Monarch butterflies are declining at such a dramatic rate that it’s hard for scientists to keep up. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the butterfly population has been reduced by 95 percent in the last 15 years.

“We were hoping to see one or two monarchs this year. We didn’t see any,” teacher Allison Cole at Flagstaff Academy in Longmont, one of several Colorado schools where students have planted milkweed gardens, told The Denver Post.

The loss is due to huge swaths of crops across the country being sprayed with glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Specifically, it’s because so much of our agricultural crops are genetically modified to be Roundup Ready, which means they’re resistant to Roundup and as result, farmers continuously spray these herbicides, creating dead zones. And these dead zones kill milkweed, a plant that Monarch caterpillars must have in order to survive.

That’s where you can help. By planting milkweed in your garden you’re creating a habitat where Monarch butterflies can thrive. It’s all part of a new national strategy which calls for creating “milkweed havens” or highways where Monarchs can survive as they migrate 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico. Groups like Monarch Watch are working to plant milkweed. The group sent 600 milkweed plants to schools and nonprofits across Colorado this year.

“People are thinking, if we plant rows of milkweed along fields, highways or anywhere we can be planting, that will provide more stopover places,” Gina Glenne, a Fish and Wildlife Service botanist based in Grand Junction said to The Denver Post. “We think the butterflies were doing fairly well before the 1990s. But we don’t have the milkweed now because we spray these crops.”

President Obama has convened a group of experts to figure out how to save Monarch butterflies and other pollinators, namely honey bees. In June, the Obama Administration announced $8 million in funding for farmers and ranchers to establish safe habitats for honey bees who have also been hit hard by the onslaught of pesticide use.

Pollinators are extremely important because they pollenate 75 percent of our flowering plants and nearly 75 percent of our crops. Without pollinators we’d have fewer fruits, vegetables, and seeds like blueberries, squash, coffee, and chocolate. Not to mention how gorgeous these black and orange butterflies are to see as they float from plant to plant spreading the pollination love.

It’s just devastating that in one generation we’ve destroyed a habitat so much so that our pollinators can’t survive. But we can still protect these beauties by planting milkweed, avoiding the use of Roundup, and not buying any food that was grown with the use of Roundup. What’s more, we can educate ourselves on what’s really in our food by fighting for GMO labeling before it’s too late. Let’s fight for the Monarch butterfly and they’ll continue to inspire and feed us.

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Image: William Warby

The post You Can Save Monarch Butterflies Right in Your Garden appeared first on EcoSalon.

GMO salmon have been a point of contention for a while now as the FDA sits on the issue. But California is taking major steps to keep so-called frankenfish out of their neck of the woods.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill banning the commercial production of GMO salmon in California waters in an effort to protect native species.

AB 504 will protect California’s native chinook and coho salmon species, like those prevalent in San Francisco’s Humboldt Bay. The salmon are already dealing a crippling drought, according to the bill’s author Wesley Chesbro of Arcata, and GMO salmon could destroy native populations.

“I thank Governor Brown for understanding the importance of protecting California wild salmon and steelhead from the threat of transgenic modification,” said Chesbro to EcoWatch. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing an application by a company that seeks to produce a farmed salmon in the United States that has been genetically altered to grow faster than native salmon. If these ‘frankenfish’ were to escape into our waters, they could destroy our native salmonid populations through interbreeding, competition for food and the introduction of parasites and disease. The only way to ensure this never happens is to ban commercial hatchery production, cultivation or stocking of transgenic salmonids in California.”

The bill extends to the Pacific Ocean and all waters in the state while banning GMO hatchery production.

“California has taken has taken an important step to protect its native salmon and trout stocks,” west coast director for The Center for Food Safety, Rebecca Spector said to EcoWatch. “Genetically engineered salmon pose a serious risk to our waterways and our native fish populations. This bill expands a 2003 law to include all waterways within the state of California. Unfortunately it opens a loophole for research that could lead to dangerous fish escapes.”

The one downside is that the bill does allow for GMO salmon and trout to be grown for research in tanks right by the waterway. And in the event of a storm, the tanks could be wiped out allowing the fish to escape.

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Image: Melissa Doroquez

The post California Bans GMO Salmon Production appeared first on EcoSalon.

