Non-gmos use pesticides, nearly all farming does, and usually more than GMO crops. Eg https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/20...

From

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/gmos-and-pesticides/

In Europe where GMOs are banned and pesticide use is lower...yields are higher than in the US.

"We need to use poison to grow food to feed everyone" is bunch of false-dilemma poppycock.

If it were truly a matter of "we need to feed everyone", we wouldn't be wasting massive amounts of grain on raising cattle, which is one of most wasteful ways of generating food there is. 80% of agricultural land is used for cattle, but they only represent 20% of the calories in food consumed.

We also wouldn't be growing corn just to turn it into ethanol, a net-energy-negative process.

We also wouldn't be controlling the price of sugar, thus creating a huge demand for corn to turn into corn syrup.

Corn is also an incredibly resource-intensive crop all on its own, and the monocropping is terrible for the soil. But corn is where the money is..

Anecdotally, I think pesticides become 'necessary' when a specific farm desires greater than a particular density of crop. Sure, the collective can achieve sufficient production with less use of these chemicals however when a farm is at a point where their plants are touching each other then serious pesticides are required if they wish to increase their yield further without pests becoming a catastrophic risk to the entire operation. If only we could all agree to just grow 'enough' instead of growing as much as science allows...

Once we started expecting farmers to be specialists instead of generalists. If you only know apples you want as many of them as you can fit. Which means pathogens have a buffet laid out.

> pesticide use is lower...

It's not. Europe uses somewhat lower amount of pesticides because it has more land that regularly freezes which helps to control insects.

When corrected for that, Europe uses more pesticides for similar climates.

> yields are higher than in the US.

They aren't, when corrected for the land area.

What do you mean by "corrected for the land area"? According to this study, in the period 2016-2020 wheat yields per acre were more than twice as high in Germany than in North Dakota or Kansas.

https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/resource/2022/05/int...

North Dakota and Kansas are deserts or near desert. Germany gets 2 to 7 times more rain per year (depending on which part of Germany you look at)

That is probably a major reason for the higher yields in Germany, but the person I replied to claimed that yields aren't really higher in Europe than in the US.

According to data from the UN, in 2020 North America used 2.77 kg pesticiedes per hectare cropland and Europe used 1.69 kg/ha, and yet Europe has higher yields per hectare. So clearly Europe uses less pesticedes per produced amount of food.

https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RP

I'm sorry, I was a bit unclear. Instead of:

> They aren't, when corrected for the land area.

I should have said "for the geographical area". You need to compare yields in similar climates and soils.

A better comparison would be ND and Ukraine in terms of climate.

Maybe, but both are large enough and have enough regional variation that it isn't safe to compare like that. The worst regionsare much worse in ND, and the best much better in Ukraine.

You need to compare yields for the land in similar climatic conditions. This is complicated, because most of the US is to the south of most of the European landmass. New York is on the same latitude as Madrid.

> In Europe where GMOs are banned and pesticide use is lower...yields are higher than in the US.

While this may be causal, agriculture is incredibly complex, and I would hesitate to come to any conclusions about causality from this bit of data alone.

one major point is that you need to use the soil substainable

and as far as I know the US did do exact the opposite en mass

GMO by itself isn't bad, but a lot of GMO is made in a way which is harmful to the soil on the long term (and sometimes even short term)

Similar much higher limits for the amount of fertilizers used allow you to use approaches to growing crops which short and mid term have more yield but also drain the soil in a non-substainable way leading to a death spiral of needing increasingly more and more fertilizers, insecticides and at some point GMO modified crops.

While most EU countries had for a long time (but not necessary still have) laws which require a more sustainable ground usage and having a larger movement of people buying food which even more stricter constraints wrt. fertilizers and pesticides.

> 80% of agricultural land is used for cattle

I don't think this is true. Did you mean livestock?

On top of that, much land cattle graze on is entirely unsuitable for growing crops.

I don't know if what they're saying is true, but I don't think they're saying non-GMO plants don't use pesticides. They're saying GMO crops use even stronger pesticides, strong enough that it would kill the non-GMO variants of these plants. And they want to avoid the kind of pesticides in their salad that would kill a non-modified lettuce, or whatever plant.

