🚀 go-pugleaf

	Agricultural biotechnology corporations claim that herbicide resistant
crops will bring about a net *decrease* in herbicide use. The reasoning, as I
understand it, is that farmers will be able to spray their crops with one
"broad spectruum" herbicide that kills all other plant life, rather than with
several more selective herbicides. These corporations, which often own the
patent to not only the crop but also the herbicide it is resistant to, also
point out that herbicides have enabled farmers to practice low-tillage
agriculture, saving valuable topsoil from erosion.
	Will herbicide resistant crops really bring these benefits?  Are they
worth the risks? Has the USDA adequately studied the possibility that approved
crops such as Buctril (bromoxynil) resistant cotton transfer its resistant
genes to its weedy cousins?  How safe to human health and ecological health
are such powerful "broad spectruum" herbicides?  Won't weeds eventually
develop their own resistance, as they have done with older chemicals? 
	Stepping back and studying the larger  picture, can such high-input
industrial agriculture be sustained?  Will it not make small farmers dependent
on multinational corporations?
	I am a Boston-based freelance science journalist writing a piece on
this subject. If you are a credible source with answers to any of these
questions, please contact me via e-mail (remro@acs.bu.edu).  I would also like
to talk with a farmer who is planting Buctril-resistant cotton, if there are
any out there on the `net. 
					Thanks!
					Robert Emro