How could something so good be so bad? While quinoa has become a superfood, its close cousin is a superweed. It’s called Palmer amaranth and it’s resistant to pesticides. While we import quinoa from Peru and can’t get enough of this protein-rich staple, we can’t seem to get rid of Palmer amaranth.

It’s wreaking havoc on our nation’s farmland, specifically in Iowa. The superweed can grow seven feet tall and in the process it can sprout 600,000 tiny seeds. What’s more, Palmer amaranth is increasingly resistant to herbicides. As a result, farmers are using older, more toxic herbicides to kill it.

GMO crops maybe causing the resistance, though scientists haven’t proved this yet. But it has been shown that an over abundance of GMO crops and the use of glyphosate to control weeds, is making American farms toxic, dead zones.

“If we use one single system, one tool to control a pest, Mother Nature will find a way around that tool,” Brent Wilson, a technical services manager at DuPont Pioneer, tells the Register. “That’s just the law of nature.”

To fight the resistant weed, biotech companies are trying to come up with new seeds that are resistant to numerous pesticides in the hopes that they can just dump a variety of poisons into a field and it will somehow do the trick, according to TakePart.

“Stacking up tolerance traits may delay the appearance of resistant weeds, but probably not for long,” the Nature piece reads, reported in TakePart. “Weeds are wily: farmers have already reported some plants that are resistant to more than five herbicides. And with glyphosate-resistant weeds already in many fields, the chances of preventing resistance to another are dropping.”

In the end, it’s a side effect of trying to poison nature, which will find a way to survive. It’s the misperception that you can just kill off everything but the crop. A healthy soil ecosystem is a must to producing a healthy crop and superweeds like Palmer amaranth are just a byproduct of trying to work against Mother Nature.

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Image: Delaware Agriculture

The post Palmer Amaranth: Is it a Supergrain or Superweed? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Three of thirteen major pest species have become resistant to genetically modified (GMO) Bt cotton.

Issues with GMO crops—this time cotton—rear their ugly head (or perhaps that’s a multi-eyed Simpsons fish-like head?) again. It is a major crop for farmers in several countries in the world, including the United States. A recent study conducted by a team of French and U.S. scientists has shown that 3 of 13 major cotton pests have become resistant to Bt cotton (a strain that’s been genetically modified to exude a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is toxic to insects). The research was compiled from 77 studies conducted in 8 corn and cotton producing countries and found that more 50 percent of insects had become resistant to Bt crops in any one location.

Although scientists and researchers have stated that all insects would inevitably adapt and become resistant to pesticides such as Bt (nature is wily!), many farmers have nonetheless invested in cultivating the GMO crop. Half of all Bt plantings currently occur in the U.S., where three of the resistant insect species were found, while India and South Africa account for the other plantings with resistant pests. In 2011 alone, 164 million acres of land were planted in Bt crops globally, adding to a total of over 1 billion acres that have been planted in Bt corn or cotton since the mid-1990s.

The research, which was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, showed that providing so-called ‘refuges’ for insects that feed on cotton would slow down their resistance to Bt cotton. How does that work? An area of land adjacent to the ground where Bt cotton is grown is planted in non-Bt cotton, providing an alternative space for insects. The insects that like to eat the cotton need two copies of the Bt resistant gene to become entirely resistant to Bt crops, so planting non-Bt crops next to Bt crops means that insects have two different genes. This reduces the chances of two Bt crop-resistant insects mating and creating offspring with the completely resistant double gene. According to main author of the research paper Bruce Tabashnik, farmers should “take more stringent measures to delay resistance, such as requiring larger refuges, or this pest will probably evolve resistance quickly.” Also, it seems obvious that there’s a flaw in the design if you need a natural, non-GMO crop to counterbalance the GMO version.

The efficiency of these refuges has been demonstrated in the case of the pink bollworm, which is a caterpillar that devours the cotton boll from the inside out. In the southwestern United States, where most of the country’s cotton is grown, farmers have been working with scientists from the EPA, universities and the USDA to implement refuge strategies. The resistance of the pink bollworm has therefore developed very slowly in the US.

However, in India, where 18% of the world’s cotton is grown, this collaborative infrastructure and resource management is not available (read: the Indian farmers have less education and help to deal with GMO crops that fail). Farmers have not been able to or have not been provided with the resources to plant refuges, offering a much speedier evolution of Bt resistant pests. According to research, pink bollworms became resistant to cotton within six years in India. This only increases the already dire situation of many Indian cotton farmers, whose lives have been compromised for the sake of voluminous production of GMO cotton.

