Stay off the grass.
Aww, the winter season has given away to the spring meaning that it is time for America’s pastime to take shape. By the way I am talking about baseball I am talking about lawn care. Yes lawn care the nation’s most popular outdoor leisure activity. For no other nation commits a fraction of the land, resources, chemicals and water than the United States in pursuit of the perfect lawn.
The good news about this is that is that our lawns absorb 12 billion pounds of carbon cutting into greenhouse gases plus without grass more soil would run off into storm drains, waterways and rivers hasten the erosion of farmland.
Green brigadiers do not wave your flags yet for lawn mowers pollute the atmosphere as well plus pesticides and fertilizers trickle into waterways harming wildlife.
Then there is the watering in a water starve state with a growing population like Arizona or Nevada adding new subdivisions where owners water like crazy leads to more rivers being dammed and more wildlife threatened.
However biotech wants to alleviate this problem with their products. In 2005 13% of US farmland had biotech crops of corn, soybeans and cotton planted on their land, which led to a few environmental advantages.
Experts state that 1 billion tons of topsoil per year is prevented from becoming run off because genetically modified crops allow farmers to reduce how much they plow to kill weeds. The amount of pesticide use on crops shrank by more than 30%. Now if biotech can do that for farming and its large acres of land then can surely do the same for your lawn.
What if grass were engineered to require less water, fertilizer and pesticides? Or what if it was customizable?
These are not hypothetical question these are the questions that Scotts Miracle Gro the nations larges lawn care company are asking.
In 1998 they partnered with Monsanto to bring bioengineering from the farm to the lawn. Their first project was focused on bentgrass a lush and uniform species of turf coveted by golfers.
Scientist implanted it with the gene CP4 EPSPS to make it resistant to herbicide. In 2003 Scotts contractors planted transgenic bentgrass on 400 acres of high desert farmland in Oregon.
From here everything begin to spiral out of control for the project despite Scotts best efforts to prevent contamination the transgenic grass migrated well beyond the control area as all parties involved knew it would but what was surprising was the grass and the CP4 gene traveled so far.
One reason was from a heavy summer wind, which lifted and carried seeds all over. The second reason was the grass cross pollinated with other species like red top.
The nightmare scenario for environmentalist plants with new survival boosting trait gaining a competitive advantage that can potentially disrupts whole ecosystems.
Unlike corn or soybeans, which require a lot of human input to survive grass is totally different; it needs no input to grow.
Yet Scotts is ready to give it another try this time they are ready to launch a grass that does not grow as tall as regular grass then a drought tolerate disease resistant grass or any way you want after all this is the era of modification. Stay off my grass is about to take on entirely different meaning.
The good news about this is that is that our lawns absorb 12 billion pounds of carbon cutting into greenhouse gases plus without grass more soil would run off into storm drains, waterways and rivers hasten the erosion of farmland.
Green brigadiers do not wave your flags yet for lawn mowers pollute the atmosphere as well plus pesticides and fertilizers trickle into waterways harming wildlife.
Then there is the watering in a water starve state with a growing population like Arizona or Nevada adding new subdivisions where owners water like crazy leads to more rivers being dammed and more wildlife threatened.
However biotech wants to alleviate this problem with their products. In 2005 13% of US farmland had biotech crops of corn, soybeans and cotton planted on their land, which led to a few environmental advantages.
Experts state that 1 billion tons of topsoil per year is prevented from becoming run off because genetically modified crops allow farmers to reduce how much they plow to kill weeds. The amount of pesticide use on crops shrank by more than 30%. Now if biotech can do that for farming and its large acres of land then can surely do the same for your lawn.
What if grass were engineered to require less water, fertilizer and pesticides? Or what if it was customizable?
These are not hypothetical question these are the questions that Scotts Miracle Gro the nations larges lawn care company are asking.
In 1998 they partnered with Monsanto to bring bioengineering from the farm to the lawn. Their first project was focused on bentgrass a lush and uniform species of turf coveted by golfers.
Scientist implanted it with the gene CP4 EPSPS to make it resistant to herbicide. In 2003 Scotts contractors planted transgenic bentgrass on 400 acres of high desert farmland in Oregon.
From here everything begin to spiral out of control for the project despite Scotts best efforts to prevent contamination the transgenic grass migrated well beyond the control area as all parties involved knew it would but what was surprising was the grass and the CP4 gene traveled so far.
One reason was from a heavy summer wind, which lifted and carried seeds all over. The second reason was the grass cross pollinated with other species like red top.
The nightmare scenario for environmentalist plants with new survival boosting trait gaining a competitive advantage that can potentially disrupts whole ecosystems.
Unlike corn or soybeans, which require a lot of human input to survive grass is totally different; it needs no input to grow.
Yet Scotts is ready to give it another try this time they are ready to launch a grass that does not grow as tall as regular grass then a drought tolerate disease resistant grass or any way you want after all this is the era of modification. Stay off my grass is about to take on entirely different meaning.
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