Hakim’s Effort to Skewer Biotech Crops in Sunday's NY Times

Danny Hakim’s attempt to skewer biotech crops in his recent article on the front page Sunday’s New York Times (Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops) is skewed from beginning to end.  His insight – what he says the debate has missed – is that genetic modification has not accelerated increases in crop yields.  Well – duh! – they weren’t meant to.  The two major modifications in widespread use today are resistance to certain types of pests and tolerance to the herbicide glyphosate.  These biotech traits were designed to be advantageous to farmers by decreasing their input costs through reduced use of insecticides, and reduced necessity for weed control.  So citing yield data is simply disingenuous. It’s kind of like accusing the body shop that just fixed your dented car door of not making your engine run better.Indeed, he goes on to say the promise of genetic modification was that herbicide-tolerant and pest-resistant crops “…would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides.” Hmm…this might actually be true, although these modifications would not be expected to directly impact the rate of increase in crop yields. "Instead of higher yields, herbicide-tolerant GM crops have contributed to reductions in herbicide costs, labor time, machinery time, and fuel use. Thus, herbicide-tolerant crops have also helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production.”