3. Increased Pesticide Use

Image Credit

While scientists pat themselves on the back for being smart enough to outsmart mother nature, they are slowly beginning to realize that mother nature has actually outsmarted them. Looking to make corn more resistant to pests, a gene from a bacteria known as BT was inserted into corn. BT is toxic to insects but supposedly harmless to humans and animals. The idea was that the pests would start eating the corn and the BT would kill them, therefore farmers would not have to use pesticides as often. Well, bugs seem to be smarter than they look and are gradually evolving immunity to the BT meaning that growers have to increase pesticide use to stay ahead of the evolving pests. Now we have farmers growing BT corn that are also using increasing amounts of pesticides exposing the public to unknown potential dangers of the BT corn as well as the heavier pesticide load.