GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • Daily Digest
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Cornell videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
    • How donations will help us
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
      • 2021 articles
      • 2020 articles
      • 2019 articles
      • 2018 articles
      • 2017 articles
      • 2016 articles
      • 2015 articles
      • 2014 articles
      • 2013 articles
      • 2012 articles
      • 2011 articles
      • 2010 articles
      • 2009 articles
      • 2008 articles
      • 2007 articles
      • 2006 articles
      • 2005 articles
      • 2004 articles
      • 2003 articles
      • 2002 articles
      • 2001 articles
      • 2000 articles
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • How donations will help us
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Cornell videos
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
  • Donations

LATEST NEWS

  • Japan's first genome-edited food, a tomato, gets green light for distribution

  • New report shows EFSA systematically ignores risks of GM crops and foods

  • Brexit voters reject lower food standards

  • Victory in fight against deregulation of GMOs in Italy

  • France has not backed deregulation of gene-edited crops

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE-EDITED CROPS & FOODS

Help stop the new threat

LATEST VIDEOS

  • Seed keepers and truth tellers: From the frontlines of GM agriculture
  • Myths and Truths of Gene-Edited Foods
  • Dangers of gene-edited foods

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

Spain: Farmers abandon Monsanto’s GM maize en masse

Details
Published: 06 July 2016
Twitter

Maize in Spain

The high cost and low yields of GM seed make major producers opt for non-GM maize

Monsanto's GM maize is no longer profitable or attractive for a good proportion of Spanish farmers, says a report for the Spanish news outlet Economia Digital.

Engineered to resist the corn borer pest, the crop has suffered a series of setbacks in Spanish fields.

Producers have abandoned the crop because its profitability is much lower than non-GM maize. The GM seed is more expensive than non-GM and the market penalizes GM crops with a lower price – usually 25% lower.

“It’s a clear trend. The producers of the area, one of the largest with more than 700 hectares, have stopped growing GM maize. They have realized that after several harvests, production is much less profitable," explains Juanjo Mayén, a farmer from Binéfar in Huesca, Aragon.

GM maize plants contain Bt, an insecticide that kills the worms that eat them. Farmers are convinced that GM maize eventually hurts yields. Cooperative members from Huesca claim to have conducted field studies that show lower productivity in the medium term.

Monsanto refused to answer questions from Economia Digital about farmers’ rejection of GM maize.

The company insists that GMOs are an effective way to combat hunger in the world but local producers consulted by Economia Digital refute this theory. “Transgenic seeds have reduced and in some cases eliminated local food crop species," explains Juan Carlos Simon, an Aragon-based farmer.

A report by the Government of Aragon published in 2014 says that in the latest harvests in the region, attacks by the corn borer have decreased, which has allowed non-GM crops to be more efficient than GM, in economic terms.

The Coordinator of Farmers and Livestock Farmers’ Associations (COAG) and Friends of the Earth have applied to the autonomous communities to ban GM maize as long as its wild relative, teosinte, is not eradicated.

Environmentalists fear that teosinte is spreading uncontrollably and that it has already been contaminated by GM maize. To combat this problem, they are asking that Monsanto’s GM maize is not grown for several harvests.

Menu

Home

News

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

How Donations Will Help Us

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

RSS

Content 1999 - 2021 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design