The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has developed a career-long role that entails finding issues to worry about and writing about them.  That can be a good thing because science is definitely about asking the hard questions.  Sometimes however, these well-intentioned folks can let their biases and presuppositions get in the way.

UCS has just released a report linking increased pesticide use to the adoption of biotech crops.  Their presuppositions are that both of these are bad things - GMOs and chemicals.  Their logic flaw is that even though they note that the biggest increase was in 2007/8 (long after the major adoption of biotech), they think the use of the biotech traits drove the increase in chemical use.  There was indeed a significant increase in chemical use in 2007/8, but what actually drove that was the unprecedented spike in grain commodity prices at that time.

There is an old saying - “the best cure for high food commodity prices is high food commodity prices.”  When grain prices are high, growers respond by planting more acres (=more chemical use) and are move motivated to protect their now more valuable crop in the field (in some cases this may result in an additional disease or insect control application as the economic thresholds to justify these measures are more readily achieved).  Its really simple, rational economics.  Also, remember that the irritating, but not large, food price increases American consumers saw in 2007/8 corresponded to a huge swing in the percent of the family budget spent on food in poor countries.  There were even food riots and export restrictions.  The fact that American farmers ramped up production was a good thing for poor people and the chemicals were part of that.  This year, chemical sales are down substantially, but not GMO plantings.

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