Roundup isn't a pesticide, or an insecticide (as the charts above are labeled). Roundup is an herbicide, which is why it is so useful to combine with GMO crops. When you spray a field for weeds with Roundup, your crop doesn’t die because it has resistance built in.

More clearly, Roundup kills weeds, not bugs.

> Roundup isn't a pesticide, or an insecticide (as the charts above are labeled). Roundup is an herbicide

Pesticide is an umbrella term for herbicides, insecticides, and other types of substances.

Ok! Thanks for the correction!

This was a new one for me, too.

This definition might be true in some places but the vernacular usage of “pesticide” by users is slanted towards targeting animal life and not plants.

> But when chemicals so awful they kill the crop, the crop’s genes need to be modified so that they don’t die and that chemical residue ends up all over our food system

Fortunately, you are not a plant.

These chemicals just need to not harm humans (and domestic animals). The fact that they did, in this case, is merely a safety failure. There is nothing which says that pesticides and herbicides must be harmful to humans, and if these judgments are big enough, hopefully in the future there will be sufficient motivation to ensure that they won't be.

I’m not a plant, but I’m loaded with tiny creatures that appear to support my overall health yet are hindered by stuff we put on plants. I have no interest in harming them without a clear need to, and studies show that exposure to pesticides can significantly impact gut flora either by outright killing them or causing significant imbalances. This matters, and I’d consider it a reason at least some pesticides are harmful to humans, even if indirectly.

This is a very different (but important) point to the one the OP was making though, which was freely playing with the "it'll totally kill you" imagery in the wording.

People complain when "the other side" is loose with the truth, then freely do it themselves when it suits.

Although we have seen very frequently that pesticides still affect some humans or animals. At this point, shouldn't we just reduce the possible points of failures instead of hoping the next miracle molecule doesn't kill us all twenty years later?

Very frequently?

These chemicals are benign and the media and activists have been scaring people for decades without justification.

I'm shocked Bayer lost and that the plaintiff was awarded anything. Glyphosate has not been shown to cause cancer. If it had, such literature would be paraded out as an evergreen example.

If you want to be afraid of chemical use, it's the overuse of antibiotics that should worry you.

> it's the overuse of antibiotics that should worry you

If violence doesn't work, you are not using enough violence.

Roundup isn’t glyphosate. It’s full of glyphosate, yes. But it’s not glyphosate.

It also doesn’t always break down. Depends on if it binds with anything.

Seems like a distinction without a difference:

"Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops. Its herbicidal effectiveness was discovered by Monsanto chemist John E. Franz in 1970. Monsanto brought it to market for agricultural use in 1974 under the trade name Roundup."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

It’s a distinction without a difference if you’re trying to reuse the tobacco playbook and you need people to be confused long enough for your bonus checks to clear.

I think what they are meaning is that the chemical blend with glyphosate causes cancer even if pure glyphosate doesn't. I.e. an inactive ingredient or an interaction with an inactive ingredient is what causes the cancer.

> These chemicals are benign

Sure they are.

> Although we have seen very frequently that pesticides still affect some humans or animals.

“Pesticides” is a class that includes things intended affect animals (insecticides and rodenticides, for instance.)

> At this point, shouldn't we just reduce the possible points of failures instead of hoping the next miracle molecule doesn't kill us all twenty years later?

Probably not. We should probably improve our structures for evaluating, approving, and reevaluating once deployed agricultural chemicals of all types, but should we stop developing new technology in the field? No, we probably should not.

The lack of basic scientific literacy is pretty shocking in the "organic is healthier" world. It's a virtue smorgasbord of "natural fallacy" and "don't eat chemicals" logic.

Most pesticides and hebicides break down from exposure to the sun and rain. The main reason im concerned with roundup is because it has now become common to finish crops by spraying them with roundup so they all dry up at the same time on a set schedule, which means they are harvesting within days after spraying them, then storing that grain in sunless silos with reduced moisture and drying so that roundup never has a chance to degrade.

I would have no problem eating something that was hit with roundup 2 months previously and exposed to the elements. But spraying it then eating it just a few days afterwards is just dumb.

