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GMO Grass is Creeping Across Oregon

posted by martyb on Monday July 02 2018, @11:17AM   Printer-friendly
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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  • (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).