From gmwatch:
NOTE: Remember when they told us GM crops would reduce herbicide use,
particularly of the harsh old-line agrochemicals?
EXTRACTS: [B]ig chemical companies - taking a page from Monsanto's book -
are engineering crop varieties that will enable farmers to spray on the
tough old weedkillers freely, instead of having to apply them surgically in
order to spare crops.
"The herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it
out," says Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta.
"Now it is getting fun again."
---
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Superweed Outbreak Triggers Arms Race
SCOTT KILMAN
Wall Street Journal, 4 June 2010
http://biolargo.blogspot.com/2010/06/round-up-weed-killer-and-acquired.html
Hardy superweeds immune to the Farm Belt's most effective weedkiller are
invading fields, prompting a counterattack from agribusiness that could
leave farmers using greater amounts of harsh old-line herbicides.
The flagging weedkiller is Roundup. Its developer, Monsanto Co., also
sells seeds for corn, soybean and cotton plants unaffected by the chemical,
enabling farmers to spray it on freely without fear of harming their crops.
Farmers now do so en masse, using "Roundup Ready" crop varieties for 90% of
the soybeans and 80% of the corn grown across the U.S.
The rise of Roundup, more than a decade ago, sent older herbicides that
damage both weeds and crops into deep eclipse. But now, as nasty invaders
with names like pigweed, horseweed and Johnsongrass develop immunity to the
mighty Roundup, chemical companies are dusting off the potent herbicides of
old for an attack on the new superweeds.
And big chemical companies—taking a page from Monsanto's book—are
engineering crop varieties that will enable farmers to spray on the tough old
weedkillers freely, instead of having to apply them surgically in order to
spare crops.
Dow Chemical Co., DuPont Co., Bayer AG, BASF SE and Syngenta AG are
together spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically modified
soybean, corn and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their
herbicides, many decades old.
"It will be a very significant opportunity" for chemical companies, says
John Jachetta, a scientist at Dow Chemical's Dow AgroSciences and president
of the Weed Science Society of America. "It is a new era."
The bioengineering push is causing controversy, though. Some of the old
pesticides—in particular, those called 2,4-D and dicamba—have a history of
posing more risks for the environment than the chemical in Roundup. That's
partly because they have more of a tendency to drift on the wind onto
neighboring farms or wild vegetation. Roundup tends to adhere better to the
ground.
The chemical companies are betting their biotech investments will pay off
in two ways: Farmers will buy more of their herbicides, and will pay big
premiums for the new seeds.
Some 40% of U.S. land planted to corn and soybeans is likely to harbor at
least some Roundup-resistant superweeds by the middle of this decade,
executives at DuPont estimate. That could create big demand for the herbicides
that can kill the evolved weeds—and for the seeds of crops that permit free
use of those herbicides.
The new herbicide-tolerant seeds "would make controlling weeds very easy
for farmers," says David Mortensen, a weed scientist at Pennsylvania State
University. As a result, he says, the amount of herbicide sprayed on just
one major crop, soybeans, could climb roughly 70%.
The burst of efforts by rivals isn't necessarily bad for Monsanto's
crop-biotech business, at least in the short term. The chemical in Roundup
remains able to kill hundreds of kinds of weeds and will remain a central part of
the farmer's arsenal. Most companies developing crops tolerant of other
herbicides want to build them on a Roundup Ready platform, so to speak—
putting their new herbicide-tolerant genes into crops that already carry
tolerance for Roundup.
Yet the developments portend further turmoil in the $12 billion U.S.
pesticide industry. Monsanto already is cutting prices for Roundup to compete
with a flood of cheap Chinese-made generics. The patent for Roundup expired
years ago. The St. Louis company has cut its earnings outlook recently to
reflect both generic competition and a backlash by farmers against the steep
prices it charges for genetically modified seeds. Its stock has dropped 39%
this year.
Monsanto also is facing the 2014 expiration of the patent on the key gene
in seeds for soybeans tolerant of the weedkiller.
It was back in the 1990s that Monsanto upended the herbicide industry and
farming practices by offering its first genetically modified product—
soybean seeds into which scientists had transplanted genetic material from
microorganisms and petunias. The seeds sprouted soybean plants that could survive
exposure to Roundup. Chemically known as glyphosate, Roundup was known for
its ability to kill almost anything green yet leave a relatively small
environmental footprint, being less toxic to wildlife and people than most
weedkillers. "If glyphosate isn't the safest herbicide, it is damn close,"
says Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of the Organic Center, a nonprofit
organic advocacy group.
The new seeds meant farmers could leave behind the risk and guesswork of
choosing the right herbicides to spray, at exactly the right time, on the
right weeds. Weed control became so easy that many farmers sold off their
weed-tilling implements and stopped buying other pesticides.
The chemical weed control even had some environmental pluses because it
left the soil undisturbed, reducing erosion. Farmers burned less fuel, no
longer needing to crisscross fields with implements that root out weeds. The
Roundup revolution, as some called it, freed up time for growers to plant
more land, helping spur bigger farms.
