[Bagor]

Originally Posted by Thor

Ok from the GMO FB group (if anyone is interested in joining PM me, its a fun little group with a great sense of humor about all this.)

Re Adam: Only guilty by association? What on earth does that mean? They're guilty .... period. If RR are hardly to blame then what does he suggest is?

Re Richard.

A good post earlier at GMOLOL plotted the incidence of new glyphosate resistant weeds before and after the introduction of RR trait - the trend continued unchanged, indicating no increase in the rate of resistance development.

And there, Thor, for me lies one of the biggest problems of the whole debate which I'll comment on briefly at the end. Sifting throught the crap. Can he back up this claim with evidence or ... is it bad science? My thoughts at the end.

From the Benbrook paper.

Glyphosate resistant (GR) weeds were practically unknown before the introduction of RR crops in 1996. The first glyphosate-resistant weed ( Lolium rigidum) emerged in Australia in 1996 from canola, cereal crop, and fence line applications [19]. In the mid-1990s, as the first glyphosate-resistant crops were moving toward commercialization and gaining market share, Monsanto scientists wrote or were co-authors on several papers ar-guing that the evolution of GR weeds was unlikely, citing the herbicide’ s long history of use (~20 years) and relative absence of resistant weeds [20,21].

Other scientists, however, challenged this assertion [22]. Dr. Ian Heap, long-time manager of the international database on resistant weeds, warned in a 1997 conference presentation that to limit glyphosate selection pressure in Roundup Ready cropping systems, the herbicide would need to be used in conjunction with proven resistance-management practices and with non-chemical weed con- trol methods [23]. A 1996 report by Consumers Union stated that HR crops are“custom-made ” for accelerating resistance and called for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revoke approval of HR crops when and where credible evidence of resistance emerges [24].

Today, the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) website lists 22 GR weed species in the U.S. [19]. Over two-thirds of the approximate 70 state-GR weed combinations listed by WSSA have been documented since 2005, reflecting the rapidly spreading nature of the GR-weed problem. According to the WSSA, over 5.7 million hectares (14 million acres) are now infested by GR weeds, an estimate that substantially underestimates the actual spread of resistant weeds [16,22], [and personal communi cation, Dr. Ian Heap]. Dow AgroSciences carried out a recent survey on the percent of crop acres/hectares in the U.S. impacted by glyphosate-resistant weeds [25]. Findings from the survey were provided to USDA in support of Dow AgroSciences’s petition for deregulation of 2,4-D herbicide-resistant corn, and suggest that around 40 million hectares (100 million acres) are already impacted by glyphosate-resistant weeds, an estimate that Heap considers inflated [personal communication]. The true extent of spread in the U.S. likely lies around the midpoint between the WSSA and Dow AgroSciences estimates (i.e., 20–25 million hectares), and by all accounts, will continue to rise rapidly for several years.

I feel that's one of the problems of social media, there's so much crap. I'm not suggesting Richard is guilty of creating it but someone somewhere down the line fabricated (imo at this time) this information, plotted a graph and posted it. It then feeds into people like Richard's confirmation bias (which we are all guilty of to some degree), he reposts it as a "good post", because he feels it is a good post and it is circulated again and again until it becomes a cornerstone argument. Just my 2c.