"Pesticide Resistant" Pest adding insult to drought injury

Last winter, I wrote about evidence that one of Monsanto’s flagship GMO product lines — seeds engineered to produce the pesticide Bt — was succumbing to corn rootworms, the exact insects it was designed to kill. The evidence was somewhat thin — the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received reports from several states that indicated a problem — and certainly not decisive enough to prevent Monsanto from issuing an outright denial.

But now comes a report from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) on the damage rootworms are doing to the current corn crop and the very real concern farmers have that Monsanto’s seeds are no longer helping them control pests. The EPA is treating these latest reports seriously; according to the article, EPA officials visited some “problem fields” to observe possible evidence of resistance while awaiting results from Monsanto’s own scientists.

One pest expert MPR interviewed, Bruce Potter of the University of Minnesota, spoke more directly about the threat posed by rootworms, which appeared to have been held at bay by GMO corn until now. “We’re not going to make this go away … We’re stuck with managing this problem,” he told MPR. The report continues:

Potter has seen what he calls a “ridiculous” increase in rootworms apparently unfazed by the usually deadly protein [in GMO Bt seeds] in southern and western Minnesota this summer."

<50% from [link to grist.org]