Why are we planting large quantities of Bt cotton if it is a proven fact that pests will eventually become resistant to it?  Furthermore, taking advantage of less privileged farmers that cannot implement, or are not helped with effective strategies is abominable on the part of the seed-providing companies, who seemingly have nothing else in mind but profit. This is not the first case demonstrating the development of “super weeds” or “super bugs”, and will likely not be the last. In Europe, transgenic crops are opposed because of their threat to human health and the environment. What will it take for everyone to see the bigger picture?

Image: Calsidyrose

The post GMO Cotton Pest Resistance: Tragically Threatening Low-Income Farmers in the US, India, South Africa appeared first on EcoSalon.

The last time we wrote about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), three big stories were in play: GM Alfalfa, GM Sugar Beets, and GM Salmon. Now, there’s more.

On January 27^th, the USDA announced its approval of the planting of GM alfalfa without restrictions. This was a reversal from what organic industry leaders thought was going to happen, but it seems that the industry had pretty much given up on getting GM Alfalfa banned outright. They were reluctantly supporting coexistence as the next best alternative. Agriculture experts say President Obama pushed U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in the direction of an approval without restrictions in order to appear more business-friendly to the biotech industry. Whatever the rumor mill, coexistence could have imposed some important restrictions, like isolation of GMO crops from non-GMO crops to prevent contamination. Yet, even that met with failure.

You might think the flowering little clover plant is nothing but a poetic prop in a Willa Cather novel, but alfalfa is a crop crucial to the organic industry because it serves as the main feed for organic dairy cows. Contamination at feed level can work its way all through the organic food chain to milk, yogurt, ice cream, cheese, sour cream, and even packaged products that contain milk solids, potentially making the USDA organic label meaningless.

Unfortunately, no matter what, contamination is likely even if precautions are taken because alfalfa is so widely planted in the U.S. and because it’s pollinated by busy bees. And it is a losing battle: Separating the crops doesn’t prevent worker bees from flying up to five miles to pollinate (and possibly contaminate non-GM alfalfa with GM material). For an organic dairy farmer’s take on the matter, read this statement from Albert Straus of Straus Family Creamery. He has been fighting the contamination of his feed sources by GMO’S ever since 2006, when he first discovered contamination in organic corn.

On the heels of the alfalfa decision, on February 4, the USDA announced it would partially deregulate GM Sugar beets.

What partial deregulation means in this case is that the beets are approved until the environmental impact statement can be completed in May 2012. GM sugar beets have already been planted in the US (and ripped out) after Federal Judge Jeffrey White ruled in December that a proper environmental report hadn’t been conducted. According to the New York Times, in this latest action, the USDA essentially overruled the judge by approving the replanting of the crop at the request of Monsanto and KWS, a German seed company.

As if that weren’t enough to be depressed by, there’s more: The FDA is poised to approve the first genetically modified animal for human consumption, GM salmon. Watch this video for a sadly entertaining take on why this is an awful idea. Many Congress people are working to stop this because neither they nor their constituents want to eat GM salmon.

The problem with these “developments” in food and crop science is that we’ll never get a full and accurate picture of the safety or health risks of GMOs as long as the developers of the technology control the information that is available.

As the salmon video points out, the research studies regarding safety are often done by the developers themselves. An op-ed in Sunday’s LA Times by scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union for Concerned Scientists details how the bio-tech industry restricts independent research into bio-tech crops by withholding seeds and ultimately chooses who does the research through heavy funding of university agriculture departments.

Non GMO activists are often attacked for being “irresponsible”, withholding progress for mankind, and generally living in the dark ages but a healthy skepticism about industry-funded research is not irresponsible. What is irresponsible is our government’s ability to approve unproven technology that could be dangerous. Until we have better assurance through independent research that GMO’s are safe for the environment, us, and will not contaminate non-GMO’S, we should oppose them on principle.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Go to Food Democracy Now and join the campaign against GMO’S. Tell Obama to overrule the USDA.

2. Give money to the Center for Food Safety’s fight to stop GMO alfalfa.

3. Sign the petition to stop GMO Salmon.

4. Learn about and support the non-GMO Project.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Erin Collins

The post The Green Plate: Genetically Modified Outrageous appeared first on EcoSalon.