Gordon Couger wrote:
Idiot, BT cotton kills boll worms no boll weevil.

Thanks, Gordon. We note you gave a good explanation on a previous
article.

I understood that boll weevil has to be treated separately taking
care not to kill beneficial organisms. Are the `beneficials' you
wrote of

i) necessary pollen spreaders
ii) parasites or predators which kill boll worms?

It is all quite complex and maybe the knowledge of the farmers of
old will pay off.

Now they are finding in China that mixing lots of different rice
produces much more yield, makes better use of soil micro-organisms
and produces less greenhouse gas - methane.

If you happen to want individual types of rice maybe the technology
these days could go into designing a machine to do the job. That
might cost a bit but the extra yield could more than make up for it.
In the old days the technology to design the machine would nto have
been so easy. Same with all sorts of weeding technology, too.
Sorting could even develop to sort crops from beneficial weeds which
might grow with them, and perhaps shade other weeds to stop them
growing.

As Jim said billions has gone on BSE research which may have saved
more lives elsewhere. We weren't quite sure about that. But since
weeds are getting resistant to Roundup, or the weeds which were
already resistant are much more prevalent, and so many billions have
been spent on producing the Roundup Ready system, it might have been
better to spread the research a bit.