GMOs are good for the environment

The argument

GMOs are good for the environment because they result in less pesticide, land, and water use. Modifying crops to be pest-resistant means that there is less need to use pesticides. If the plant itself carries resistance to the insects that would otherwise damage it, the protection is built into the crop rather than applied across the field, so the chemical no longer has to be introduced from outside in order to achieve the same result. These pesticides are harmful to the environment and to animals such as honeybees and monarch butterflies, which are affected precisely because a substance sprayed over a field does not confine itself to the pest it was aimed at. Crops can also be modified to be drought resistant which would help to waste less water. A crop that tolerates dry conditions needs less irrigation to reach the same yield, which reduces the demand placed on the water supplies agriculture draws from. GMOs also produce increased yields which means they require less land. The relationship there is straightforward: if a given area produces more food, then less area is needed to produce a fixed amount, and land that would otherwise have been brought into cultivation can be left as it is. Using less land and water for agriculture is good for the environment. GMOs also help improve soil quality because farmers no longer need to till (which removes nutrients from the soil and causes erosion) to address weeds since the crops are herbicide-resistant. Tilling is a method of weed control, so a crop that survives herbicide application allows weeds to be managed without physically disturbing the ground, and the soil keeps the structure and nutrients that the disturbance would have cost it. As a result of less pesticide spraying and tilling, farmers don't use their tractors as much which means less carbon dioxide emissions. Each of these effects follows from one principle: the modification moves a function out of an external input and into the plant itself, and it is the external inputs that carry the environmental cost. All of this is good for the environment.

Premises

Counter-arguments

GMOs result in more herbicide use. A report from 2001-2010 found that herbicide use increased by 26% as weed resistance increased because of GMOs. These herbicides are made of glyphosate which is a toxic chemical; this chemical gets into the water, harms soil quality, and increases the susceptibility of crops to diseases. This is all extremely bad for the environment. Additionally, farmers are actually having to do more tillage (which erodes the soil) because the increase of herbicide-resistant crops is creating a rapid increase in superweeds that are resistant to herbicide.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The traits are real but unevenly deployed. The overwhelming majority of the acreage actually planted is herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant; drought tolerance and yield-specific modifications are a far smaller part of the picture than the premise's list suggests. [Rejecting P2] The input accounting is one-sided. Insect-resistant varieties have reduced insecticide applications, but herbicide-tolerant ones increased herbicide volumes as resistant weeds spread, and the resulting superweeds have pushed some growers back towards tillage — the opposite of what the premise claims. [Rejecting P3] The environmental verdict depends on the trait, the crop and the farming system rather than on genetic modification as such. That is an argument for assessing each application on its own terms, not for the blanket conclusion the position draws.