"From a Wired article - Voracious Worm Evolves to Eat Biotech Corn Engineered to Kill It:
"One of agricultural biotechnology's great success stories may become a cautionary tale of how short-sighted mismanagement can squander the benefits of genetic modification.
After years of predicting it would happen - and after years of having their suggestions largely ignored by companies, farmers and regulators - scientists have documented the rapid evolution of corn rootworms that are resistant to Bt corn."
Until Bt corn was genetically altered to be poisonous to the pests, rootworms used to cause billions of dollars in damage to U.S. crops. Named for the pesticidal toxin-producing Bacillus thuringiensis gene it contains, Bt corn now accounts for three-quarters of the U.S. corn crop. The vulnerability of this corn could be disastrous for farmers and the environment.
'Unless management practices change, it's only going to get worse,' said Aaron Gassmann, an Iowa State University entomologist and co-author of a March 17 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study describing rootworm resistance. 'There needs to be a fundamental change in how the technology is used.'
(Score: 5, Funny) by number6x on Friday March 21 2014, @02:28AM
I, for one, welcome our new genetically modified corn fed overlords.
(Score: 5, Funny) by zeigerpuppy on Friday March 21 2014, @03:40AM
Maybe if we keep tweaking, we can have the Worms of Arakkis.
http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Sandworm [wikia.com]
The Spice, oh the Spice!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday March 21 2014, @03:48AM
Amazingly this joke would have been understood over ten years ago. Congrats on mastering backwards-compatible humor!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Friday March 21 2014, @06:32AM
I thought you were funny.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Tork on Friday March 21 2014, @07:40AM
I appreciate it. I'm not sure why ribbing a guy for making a joke that even Slashdot stopped modding as funny is considered 'flamebait'.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @02:29AM
The irony of things like this makes me smile and remember just how perfect nature is.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @03:10AM
> ...just how perfect nature is.
Those worms just want to have fun.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by germanbird on Friday March 21 2014, @03:20AM
Very true. The more I learn about gardening for my own personal garden, the more I realize a lot of our agricultural practices are terribly broken. Rather than working with the earth and her natural processes, we tend to brute force things. Works great for a few years, but it rapidly depletes the soil and hinders its ability to recover.
The good news is that there are groups working on less destructive methods. Check out Sepp Holzer and the permaculture movement or John Jeavons and Grow BioIntensive. At first these guys just seem like a bunch of hippies (no offense intended towards any hippies that might be reading this), but if you actually study their methods, it is very grounded in trial and error, recording and studying yields, and generally trying to read the data that nature is providing.
Will their methods work for large scale agriculture? I have no idea. Do they seem like a better use of our natural resources? Most definitely.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Friday March 21 2014, @06:03AM
That's what I thought too when I first heard about Permaculture. But Bill Mollison's book is a theoretical masterpiece. It not only covers agricultural principles but is also a very good description of social and natural systems. As fossil fuel derived fertiliser supplies dwindle we will need to seriously apply these techniques on a larger scale. Multi-layered polyculture is much more resilient to pests and changing conditions than monoculture. It does require more labour at harvest but this is largely offset by lower input of fuel. We will look back at pesticide driven monoculture as a strange abberation in years to come.
(Score: 1) by germanbird on Friday March 21 2014, @09:04AM
Nice. I hadn't heard of Bill Mollison before. I'll have to check his stuff out. I've been trying to work out how best to apply these principles to my own little garden plot and more good sources of information are always welcome.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @02:32AM
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @02:50AM
However, in Texas these worms were intelligently designed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @09:24AM
So god hates texas
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Friday March 21 2014, @03:05AM
Wow - four funny and smart up-moddable comments right off the mark! Well done Soyfolk.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mykl on Friday March 21 2014, @03:06AM
The same problem is currently occurring with our over-use of antibiotics. Farmers are regularly giving 'preventative' antibiotic shots to livestock in order to reduce sickness. The only long term outcome from this will be resistance to these antibiotics, rendering them useless.
If we had carefully managed our use of antibiotics, their usefulness may have extended for far longer. Instead, we are now rapidly approaching a point where 'last resort' antibiotics in hospitals have side-effects that are just as bad as the problem they're trying to solve.
The worst thing of all of this is that the solution to this problem has been known for centuries - crop rotation!
It's things like this that make me wish everyone would hurry up and appoint me Benevolent Dictator for Life...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday March 21 2014, @03:26AM
They rotate crops -- every year they plant new corn again. /sarcasm
An interesting read in the line of near future dystopian sci-fi, in which the main character is a gene scout for AgriGen (a future Monsanto), is The Windup Girl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Friday March 21 2014, @03:56AM
Is that like a coin operated boy?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Funny) by Debvgger on Friday March 21 2014, @11:16AM
I can certainly see a slot instead of a lever.
