If 4 million cars were taken off the road in a single year,
stopping 9 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide being discharged,
most environmentalists would whoop with joy. But what if the
same saving came from planting genetically modified crops? This
is the claim of an annual audit of GM crops by the International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications
(ISAAA), which is funded largely by the GM industry. The audit,
published on 18 January, bases its estimate on GM planting in
2005 in the US, Canada and Argentina. Graham Brookes of PG
Economics in Dorchester, UK, who supplied the data, says 85 per
cent of the savings come from the fact that farmers growing
weedkiller-resistant GM crops don't have to plough their fields
to get rid of weeds, so organic matter in the soil is not
exposed to the atmosphere. This, according to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ... To continue reading this
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