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GMO Grass is Creeping Across Oregon

posted by martyb on Monday July 02 2018, @11:17AM   
from the just-wait-until-the-Ents-get-loose dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

High Country News reports:

[...] Scotts got permission from the USDA to plant larger fields for seed production. Farmers sowed 80 acres of bentgrass in Canyon County, Idaho, and 420 acres in Jefferson County, Oregon, north of Bend. The Oregon Department of Agriculture picked the site - an irrigated island in the sagebrush sea - to keep the plant far from the Willamette Valley. There, on the western side of the mountains, farmers grow forage and turf grass for a $1 billion-a-year seed industry.

Then two windstorms swept through the eastern Oregon fields in August of 2013, scattering flea-sized seeds well beyond the designated control area. Roundup-resistant pollen fertilized conventional bentgrass plants as far as 13 miles away.

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Original Submission

• Re:Told you so Re:Told you so (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday July 02 2018, @03:02PM (1 child)

  by VLM (445) on Monday July 02 2018, @03:02PM (#701393)

  have been warning about for years and years, and all that time have been told

  Speaking of repeated unproven assumptions, a plant has to burn some energy and effort to be resistant to glyphosate herbicides (not merely just name brand Round-Up(tm)) so supposedly anywhere that glyphosate herbicides are NOT sprayed, the local non-resistant plants should out compete the resistant plants, not immediately of course but "in a couple generations". That's kinda the whole point, WHY normal non-engineered plants are NOT resistant naturally. If resistance were free, why wouldn't natural plants have evolved to be resistant, every crop field in the nation seems like it would be motivational, LOL.

  So in theory, this will suck for like a year or two until the resistant varieties are out competed and wiped out, unless the locals are saturating the ground with herbicide in which case things might suck forever, or until they stop using that herbicide. Speaking of stop using that herbicide, in the long run the people hurt most are not going to be the local farmers but will be the herbicide mfgr and seller.... "Your spray doesn't kill turf grass anymore, I don't care why, I'm simply not buying your spray anymore"

  Parent

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• Re:Told you so (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:50AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:50AM (#701806)

  If resistance were free, why wouldn't natural plants have evolved to be resistant

  Because we haven't been using Roundup for long enough yet.

  We are getting close to having used anti-biotics long enough, that's why you hear more and more often about resistant bacteria. It's not all bacteria yet, but it gets worse.

  (Note that "long enough" is counted in generations, and many bacteria have very short generations).

  Parent