12/September/22

 

Development expert Brian Dowd-Uribe, associate professor at the University of San Francisco, has produced a tweetorial on how it's misleading to use average yields to claim success for GM crops in Africa. He writes, "Too often averages are used to claim success... when what is (also/more) important is the standard deviation" – the amount of variation in a set of values. For example, GM cotton was supposed to boost yields for small farmers in Burkina Faso and field trials projected an average yield gain of 34%. But a study that took standard deviation into account showed how yield and profit gains were split between rich, medium and poor producers – and came up with a different verdict. The study found that rich farmers had a yield gain of +33% and a profitability gain of +43% with GM cotton. But medium producers only had an +8% yield gain, and poor producers had -11% yield decrease with GM cotton. Both lost money. Medium producers had a -8% profit decline (due to increased costs) and poor producers had a -46% profit decline. GMWatch

 

 

The US EPA said it received about 3,500 reports this year indicating that more than one million acres of non-dicamba-tolerant soybean crops were allegedly damaged when the chemical drifted from where it was applied. Trees and crops like rice and grapes also suffered damage. The EPA is assessing whether dicamba can be sprayed on soybean and cotton plants genetically engineered to resist the chemical without the procedure posing “unreasonable risks” to other crops. Insurance Journal

 

 

Liz Truss’s election as leader of the ruling Conservative Party, and hence the UK’s new Prime Minister, appears to hold out little prospect of an improvement in the Tory Government’s dire record on food, farming and the environment. In fact, Truss’s own statements, her track record, and her ministerial appointments all suggest things could well get worse. That might seem surprising, given that Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, used his first three speeches as Prime Minister to flag up his desire to “liberate” GMOs and went on to introduce the “Precision Breeding” bill to fast-track deregulation of gene-edited crops and animals in England. But Truss made clear during her leadership campaign her own commitment to this direction of travel, vowing to “unleash British farming” through deregulation, including of “precision breeding technologies” (code for GMOs). GMWatch

 

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