The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

222 the world according to monsantoand the third with water. The yield in all three cases was exactly the same,fifty-five bushels an acre. So it’s genetic manipulation that explains yielddrag. Apparently, the violent insertion of the gene disturbs the productivecapacity of the plant.”“So transgenic soybeans are not the same as the conventional variety?”“That’s what our study shows.”“How did Monsanto react?”“Let’s say the company wasn’t really eager to have us publish it,” he answeredwith the necessary caution.“But hadn’t they done a study of the yield of their own soybeans?”“The data they supplied were very weak from the scientific point of viewand answered more to needs that were, let’s say, commercial.”The results of Elmore’s study thus confirmed the meta-analysis carriedout by Charles Benbrook in which he had gone through 8,200 yield measurementsmade by U.S. university agriculture departments in 1998. Theyshowed that yield drag on average was 6.7 percent, with peaks of 10 percent,particularly in the Midwest, which amounted to a loss of 80 million to 100million bushels of soybeans for the year 1999 alone. 58As Benbrook pointed out, yield drag turned into a genuine catastrophebecause of another phenomenon brought to light by researchers from theUniversity of Arkansas in 2001. 59 They found that Roundup affects therhizobium bacteria present in the soybean roots, which assist in growth bythe fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. The sensitivity of the bacteria to theherbicide would explain the decline in yield of RR soybeans, which mightreach 25 percent in a dry spell. “Unfortunately,” according to Benbrook, “itnow appears that RR crops are more vulnerable to certain diseases, especiallywhen plants are battling other sources of stress caused by, for example,excessive cold or high pest pressure, or a mineral or microbial imbalance inthe soil. These plant health problems arise because the genetic materialmoved into RR crops to make them tolerant of Roundup modifies the normalfunctioning of a key biochemical pathway that also happens to triggerand regulate a plant’s immune response.” He went on to say: “Unfortunatelythis information was only available after 100 million acres of RR soybeanshad already been planted in America.” 60A careful review of scientific and agricultural journals reveals that problemswith Roundup Ready crops have been common around the country(similar problems with Bt plants will be discussed later). In 1999, for exam-