I must confess to not washing all fruit before I eat it. Especially berries. I sometimes wonder if there's any home testing kit I can use to figure out how much chemical residue is on them. Easy testing for pesticides/sprays could prompt changes in both consumer behaviour (e.g. preparation/washing), but also buying behaviour (if one farm's berries had less spray than another's, presumably the former's would be preferable to most people).

Worry about bacteria and gastropods. These are the things that actually kill human consumers.

Rinse them with vinegar.

People tell me "GMO food is perfectly safe" and they do not seem to understand that in practice they genetically modify the food so they can dump glyphosate on it and that's what I want to avoid eating!

According to the FDA they genetically modify plants to dump less pesticides on them and to be cheaper: https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/why-do-f...

All that says is "Farmers can use less spray pesticides when they plant GMO crops.

From a paper:

"On whether RR soybean systems reduce pesticide use and increase grower profits, our analysis shows that –

• RR soybean systems are largely dependent on herbicides and hence are not likely to reduce herbicide use or reliance. Claims otherwise are based on incomplete information or analytically flawed comparisons that do not tell the whole story.

• Farmers growing RR soybeans used 2 to 5 times more herbicide measured in pounds applied per acre, compared to the other popular weed management systems used on most soybean fields not planted to RR varieties in 1998. RR herbicide use exceeds the level on many farms using multitactic Integrated Weed Management systems by a factor of 10 or more."

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.41...

There's meta analysis that shows on average the statement is true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4218791/ even in general

How does glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives?

I develop new technology for regenerative organic farming. I would say the question is not about how GMOs and glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives, but how they compare to the possibilities. Heavy reliance on glyphosate has notable environmental consequences, but it is so cheap and convenient that its use is widespread. To be honest since I am focused on regenerative organic, I can't speak much to what conventional farming methods were like before the use of GMO'd glyphosate resistant crops as I have not studied them, but they would have been more labor intensive. So these GMO crops did make farming cheaper in some ways (tho now farmers pay huge fees to Bayer née Monsanto), but it is important to ask what the trade offs are for this.

Long term, my hope is that small scale farming robot swarms can manage crops the way a more traditional regenerative organic farmer would tend to their crops. In those systems there is more attention paid to each plant, and little to no artificial inputs. This is excellent for the soil and the local environment, as well as the people who live and work at or near the farms.

But then, I am the project lead and maintainer on a solar powered open source farming robot[1], so not only have I drank the Kool-Aid but I'm the one mixing it up to share.

[1] https://community.twistedfields.com/t/join-the-solar-farming...

Well the main alternative was cultivation, that is dragging a steal hoe threw the ground. This releases a lot of co2, both from burning fuel and faster decomposition of organic matter and so is a factor in global warming. That hoe also destoryes the soil and leads to topsoil loss. Glyphosate allows modern farm to leave the soil alone and that builds more top soil.

No-till organic farms exist.

Depending on who you ask there is no usual alternative which is in any way competitive and isn't so similar to phosphorylate that any harmfulness of glyphosate like applies to it, too.

Through other people will tell you this is propaganda bs.

I'm not in a position to make any proper judgement there, but it seems that not using glyphosate _or similar_ requires major changes to the approach of farming used.

Glyphosate is more of a problem for people that live and work near it.

The food on the shelves contains trace amounts of it (parts per billion).

What makes you think non GMO is any safer? GMO seeds are studied to confirm safety, everything else is not studied at all. Random mutations happen all the time in non GMO food, but nobody checks if it is safe. Thus your worse case for GMO is no different than any other food '

> I hope the settlement hits trillions. Burn the fuckers down.

Hoping on the sidelines gets you nowhere. Laws need to be changed to end the presumption in many jurisdictions that a lack of safety data equates to a benign substance.

Thanks for the insight, super helpful.

But roundup has tons of safety data in favor of it?

But it really doesn't. What it has is a lot of industry-funded "research" muddying the waters with ambiguous or misleading results.

When I worked at Monsanto, the mantra was that __the burden of proof was on those alleging harm__.

I don't know about you, but I expect a higher standard from the system that regulates the food I put in my body.

Broad spectrum pesticides are terribly complex to test and it should take years if not decades to properly prove them safe for agricultural use and human consumption.

Glyphosate hasn't been shown to cause cancer, despite decades of science trying to demonstrate otherwise.

Plant and insect biology is incredibly different from our own.