Monsanto's sales and profits soared while other herbicide makers suffered.
DuPont's leading herbicide for soybean farmers, called Classic, lost about
90% of its business. Some industry players were swept into mergers, and
research spending wilted. Today, Roundup and its generic competitors are used
on nearly four times as many U.S. acres as any other herbicide.
But weeds are adapting. At least nine species have developed immunity to
it. They've spread to millions of acres in more than 20 states in the
Midwest and South.
Ron Holthouse, a farmer who grows cotton and soybeans on 8,600 acres near
Osceola, Ark., says he spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on
the herbicide. But after 10 years of use on his land, Roundup no longer
controls pigweed, which ran rampant in his fields last year.
The weed, which can grow six feet high on a stalk like a baseball bat, is
tough enough to damage delicate parts of his cotton-picking equipment. Mr.
Holthouse had to hire a crew of 20 laborers to attack the weeds with hoes,
resorting to a practice from his father's generation. For the first time in
years, Mr. Holthouse used some of an older, highly poisonous weedkiller
called paraquat.
Many Southern farmers are spending twice as much on killing weeds as it
typically cost them just a few years ago. "It is getting a lot harder and
expensive to run a big farm," says Mr. Holthouse. "This is nerve-racking."
Farmers have no wish to return to labor-intensive methods. The success of
expensive seeds that are Roundup-tolerant shows growers will pay a steep
premium to control weeds chemically.
Chemical companies are tight-lipped about their development of crops that
can tolerate the spraying of herbicides other than Roundup. BASF and Bayer
filed petitions last year with biotech regulators at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, seeking permission to market new herbicide-tolerant seeds.
The USDA hasn't yet released its environmental assessments. Several of the
genetically modified plants are still in field trials or in the laboratory.
Dow AgroSciences manufactures 2,4-D, a powerful herbicide introduced
nearly 65 years ago. The company hopes by 2013 to be selling seeds for corn
crops that will be unaffected if farmers splash 2,4-D on their fields. The
company hopes to have seeds for soybeans tolerant of the herbicide a year
later, and is also working on a herbicide-tolerant cotton variety.
It won't predict how the new seeds might help its sales of 2,4-D, but it's
optimistic enough that it's developing a new form of the herbicide.
Some winery owners are concerned that such efforts will renew farmer
demand for 2,4-D, to which grapes are highly sensitive if the herbicide drifts
from a farm sprayer onto vines. "I couldn't survive in this business if
2,4-D resistant seed catches on in cotton country," says Neal Newsom, whose
100-acre vineyard in Plains, Texas, is surrounded by cotton fields. "A
neighbor could take me out in one night."
The Natural Resources Defense Council petitioned the Environmental
Protection Agency in 2008 to ban 2,4-D, citing research that suggests it disrupts
hormones in trout, rodents and sheep. Dow says it is providing rebuttal
data to the agency. A spokesman for the EPA said it anticipates responding to
the petition this fall.
Both 2,4-D and dicamba, another older herbicide, are common ingredients in
weedkillers at lawn-and-garden stores, which homeowners are careful to
keep away from flowers and vegetables. Chemical companies say both are safe in
larger amounts if farmers follow usage instructions cleared years ago by
the EPA.
Allthough dicamba could kill superweeds such as Mr. Holthouse's pigweed,
soybean farmers haven't sprayed it because it kills soybeans, too. A
dicamba-tolerant soybean variety would change that. Monsanto itself is developing
one.
Bayer is developing soybeans that can survive exposure to a herbicide that
disables weeds' defense to ultraviolet rays, setting them up for a fatal
sunburn. Bayer hopes to have those soybean seeds on the market in 2015 and
later give corn and cotton plants immunity to the same herbicide, called
isoxaflutole.
As for Monsanto, its chairman and chief executive, Hugh Grant, hinted in a
call with analysts last week that the company is considering whether to
begin selling farmers cheap, off-patent weedkillers that can kill
Roundup-tolerant weeds. On Thursday a Monsanto spokeswoman, Kelli Powers, said, "We
remain committed to working with farmers to manage weed resistance," adding,
"We have a shared interest with farmers in continuing to deliver
environmental and production benefits on the farm with glyphosate."
Monsanto, in fact, is launching a second generation of Roundup Ready
seeds. Competitors continue to try to develop their own plant varieties tolerant
of the chemical in Roundup. DuPont's big Pioneer Hi-Bred seed business,
for example, plans to begin selling seed for soybean and corn plants that can
tolerate exposure to both the Roundup chemical and other herbicides.
Swiss-based Syngenta, meanwhile, is field-testing soybeans genetically
engineered to tolerate exposure to a relatively new herbicide Syngenta makes
called Callisto.
"The herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it
out," says Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta.
"Now it is getting fun again."
Write to Scott Kilman at [log in to unmask]
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