by Dan Charles
NPR

Excerpts:

Across the Midwestern corn belt, a familiar battle has resumed, hidden in the soil. On one side are tiny, white larvae of the corn rootworm. On the other side are farmers and the insect-killing arsenal of modern agriculture.

It appears that farmers have gotten part of the message: Biotechnology alone will not solve their rootworm problems. But instead of shifting away from those corn hybrids, or from corn altogether, many are doubling down on insect-fighting technology, deploying more chemical pesticides than before. Companies like Syngenta or AMVAC Chemical that sell soil that sell soil insecticides for use in corn fields are reporting huge increases in sales: 50 or even 100 percent over the past two years.

This is a return to the old days, before biotech seeds came along, when farmers relied heavily on pesticides. For Dan Steiner, an independent crop consultant in northeastern Nebraska, it brings back bad memories. “We used to get sick [from the chemicals],” he says. “Because we’d always dig [in the soil] to see how the corn’s coming along. We didn’t wear the gloves and everything, and we’d kind of puke in the middle of the day. Well, I think we were low-dosing poison on ourselves!”

For a while, biotechnology came to his rescue. Biotech companies such as Monsanto spent many millions of dollars creating and inserting genes that would make corn plants poisonous to the corn rootworm but harmless to other creatures. But all along, scientists wondered how long the good times would last.

In parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, though, farmers are running into increasing problems with corn rootworms.

Nobody knows how widely those insects have spread, but farmers aren’t waiting to find out. Some are switching to other versions of biotech corn, containing anti-rootworm genes that do still work. Others are going back to pesticides.

Steiner, the Nebraska crop consultant, usually argues for another strategy: Starve the rootworms, he tells his clients. Just switch that field to another crop. “One rotation can do a lot of good,” he says. “Go to beans, wheat, oats. It’s the No. 1 right thing to do.”

Insect experts say it’s also likely to work better in the long run.

Meinke, who’s been studying the corn rootworm for decades, tells farmers that if they plant just corn, year after year, rootworms are likely to overwhelm any weapon someday.

The problem, Meinke says, is that farmers are thinking about the money they can make today. “I think economics are driving everything,” he says. “Corn prices have been so high the last three years, everybody is trying to protect every kernel. People are just really going for it right now, to be as profitable as they can.”

As a result, they may just keep growing corn, fighting rootworms with insecticides — and there’s a possibility that those chemicals will eventually stop working, too.

Read the Full Article Here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/07/09/198051447/as-biotech-seed-falters-insecticide-use-surges-in-corn-belt