A vote last week by the Arkansas Plant Board to impose an emergency ban on spraying dicamba herbicide is hot news in both the mainstream media and the ag community. Dicamba is used to battle the herbicide-resistant Palmer amaranth that plagues farmers in Arkansas, and the recent introduction of BASF’s Engenia brand dicamba herbicide, sold for use […]
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Andrew Kniss is a professor at the University Wyoming whose research is partially funded by the pesticide and biotech industry. My research over the last ~15 years has been substantially funded by organic food companies, and foundations that hope to support bio-based innovation in agriculture that leads to healthier food and a lighter environmental footprint. (For […]
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Fresh off the printer is a new paper featured in Nature: Scientific Reports that describes important new research by an international consortium of scientists led by Robin Mesnage from the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College of London. It appears that for the first time, clear evidence has been published of subtle metabolic […]
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It looks like Dow-DuPont’s genetically modified Herculex corn is no longer controlling the western bean cutworm. This corn was engineered to express a protein called Cry1F, toxic to the pests that feed on corn kernels and lead to fungus growth. This control failure is the latest in a series that are collectively undermining the efficacy […]
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Over the last forty years nitrogen fertilizer use has increased seven-fold and nearly every acre of intensively farmed, conventional cropland is treated with pesticides. A team of scientists explored the impact of pesticides and other environmental toxicants on symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) brought about by Rhizobium bacteria (Fox et al., 2007). Their findings were published […]
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This study reports some remarkable numbers quantifying the economic impact of exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Pesticides cause the second largest impact — some $44 billion — right behind flame retardants. While worrisome enough, the huge increases now occurring in herbicide, insecticide, and fungicide use on farms growing the three major genetically engineered (GE, or GMO) crops (corn, soybeans, cotton) is bound to markedly increase exposures, reproductive problems, birth defects, and a host of life-long health problems. Hopefully sooner rather than later, the agricultural commodity groups and farmers will rediscover prevention-based Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and start to reduce their…
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Historic posts are reprinted verbatim from their original source. Source: Editorial Desk, The New York Times, February 19, 2003 One of the most pervasive chemicals in modern agriculture is a herbicide called glyphosate, which is better known by its trade name, Roundup. When it was first introduced in 1974, by Monsanto, no one could have predicted […]
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