2/5 of farmers don't plant required non-GM corn designed to keep 'super bugs' from developing

More than two of every five U.S. farmers planting genetically modified corn are failing to plant a non-modified crop nearby to keep pests from becoming immune to a natural insecticide generated by the modification, a threefold increase from last year, according to Monsanto Co. and other companies that make the seed corn, Jack Kaskey of Bloomberg News reports.

The Environmental Protection Agency requires the growers to plant an adjacent "refuge" area, but "about 41 percent of 3,053 farmers inspected in 2011 failed to fully comply with the refuge requirement, according to data from the Agricultural Biotechnology Stewardship Technical Committee," Kaskey reports.

Last year's non-compliance figure was 15 percent. There is "concern that an increasing number of bugs may be developing resistance to modified crops," Kaskey writes. In July, Iowa State University researchers found that some corn rootworms (above) have evolved resistance to a gene engineered into Monsanto corn.

The National Corn Growers Association said it expected an increase in non-compliance "because of a new industry initiative that uses sales data," Kaskey writes. "Seed companies used their data to identify farmers who may not have purchased enough seed for a refuge, said Nick Storer, Dow Chemical Co.’s representative on the committee. “What’s new is that every grower had some sort of scrutiny this year,” Storer told Bloomberg. (Read more)