"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Brian Sandle wrote:
Dean Hoffman wrote:

Another is insect control. There something showing up locally that has
no
treatment except rotation. I don't remember what it is. It isn't the
traditional bugs or weeds.
The seed corn companies here won't put their crop into a field that
had
corn the previous year.

So I hope the people here in NZ who are supporting the end of the GM
moratorium have got some figures on how that sort of thing affects their
whole profit scenario.

Or are they going to whimper that they could not have forseen such
problems and get a govt tax hand out for more research and or trying to
keep up standard of living of farmers who may be suffering. Otherwise
how
can the govt keep on god terms with their mates in biotech?

The NZ govt seem to be now indicating they do not want Monsanto food crops
in the near future. Though that is not certain. But they might approve GM
pine. And former ag scientist and now Govt member Choudhary yesterday
referred to reduced chemical use in Australian GM cotton. As a scientist
he should have acknowledged the possibility this is only an initial blip
in pest control of this new venture in Australia, same as with the old DDT
which was dropped from constant use because it lost its effectiveness
against insects.

I have cautioned before about tissue culture of pine - many genetically
identical plants could be susceptible to new diseases/pests. Now we have
new aspects of problems as Dean has indicated. Pine takes quite a few
years to grow and if something goes wrong all those years could be lost.

Besides if your trees spread as weeds the way pines do in New Zealand,
will you be liable?

Didn't I read that some GM connected Canola - rape has become
uncontrollable by chemicals and Monsanto are sending workers to remove it
by hand?


I would love to see where you read this. Volunteer RR Canola can be sprayed
out of other crops such as flax(MCPA Ester) wheat(2,4-D Ester), peas(MCPA
Amine),and Barley(a variety of phenoxys) quite easily, and in a majority of
these fields these sprays are used whether the volunteers are there or not.



Dean Ronn