Teach me about GM crops

[AgRep]

I agree with what everyone else has said about herbicide tolerant crops.  It has made crop production in the US more efficient.  However as herbicide resistance in weeds becomes more prevalent all over the country, I am in favor of pre emerge and early post weed control applications that use multiple modes of action to control weeds and provide excellent residual control to reduce the occurance of resistance.  Also to answer your about Tolerant corn in soybeans, fluazifop chemistry, such as Fusilade from Syngenta offers excellent control.

[soilbabe]

Hi Ollie, I like that name.  I currently grow LL soybeans and conventional soybeans, wheat, barley and corn.  I am using LL beans to control resistant weeds in fields and because they are the highest yielding I have grown.  I had a field that should have made 100 bu last year but I lost 15 pods per plant from 90 days of 90 degree heat and little rain but they still were very profitable and all my LL fields made 60-80 bu.

I am concerned what glyphosate and glufosinate does to the soil.  It's half life remains and ties up nutrients and increases soil borne disease.

RR beans never did much better than conventional soybeans for me and resistant weed populations built up with them.

My RR and LL corn plots never beat my non GMO plots so I never adopted them.

I hope this answers some of your questions,

[Ollie1983]

Thank you very much soilbabe. I was going to ask about the widespread and longer term repeated use of glufosinate and glyphosate and what effects people though it had on soil health- this is becoming a hot issue over on this side of the pond because we rely on these chemicals for stale seedbed destruction and also preharvest dessication.

The idea that GM crops would yield less than non GMO ones is fairly sound in my mind- the plant after all, is spending a fair amount of energy in an enzyme system that its non-GM cousins do not have, hence they would, all other things being equal, yield less.

It is a clever idea to use LL crops at one point in the rotation only, many of my farming contacts would like herbicide tolerant Canola for this very reason as our cereals are plagued with grassweeds.

Thanks again. 

[nwobcw]

   I have to totally disagree on non GMO outyielding GMO, especially in spybeans, my main crop.  Most if not all reserach in higher yielding varieties is going into RR beans.  My yield drastically improved with RR beans.  And they took another jump with RR2 seed.

[hymark]

It takes about 4 oz to kill them in my area.