We are attracted to many natural insecticides, in fact.

Chilli, for instance?

Nicotine and THC are two more.

Caffeine.

Tea is so simple to produce because tea leaves are booby trapped with caffeine crystals and the enzymes to break them down. When an insect eats them they mix.

Caffeine

Edit: and every herb we’ve ever enjoyed

> The most dangerous surface in a farm is the farmer’s hat I was told.

How about the surface of the crops?

I figure it’s like dentists wearing aprons when doing teeth X-rays. It’s not that you are receiving a dangerous dose, it’s that they are exposed over, and over, and over again all day. That hat has seen every acre of that farm, at 10-30 foot intervals. Several times a year.

"Chemicals killing the crop" aren't inherently dangerous to your body, that's just chemophobia.

Best quality artisanal chocolate can easily kill your cat. Nicotine kills bugs and is benign in humans. Belladonna would kill you, but a goat can munch on it without much trouble. Lots of stuff is lethal to some species and harmless to others, "this chemical is so bad it kills plants" is as rational as "chocolate is so bad it kills cats".

And yet, eating food that has spoiled contains chemicals that are inherently dangerous to your body causing food-poisoning.

That people would prefer NOT to believe those with vested interest in profiting from selling things exposed to chemicals isn't an invalid concern.

Food poisoning is caused by viruses and bacteria.

As another poster pointed out, a lot of GMO crops are altered in such a way that they don't need as many pesticides. Non-GMO often need more pesticides and the GMO label has nothing to do with pesticides - just genetic modification.

If you don't trust me, just ask the FDA: https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/why-do-f...

Discussing GMO's in general and not specific varieties is about as productive as discussing manmade materials- the topic is too broad. What are we even comparing- bricks vs stones? Copper vs a rock?

Monsanto was producing crops that better withstand it's chemicals and China is producing Rice that can tolerate salt water. Clearly China is Innovating to feed it's people while Monsanto is 'Innovating' to boost their share price.

You certainly can discuss them in general, here's the NIH doing a meta analysis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4218791/

> Studies were included when they build on primary data from farm surveys or field trials anywhere in the world, and when they report impacts of GM soybean, maize, or cotton on crop yields, pesticide use, and/or farmer profits. In total, 147 original studies were included.

> On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries.

Comparing Monsanto to China is an even sillier comparison than copper vs rock.

> Food poisoning is caused by viruses and bacteria.

I've got plenty of E.coli in my gut already, the risk in food poisoning is not that I'll get a few more, it's that I'll get a few more that also produce shigatoxin.

What spoiled food has to do with it? If anything, it's a tautology, because "spoiled" effectively means "bad", when the process of "spoiling" is harmless we call it "blue cheese" or "kimchi".

"Things exposed to chemicals" is literally anything you see around you. Water is a "chemical". Glucose is a "chemical". Vitamin C is a "chemical". I don't understand your point.

So you are saying glycophosphates are super duper healthy for humans and everything in the river and ocean. Awesome, where is that data?

Also, Hersheys is loaded with lead and cadmium, which is probably bad for anything living.

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

Whether something kills humans, and whether it kills fish are two entirely different questions. For example: the medium fish live in has a 100% kill rate on humans submerged in it for longer then about 5 minutes.

No, I'm not saying that, how can you read my reply that way in good faith?

I didn't say anything about Hersheys either.

Chemophobia - it annoys me that people think that the only harm we must consider for herbicides and pesticides is humans, then proceeded to dump billions of gallons of this, which ultimately end up down rivers, lakes, and oceans. there are countless creatures being affected by the chemicals, but somehow we skip that study.

You brought up chocolate. Hersheys arguably is chocolate and the Consumer Reports study is actually about dark chocolate, and all the amazing chemicals in it.

Who are those people? Regulators look at harm to other animals as well, and the fate of the herbicide is one of the most important considerations. Glyphosate in particular effectively binds to soil [1] and is biodegraded there by various bacteria fairly rapidly.

The fact that you are talking about "chemicals" in this generic way is what makes it chemophobia. There can be no serious point in talking about "chemicals" that can't even be defined, it's always irrational.

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev2_02581...

I don’t have a fear of chemicals. Everything is a chemical, but I’ve met the people you are describing, I promise to never use the work again.

