ecosystems downstream from the fields.

Do you understand now?  I realize it's not simple.

But I agree that the issue of the genes spreading to neighboring farms,
etc, is something that must be controlled.  Will the roundup-resistant
gene spread to weeds?  Will weeds develop their own roundup resistance
through natural selection?  I don't have a perfect answer to the
promblem.  My original post was really trying to understand why people
have such a negative gut reaction, rather than just considering the
benefits and drawbacks and arguing it sensibly.

--Jeremy

-- 
/---------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Jeremy Portzer        jeremyp AT pobox.com      trilug.org/~jeremy     |
| GPG Fingerprint: 712D 77C7 AB2D 2130 989F  E135 6F9F F7BC CC1A 7B92 |
\---------------------------------------------------------------------/

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part