Author : Altieri, Miguel A.

Summary : Plant diseases, insect pests and weeds become more severe with the development of monoculture, and that intensively managed and genetically manipulated crops soon lose genetic diversity. Thus, there is no reason to believe that resistance to transgenic crops will not evolve among insects, weeds and pathogens as has happened with pesticides. The fact that interspecific hybridization and introgression are common to species such as sunflower, maize, sorghum, oilseed rape, rice, wheat and potatoes provides a basis to expect gene flow between transgenic crops and wild relatives to create new herbicide resistant weeds. The ecological effects are not limited to pest resistance and creation of new weeds or virus stains. Transgenic crops can produce environmental toxins that move through the food chain and also may end up in the soil and water affecting invertebrates and probably ecological processes such as nutrient cycling. Many environmental groups have argued for the creation of suitable regulation to mediate the testing and release of transgenic crops to offset environmental risks and demand a much better assessment and understanding of ecological issues associated with genetic engineering. Unfortunately, funds for research on environmental risk assessment are very limited. Many scientists and sustainable agriculture advocates demand continued support for ecologically based agricultural research, as all the biological problems that biotechnology aims at can be solved using agroecological approaches. The problem is that research at public insitutions increasingly reflects the interests of private funders at the expenses of public good research such as biological control, organic production systems and general agroecological techniques.