GM soya 'miracle' turns sour in Argentina

[Guest guest]

Soy has 10 times the estrogen content of other foods. In the latest issue of

Nexus magazine, there is an article by Sherryl Sellman about girls reaching

puberty by 2 and sometimes 5. But it can be usual at age 8 now. I was

shocked after reading that. I can't find it online, but hopefully it will

turn up. I might just make a summary. Soy formula is deadly, in that it is

putting thousands of times the natural amount of hormone into kids. Nicky

 

GM soya 'miracle' turns sour in Argentina

http://wrightworld.net/poleshiftnews.htm

 

4-16-04 Seven years after GM soya was introduced to Argentina as an economic

miracle for poor farmers, researchers claim it is causing an environmental

crisis, damaging soil bacteria and allowing herbicide-resistant weeds to

grow out of control. Soya has become the cash crop for half of Argentina's

arable land, more than 11m hectares (27m acres), most situated on fragile

pampas lands on the vast plains. After Argentina's economic collapse, soya

became a vital cash export providing cattle feed for Europe and elsewhere.

Now researchers fear that the heavy reliance on one crop may bring economic

ruin. The GM soya, grown and sold by Monsanto, is the company's great

success story. Programmed to be resistant to Roundup, Monsanto's patented

glyphosate herbicide, soya's production increased by 75% over five years to

2002 and yields increased by 173%, raising £3bn profits for farmers hard-hit

financially. However, a report in New Scientist magazine says that because

of problems with the crops, farmers are now using twice as much herbicide as

in conventional systems. Soya is so successful it can be viewed as a weed

itself: soya " volunteer " plants, from seed split during harvesting, appear

in the wrong place and at the wrong time and need to be controlled with

powerful herbicides since they are already resistant to glyphosate.

 

The control of rogue soya has led to a number of disasters for neighbouring

small farmers who have lost their own crops and livestock to the drift of

herbicide spray. So keen have big farmers been to cash in on the soya

bonanza that 150,000 small farmers have been driven off the land so that

more soya can be grown. Production of many staples such as milk, rice,

maize, potatoes and lentils has fallen. Monsanto says the crop is the victim

of its own success. Colin Merritt, Monsanto's biotechnology manager in

Britain, said that any problems with GM soya were to do with the crop as a

monoculture, not because it was GM. " If you grow any crop to the exclusion

of any other you are bound to get problems. What would be sensible would be

to grow soya in rotation with corn or some other crop so the ground and the

environment have time to recover, " he said. One of the problems in Argentina

is the rapid spread of weeds with natural resistance to Roundup. Such weeds,

say opponents of GM, could develop into a generation of " superweeds "

impossible to control. The chief of these is equisetum, known as marestail

or horsetail, a plant which rapidly chokes fields of soya if not controlled.

 

But Mr Merritt said horsetail could be a troublesome weed in any crop. " I

reject the notion that this is a superweed or that it will confer genetic

resistance on other weeds and make them superweeds. It always has been a

troublesome weed. " The soya was originally welcomed in Argentina partly

because it helped to solve a problem of soil erosion on the pampas which had

been caused by ploughing. Soya is planted by direct drilling into the soil.

Adolfo Boy, a member of the Grupo de Reflexion Rural, a group opposed to GM,

said that the bacteria needed for breaking down vegetable matter so that the

soil was fertilised were being wiped out by excessive use of Roundup. The

soil was becoming inert, and so much so that dead weeds did not rot, he told

New Scientist. Sue Mayer, of Genewatch in the UK, said: " These problems have

been becoming evident in Argentina for some time. It gives a lie to the

claim that GM is good for farmers in developing countries. " It shows it's an

intensive form of agriculture that needs to be tightly controlled to prevent

very undesirable environmental effects. It is not what small farmers in

developing countries need. "

 

I can't find a decent tomato anymore, because the natural tomato has been

replaced by genetically engineered varieties, that are tasteless and have a

consistency resembling slime or mush. Fish genes and tomatoes just don't

mix, at least gastronomically anyway. You think I'm kidding? Fish genes were

introduced to the tomato some years ago, without much success in the market

place. No taste and a bad texture are the reason. Nothing can replace the

taste of a natural tomato, but it has disappeared forever because of genetic

engineering.