Almost everything you eat and everything you wear comes from agriculture. You depend on the security of food and fiber crops to feed and clothe yourself and your family. Even in uncertain times, you expect to see food on the shelves and clothes on the racks in stores.
There is a threat to the security of the food and fiber crops we all depend on. Insect pests are becoming resistant to genes in corn and cotton that are supposed to fend them off, threatening the viability of the $16B transgenic corn and cotton seed market in the US. As a result, farmers have no choice but to increase the amount of insecticides they spray to protect their crops. This cuts into farmers’ already slim profit margins, and alarms some consumers who are concerned about whether pesticides could be unhealthy or hurt the environment.
If we lose the ability to control the insect pest population, we lose our certainty in each season’s harvest.
