Biotechnology, agrodiversity and farmers’ options

The spread of transgenic crops threatens crop diversity by promoting monocultures which leads to  environmental simplification and genetic erosion.  History has repeatedly shown that uniformity characterizing agricultural areas sown to a smaller number of varieties is a source of increased risk for farmers, as the genetically homogeneous fields may be more vulnerable to disease and pest attack (Robinson, 1996). Several people think that HRCs and Bt crops have been a poor choice of traits to feature the technology given predicted environmental problems and the issue of resistance evolution.  In fact, there is enough evidence to suggest that both these types of crops are not really needed to address the problems they were designed to solve. On the contrary, they tend to reduce the pest management options available to farmers. There are many alternative approaches, (i.e. rotations, polycultures, cover crops, biological control, etc.) that farmers can use to effectively regulate the insect and weed populations that are being targeted by the biotechnology industry. To the extent that transgenic crops further entrench the current monocultural system, they impede farmers from using a plethora of alternative methods (Altieri 1996).