Last night NPR reported on the Roundup Ready (RR) sugar beet debate. (Click here to listen.) As the planting season approaches, sugar beet producers seem eager to embrace the new variety. "Farmers are going to adopt it as rapidly as they can," says Alan Dexter, weed scientist at North Dakota State University.

While many of these farmers believe Roundup (and other glyphosate herbicides) will replace a variety of toxic herbicides, a report released this week by Friends of the Earth and the Center for Food Safety shows quite the contrary. Applications of herbicides, including 2,4-D (an ingredient in agent orange), have increased significantly in the last five years – as Roundup Ready crop acreage increases. Which is exactly the problem. As more and more glyphosate enters the environment, weeds develop resistance, leaving farmers with more difficult weed challenges that lead to the use of more toxic and expensive chemicals. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency increased glyphosate residue tolerances on sugar beets by 5,000 percent, which only allows this vicious cycle to continue.

Agronomics aside, a comment by American Crystal Sugar's CEO, David Berg, returns me to a question from a previous post: Is the market really there? Berg says that consumer resistance kept the sugar industry from adopting the GE variety until now. "The resistance has just diminished," he says. "People have become more comfortable with it." Have they?

Polls by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology show that consumer opposition to GE food remains relatively high and knowledge in the issue is low. For example, the Grocery Manufacturers of America estimates that more than 70 percent of processed food probably contains a transgenic ingredient, yet only about a quarter of those polled thought they had eaten GE food before. Is it a lack of consumer resistance or lack of awareness?

Source: NPR

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trouble
written by Ben, February 17, 2008

So,... I heard NPR's story about GM beets and am still amazed by the lack of informational outreach. Farmers know what is going on, as with the Oregon farmers in the story who voiced concerns about genetic modification and accidental cross-pollination of their own crops. But the consumer is insulated from this information. In a political climate where so much emphasis is placed upon "family and moral values", how can genetically modifying the food we eat escape scrutiny? While we bicker over stem-cell research, how come GM crops are not included in the discussion? This trend continues to concern me.

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