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Hi, my name is Rick Hellmich. I'm a research entomologist at the Agricultural
Research Service,
I've been working with the Agricultural Research Service for about eighteen years
and more recently I had an opportunity to look at the
benefits in
of biotech crops.
One of the main benefits of biotech crops is that we have
a reduced use of insecticide.
For example uh... BT
cotton in particular, there's been an eighty, ninety percent reduction of insecticides
for that.
And also with BT maize, we found a reduction of insecticides,
primarily because of the reduced use of insecticides for
corn root worm beatles. When we compare biotech crops with crops that have traditionally been sprayed with
insecticides,
we find that there's an increase of biodiversity in general.
And in particular we find that there's a lot of
beneficial insects like lady beetles and lace wings that may be good for
biological control purposes.
But probably the best example I can give for the benefit of a uh... a BT
crop is BT cotton.
I had a colleague that worked in Mississippi
and prior to BT cotton they used to spray cotton
all, all the time maybe
ten, twelve times a year.
And he said that when you walked into those fields
there was nothing.
He didn't hear any birds; he didn't see any butterflies flying around.
And now that we have BT cotton,
there's some biodiversity in these fields where before there was a hardly anything.
I think you make a strong argument that the biotech crops
are good tools for sustainability
We have reduced use of chemicals, insecticides,
in some cases reduced use of herbicides or safer
herbicides.
And also now we can use no-till practices, especially
in areas where we have herbicide -resistant crops.
I think if you look at the big picture of biotech crops is that number one
we have a
really important tool
in our toolbox now that we can use.
And because of reduced insecticides, reduced use of tillage
reduced use of some harmful
herbicides,
I'd say that
that's more sustainable.
One of the other advantages that we find with biotech crops,
compared with the non-biotech crops,
is that because
there's, the insect damage is controlled, especially in BT maize, there's fewer
toxins associated with molds.
And this is a major benefit because these can be harmful to humans,
could be harmful to livestock.
If we can consider the overall
environmental benefits of biotech crops, because of the reduced use of
insecticides
increased use of
no-till agriculture
that uh... I'd say that it's, it's very positive. Especially if
we compare with traditional farming practices where
we use tillage, or if we use insecticides to control insects.
I've had an opportunity to work with BT maize for about
fifteen, sixteen years now.
The lab I work in for many years has been trying to breed corn that's more
effective against European corn borer. And European corn borer has been a major pest in the united
States
for the last class fifty years.
It, as it moved through the corn belt, migrating from the east in
the forties and fifties, it just devastated corn.
So we worked with corn breeders using host plants, post plant
resistance
trying to to breed better corn.
They developed corn that was
resistant, at least tolerant to, European corn borer.
That when you, one day, and I'll never forget this, when we first started to work
with BT maize,
this uh...
researcher came in who's been working on this for nearly his whole career
and he said, "Wow, this stuff is bulletproof. I've never seen anything like it." And that's true. If you look at uh... BT maize
it's uh... it's a very effective technology .