Keep in mind these studies are from 1997, the world wasn’t even ruined by the Internet at that point. The studies about humans described in your link are: some idiot drank half a cup of it, and he didn’t die, and the rabbits and mice seem ok. It’s safe! I just struggle, because even at that time these types of anecdotal statements were so dubious. It’s now over 25 years later, so what are the long-term effect?

As a point of comparison, Johnson and Johnson continues to insist that their asbestos laced baby powder doesn’t cause cancer (contradicting reality), so Monsanto now Bayer assurances don’t generate much confidence for me.

But it's naive to think there's no effect - some level of chemophobia is warranted IMO, because we do not understand all the complex second order effects to these powerful compounds. Case in point: the article we're discussing.

I firmly believe science will illuminate the true risks, but it may unfortunately take decades. Time will tell, until then I try to eat organic when I can.

Imagine thinking we have a solid enough grasp of these chemicals and their interactions and likely potentiating effects with other compounds for literally hundreds of thousands of chemicals in regular industrial use for which no one alive today evolved to tolerate. The incidence of bizarre illnesses, cancer, neuroatypicality, hormonal disturbances, and so many other illnesses is exploding in incidence across the modern world. Taking a “that’s just chemophobic” stand is honestly really stupid.

> Nicotine ... benign in humans

Not 100% sure I agree with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_poisoning

>chemophobia

How ridiculous. You should be afraid of chemicals you don’t understand. That’s common sense

"Nicotine kills bugs and is benign in humans."

One drop of nicotine put under your tongue will kill you deader than a doornail.

> not because I am worried about eating grain that has modified genes, that’s plain stupid.

So, it turns out this is not so stupid. I’m going to sound a little stupid, because this is not my field, but my sister is a plant molecular biologist. All her research/work is in plant DNA. Apparently it’s been recently discovered that the gene expression for the genetically modified plants was not as had been previously understood. Instead of turning on just one gene, it turns on like five other unexpected random genes. In addition there was something about “complex interactions” and “poorly tested and uncertain outcomes” or something. Any actual experts able to weigh in?

Anyway, she’s gone from “genetic modification of plants is a great thing because of improving food security” to “I’m not letting my kids eat this stuff”.

Does she let her kids eat sweet potatoes?

While there is AFAIK no genetically engineered variety of sweet potato being cultivated, every cultivated variety of sweet potato bears genetic traces of having been modified by Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which is the bacterium which is widely used to edit plant genomes.

I think, to understand her concerns, you would need to be in the field. I’m pretty smart, and I have plenty of layman knowledge, but I’m completely lost once she gets technical.

The summary of the issue, as I understand it, is as follows.

The modifications do much more than we realised, and the impacts are poorly tested. That’s the gist. It’s enough for me to go “there could be dragons here”, but I honestly haven’t bothered to try and change any purchasing decisions. I think the horse has already bolted anyway. Doesn’t the gmo end up in pretty much everything regardless?

our understanding of DNA is pretty basic. I’d say we’re using a hatchet to do surgery.

Did she make any reference to studies?

Yes, but I’m texting her to get info. I’ll update here, but it’ll probably take a while. Probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I was hopeful that there might be another plant molecular biologist in the audience who could clear things up.

[delayed]

No modification is perfect: While all GMO modification tries to be as narrow as possible, it's not like things are ever so perfectly narrow as to only just express a bonus protein that you wanted.

The problem is assuming that any other change that happens is dangerous and untested. There's mutation all over the place in perfectly organic plants, just like with GMOs. There are also changes on gene expression from those changes, also like GMO. An overwhelming majority of changes either do nothing, or make the plant unviable at all. The practical risks of a change that does something, doesn't harm yields, and yet somehow makes the parts of the plant that a human eats somewhat toxic is a huge stretch. It's even less likely when one considers the actual regulatory processes that happen later. It might seem crazy, but people that work on GMOs tend to be uninterested in poisoning the public.

If I was afraid of poisoning due to mutation (which I am not), I'd be more afraid of what someone that has been crossing plans with some localized, ancestral wildtypes that have been planted just in some village for the last hundred years or something. They are more likely to be untested. But it's like the risk of getting hit by lighting for the 5th time this week.

