October 12, 2005

GM crops add US$27 million to farm income, Monsanto study says

The global use of GM crops has added US$27 billion to farm income and greatly reduced agriculture's negative effect on the environment, announced a British research firm PG Economics, which was hired by Monsanto.

Company director Graham Brookes co-authored the study on the cumulative economic and environmental results from using Monsanto's biotech crops between their commercialisation in 1996 and 2004.

Farmers, Brookes said, saved 475 million gallons of fuel by cutting down on the use of machines to apply chemicals and till the soil.

As such, growers cut overall carbon dioxide emissions from fuel usage by 22 billion pounds.

Brookes also revealed that Argentina is one of the biggest economic benefactor of GM crop use, which reduced the need for tilling and made it possible to add a second harvest to a single growing season.

One such example is the producing of Roundup Ready soybeans immediately after harvesting traditional wheat, Brookes said. That second harvest accounted for about 22 percent of Argentina's total soybean production and US$1.7 billion of its farm income last year.

However, growers can overuse the technology and end up reversing its benefits, Brookes admitted.

Planting the same glyphosate-resistant crop year after year on the same land, can give rise to weeds that can also withstand the herbicide.

Eight species of resistant weeds have so far been identified, leading farmers to apply additional chemicals to kill them.