As more US food companies embrace voluntary GMO labelling, several companies like Hershey’s are moving away from US sugar beet, which is almost all GMO, and towards sugar cane, which is non-GMO.
 
A blog post by GMO promoter and glyphosate defender Andrew Kniss addressed this major shift.
 
Kniss’s blog was titled, “As consumers shift to non-GMO sugar, farmers may be forced to abandon environmental and social gains”. He creates a crisis narrative in which farmers are faced with the loss of GMO sugar beets despite the fact that they have decreased herbicide use, been a boon to the environment, and made farmers’ lives easier.
 
But there are many problems with this simplistic narrative. In particular, as we shall see, it ignores important facts – namely that GMO sugar beets:
* haven’t reduced herbicide use overall – in fact, quite the opposite, a greater quantity is almost certainly being applied
* may have simplified weed management for the moment BUT that’s only till herbicide-resistant weeds take hold, as we know they will
* may appear to have reduced the toxic load for now BUT increasing health problems are emerging with glyphosate, and weed resistance will force farmers to use more toxic old-school herbicides anyway – as well as glyphosate
* have placed conventional farmers under the monopoly control of the GMO/agrichemical industry, by removing the option of non-GMO sugar beet farming
* don’t have as good an environmental profile as organic sugar beet
* are being replaced with cane sugar from poorer nations, which is arguably a social good.

Let’s examine Kniss’s argument in detail.

Kniss’s argument

Kniss points to the “simplicity” and “significantly improved weed control of the Roundup Ready sugarbeet system that convinced farmers to switch” from conventional chemical production.
 
He writes: “Conventional sugar beet herbicides can cause severe injury [to the beet crop] under adverse environmental conditions. Some growers refer to conventional sugar beet herbicides as ‘chemotherapy’ for the beets. They injure and weaken the beets, but they hurt the weeds a little more. This is why the conventional herbicides were often applied multiple times at short time intervals…”
 
Kniss says that the herbicide regimen with non-GMO beets “used to include 4 to 6 different herbicides applied between 3 to 6 times per year, at 5 to 10 day intervals.”
 
Even after this much spraying, according to Kniss, “Around 40 to 60% of sugarbeet fields had to be hand-weeded because the herbicides rarely provided complete weed control.”
 
Kniss compares this to the Roundup Ready GMO system, “where 2 or 3 applications of glyphosate have replaced the many herbicide sprays that were used previously, while providing better weed control” and virtually eliminating crop injury.
 
Kniss claims, “GMO sugar beet has reduced herbicide use, increased soil health, decreased risk of crop injury, increased yield, and has even allowed farmers to spend more time with their families.”
 
Kniss concludes, “GMO sugar beets are better for the environment, the world, and the consumer.”
 
So has GMO sugar beet decreased herbicide use? And is it a boon to the environment? We invited Dr Charles Benbrook of Benbrook Consulting Services in the US, who has studied the effects of GM Roundup Ready crops on pesticide use, to respond.

Weed resistance in GMO sugar beet: Not “if” but “when”

According to Dr Benbrook: “Weed management is difficult in sugar beets because of lack of a closed leaf canopy that can suppress weeds, and a relatively long growing season. The benefits of Roundup Ready (RR) sugar beets were and remain much greater than in other crops, although the risk of resistance is about the same.
 
“I modelled the shift from current, herbicide-intensive sugar beet weed management in several European nations and compared to usage under RR beets, in a project for Greenpeace International a couple of years ago.
 
“I projected a slight increase in pounds applied with glyphosate, because many of the herbicides displaced were low dose, or very low dose. So there would be a drop from around 10 applications of several different herbicide active ingredients to only 3 of glyphosate, but there would still be an increase in total pounds applied.
 
“Almost certainly, all things considered, the public health and environmental impact of the 10 applications exceeds by several-fold the impact of 3 applications of glyphosate.