USDA Reports GMOs May Prompt Significant Environmental Risks

Here’s another entry to add to your list of why GMOs are to be avoided, at least until we actually have long-term tests on this stuff.

A new report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has noted that the inception of GMO crops in this country may have led to significant environmental impacts. Here’s the full lingo from the report:

“Because glyphosate is significantly less toxic and less persistent than traditional herbicides … the net impact of HT crop adoption is an improvement in environmental quality and a reduction in the health risks associated with herbicide use (even if there are slight increases in the total pounds of herbicide applied). However, glyphosate resistance among weed populations in recent years may have induced farmers to raise application rates .Thus, weed resistance may be offsetting some of the economic and environmental advantages of HT crop adoption regarding herbicide use. Moreover, herbicide toxicity may soon be negatively affected (compared to glyphosate) by the introduction (estimated for 2014) of crops tolerant to the herbicides dicamba and 2,4-D.”  

In other words, it’s likely that more herbicides have been used because of GMO crops – and this, of course, isn’t so great for our environment at all.

According to the report (via Rt.com), “Herbicide use on GMO corn increased from around 1.5 pounds per planted acre in 2001 to more than 2.0 pounds per planted acre in 2010.”

Despite the fact that GMO crops have been farmed on U.S. soil for more than 15 years, and that the majority of huge crops like soybeans and corn are all GMO, we’re just now considering how herbicide use might be increased because of these seeds, USDA?

Seriously?

Michael Livingston, a government agricultural economist and a co-author of the report, told Reuters via Rt.com, “We are not characterizing them [GMO crops] as bad or good. We are just providing information.”

Yeah, information that we are continually applying more and more herbicides to our Earth, which runs into our ground water, our oceans, and contaminates our air. Not bad and probably no big deal, right?

Right…

Image source: PI77 / Wikimedia Commons