How GMOs Unleashed a Pesticide Gusher | Mother Jones
And just as weeds developed resistance to year-after-year applications of Roundup, corn's number-one insect pest, the rootworm, is quickly evolving to be able to withstand Bt-engineered corn, as I've reported before. Benbrook told me that in areas of the Midwest where farmers have been planting Bt corn year after year—
an increasingly popular practice, since the explosion in ethanol production that started in 2006—ag university extension experts are suggesting that farmers spray other insecticides to supplement the failing Bt trait in their corn.
"The goal of this technology was to make it possible not have to spray these corn insecticides, and now we have to spray them again to bail out this technology," Benbrook told me.
The chemical war against pests will likely get yet another boost from the failure of Roundup. As I've reported before, GMO seed giants
Monsanto and Dow are preparing to roll out seeds designed to resist both Roundup and older herbicides including 2,4-D, the less toxic half of the formulation that made up the infamous Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange. The industry insists that weeds won't develop resistance to the new products.
But last year, a group of Penn State weed scientists published a paper warning that the new products are "likely to increase the severity of resistant weeds." Indeed, 2,4-D-resistant weeds have already been documented in Nebraska.