Gmo. In retreat?

[sw363535]

Does the Monsanto sale signal the peak or end to gmo effectiveness?
Considering prices, weed problems, etc.

Or did the technology just need to find a less hostile regulatory "environment" to move on?

[BA Deere]

SW, GMOs could probably go away and we farmers wouldn`t miss them.  They had their hay day, but they`re losing effectiveness, the glyphosate is ineffective, basically a adjuvant, rootworm traited seed still requires Capture 3rive, so why pay the tech fee and extra$$$?    Seeing a few $2.50/bu corn ears on the ground or a weed here and there isn`t as bad as when we had $7 corn.  If all they`re going to pay is $2.50/bu, then we gotta start farming like what they`re paying, and $350/bag seed isn`t in that equation.

I suppose these mergers are like Ole and Sven loading hay on their truck and hauling 100 bales and losing $1 on each bale and Sven in disgust telling Ole "Ole we need a bigger truck!"   🙂    Food companies brag on their packaging when they can "GMO free!"  so perhaps the merger is more favorable to the seed trait heavy Monsanto?

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

GMO are obvsiouly here to stay.  As much as we whine about them, we mostly use them becaues they are better than the alternative.  

Big agriculture is based on a 90-120 foot boom, not a 6 row cultivator and mandatory contour strips to prevent erosion.

The minority public interest in decreasing GMO is a function of people with more money than they need making an issue out of things that don't matter.  It is a reflection of their scientific ignorance.  If time gets tough, they'll be happy to eat a GMO carrot rather than none at all.

GMO will continue and expand, maybe in different areas.

I will concede one thing - as fast as GMO is produced, some farmer will lie and cheat and avoid acting responsibilty and will render it ineffective much sooner than necessary.  Agriculture is a commodity process and commodities such every bit of profit out, encouraging people to rationalize short term behaviour that is inimicable to long term interrests.

[Blacksandfarmer]

SW in my area non GMO is getting a healthy premium. 

[hardnox]

It was not anything that surprised me-pretty much what I expected- but in the early years of RR corn a couple brothers I know were tickled that things had gotten so easy- didn't even have to clean out the sprayer- just fill it with generic glyphosate and go.

May their future be filled with waterhemp and palmer ameranth, although unfortunately so will the rest of ours'.

That was what I told the moderator was going to happen when I happened to be invited to a focus group for MON concerning the release of RR corn. But they weren't interested- their purpose was to figure out what the resistance to sales would be so they could counter it.

And I got $50, a coke and a cookie.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to GMOs but don't care for the major players in the least.