(Score: 2, Informative) by evilviper on Friday March 21 2014, @04:09AM
Thus far, antibiotic use in animals hasn't been conclusively linked to antibiotic resistant human diseases.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @04:26AM
Tell that to the farmers who have had to destroy livestock infected with various antibiotic-resistant animal diseases.
(Score: 1) by SacredSalt on Friday March 21 2014, @01:14PM
You mean like http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/heidelberg-10-13/ [cdc.gov] ...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Lunix Nutcase on Friday March 21 2014, @02:08PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday March 21 2014, @03:18PM
It says bad things about the scientific method when whenever I see a study, I now have the kneejerk reaction of wondering where they're intentionally misleading us. Every time you buy some scientists to say whatever you want, you devalue the scientific meathod and lend more credence to the anti-science crowd.
Uggh. I've been on Slashdot too long :P
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Funny) by coolgopher on Friday March 21 2014, @05:03AM
It's things like this that make me wish everyone would hurry up and appoint me Benevolent Dictator for Life...
Careful what you wish for - you might just get it only to find out your life was a whole lot shorter, simply because you became dictator for life ;)
(Score: 1) by corey on Friday March 21 2014, @05:47AM
With such progressive farming ideas, you have my vote for dictator!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @06:11AM
known for centuries - crop rotation
Millennia, actually. [wikipedia.org] It goes back to what many of us think of as the dawn of civilization (the emergence of cities).
This was the first thought I had as well. When you don't supply the pest with its favorite munchies year after year, you interrupt its breeding cycle. Give them something they can't stomach the next year and they die out.
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RoyWard on Friday March 21 2014, @09:53AM
is that Bacillus thuringiensis is so specific that it is one of the very few environmentally friendly forms of pest control - it is the only pesticide I know that can be used by certified organic farmers (although I will admit to being no expert).
So what has happened here - the biotech companies make a short term profit by giving a few years of pest resistant crops, then move on to whatever the next thing is, meanwhile rendering useless (or at least impairing) something that had a lot of value to others, and may not be easily replaced. And it was all predicted years ago.
Tragedy of the commons, anyone?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @12:22PM
Wait, this was used by organic farmers? I smell a conspiracy theory ...
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 21 2014, @03:23PM
I'm guessing they don't have a patent on the natural pesticide? That'll show those damn hippies!
[cue scene from The Bourne Identity where the head bad guy is in appropriations]
"Eh, Treadstone was just a test thing. It was nice but we're tying it off. Now, the new hotness is Blackbriar..."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by lrmo on Friday March 21 2014, @03:42PM
There are, in fact, many pesticides used by organic farmers. Their use is not regulated and since they are less effective than synthetic pesticides they are used a lot more.
Some are used at 3.5 times the level of synthetic pesticides and their long term impacts have not been studied.
Links [berkeley.edu] for [scientificamerican.com] reference. [npr.org]
(Score: 1) by RoyWard on Friday March 21 2014, @04:03PM
Ok, that's interesting - my information was a bit second hand (I knew people who where getting pretty worried about just this possibility when Bt containing crops was announced).
The point still stands though - organic farmers have a restricted set of allowable pesticides that are allowed, and they aren't going to be able to use new ones cooked up in a lab, so this is a potentially a bigger hit for them than for others, although I do understand that most of then will only use the organic pesticides in a targeted way rather than the conventional blanket of 'here are the N sprays we always put on apples'. They are harmed by the actions of the biotech companies and derive no benefit.
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @01:52PM
You go worm! Take that GMO bitches! Better now than when the one third becomes three thirds. This lets us learn from our mistakes now and avoid a, oh never mind..who am I kidding.
(not crazy that farmers are being blamed in the summary, when they're often strong-armed into accepting GMO or going out of business)
(Score: 2, Informative) by muhgi on Friday March 21 2014, @02:05PM
The actual article is less "doom and dismay" than the headlines indicate. From the article: "These results illustrate that Bt crops producing less than a high dose of toxin against target pests may select for resistance rapidly; consequently, current approaches for managing Bt resistance should be reexamined."
The article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/12/13171 79111 [pnas.org]
From later in the paper (kudos to the other poster who mentioned crop rotation): "In light of resistance to Cry3Bb1 and mCry3A, the 5% refuge associated with current Bt pyramids targeting western corn rootworm may do little to delay resistance, and larger refuges should be considered as a tactic to delay resistance (12). Additionally, cultivation of Bt maize should be better integrated with other strategies for management of western corn rootworm, such as crop rotation, which will reduce selection for resistance and may help delay the further evolution of Bt resistance by this pest."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @05:07PM