GM CROPS LEADING TO WEED RESISTANCE IN USA
Last Wednesday, 30 June 2010, ABARE presented their annual Outlook Conference in Wagga Wagga at Charles Sturt University's Convention Centre. The regional conferences are an excellent means of hearing about the region's agricultural outlook but in the context of the national and international economic climate. There were a number of fascinating speakers.
Murray Scholz, a farmer from near Culcairn, NSW has recently completed a Nuffield Scholarship in which he visited Canada and the USA to see if genetically modified (GM) crops were in fact leading to weeds that are resistant to herbicides. He found that in Canada the level of resistance amongst weeds in GM crops was not an issue. But in North Carolina, USA, he discovered that there is an estimated 11 million hectares of crop lands with weeds that had become resistant to glyphosate!
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the major broad-spectrum herbicide available to farmers world-wide for weed control, and the major herbicide used by Australian farmers. The resistance has apparently been the result of poor herbicide management amongst cotton farmers. Despite this, Murray is impressed by the vigour and yields of GM crops and believes that Australian farmers would be capable of managing the responsible use of herbicides in GM crops better than the cotton farmers in North Carolina. Interestingly, Murray noted that there has not been a new herbicide developed for 40 years to replace glyphosate, and so it is a critical issue for agriculture, not least here in the Wagga district where our agricultural sector is so significant to our economy.