I am far more likely to be poisoned by a detergent, or someone that has let bacteria run amok in their packing facility, and is somehow selling, say, premixed salads that land in my local supermarket.

I’d argue back, but I’m too ignorant. You write as if you are supremely confident, so can you back this up? Are you working in the field, or can you point me to (recent) commentary from someone who is?

I have no dog in this fight, I literally know nothing and care very little. However, I can’t just ignore the opinions that have come to me from someone who is an expert in this space. That’s why I raised it; because I was assuming there would be someone working in the field who could provide detail and nuance. Wasn’t expecting “this is all crap” as the response.

There is a lot of indications that GMO crops are much more likely to "trigger" food intolerabilities then older crops.

Through this seems to be an issue about them being further distant from what humans did eat for over a thousand years then about GMO being bad per-se. I.e. this also seem to apply (but less so) to crops which used more tradition (modern speed up) methods of cultivating crop variants.

Shit. I remember clearly spraying roundup out of a backpack sprayer on a calm day, when a stray gust of wind blew some of the spray back up and into my face. I often wonder if I inadvertently sealed my fate despite that level of exposure being so brief. It was about 5 years ago,so far so good.

Much of the time, cancer risk with these chemicals is based of some level of exposure over time.

It’s people using it all day every day that are at a high risk of cancer. One blow back in to the face probably won’t do much more than cause some irritation.

You will be absolutely fine, you really don't have to worry about it. It's very uncertain whether ingesting these chemicals is harmful, touching them briefly is just fine.

Courts are not judges of science. Roundup is well studied in science and the overwhelming majority find it is harmless to humans.

The real concern is with the surfactants used with the glyphosate, not the glyphosate itself.

Wait until you hear about how healthy soy is farmed with 4x the herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc. as regular vegetables. Mmm.

Round-Up Ready and Terminator Seeds are two of the sickest inventions that humans have ever dreamed up.

The idea of engineering seed so that new seed which comes from its crop will not germinate is just beyond wicked and evil.

But we've had that for something like a quarter century now.

$332M seems like peanuts.

Wikipedia claims (not very current claims though) that terminator seeds are not commercially available?

They are different than the common case of infertile hybrids, which have good reason to exist and the infertility (IIUIC, not a botanist) is a side effect.

There was an old patent about making generations completely infertile, but yes, never used. Bayer's corn seeds are optimized enough that, while the next generation grows just fine, the yield loss makes it not worthwhile over just buying new seed.

Its been that way for a lot of crops for almost a century at this point. This phenomenon is called hybrid vigor. Many things we grow are clonally propagated at this point to maintain these hybrid genetics.

This tells me you don't know much about Monsanto / Bayer Crop Science.

Roundup Ready is a relatively good idea: Roundup applies easily, and after the first few generations, when the control of how to add the GMO genes was so bad yields were impacted, it's a very narrow change to plants that makes farmers a lot of money. The vast majority of soybeans in the world are running Roundup-ready genes for a reason.

Terminator seeds sounded like a scary patent, but it was mostly useless. In corn, for instance, you'd never want to run it at all, as the seeds that are sold are almost perfect hybrids of 2 inbreds, which lose a whole lot of yield in the next generation without anyone really trying. There's no need for a gene when the next generation yields worse naturally.

If you want a sick situation with Bayer, forget Roundup, and look at what's been happening with Dicamba, the next generation of pesticide that GMOs are protected from. It's not a new pesticide, but it's very aggressive and it drifts: You spray a field, and many other fields around it are going to get hit. Supposedly Bayer is telling everyone that, on tests, the new formulations of it, when applied properly under the right weather conditions, there's no drift... but reality disagrees. Therefore, a whole lot of fields that aren't planting seeds protected from dicamba are getting wrecked by not-so-close that haven't mastered the really difficult ways to spray dicamba in the calmest of days. We aren't talking a pesticide that drifts 50 feet here, or 100, but people relatively far away that have their crops ruined. This is happening often enough that we'll see bans, while more and more generations of roundup GMO are going out of patent.

I am pretty sure that this one is what is scaring Bayer's lawyers, not Roundup.

Please don't fulminate or call names on HN. You can make your substantive points without any of that.

Your comment was fine until "well buddy [...] burn the fuckers down".

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.