# What is the thought on Roundup Ready Alfalfa?



## Feed Hay (May 30, 2008)

Curious what the thoughts of the group are on roundup ready alfalfa.

Here is a paper against - 
http://www.geertsonseedfarms.com/pdfs/rr hand out 5.20.08.pdf

Here is the Monsanto Page - 
Roundup Ready Alfalfa

I am a little guy, with just a little alfalfa in with my orchard grass and timothy. Horses and boar goats is all I have. So it means little to me. I would just as well not have this type of biotech in my feed, but frankly, I am probably not educated enough in this field of science to know what is good and what is bad.

But, I am also skeptical of big business, so my first opinion, since this is a perennial plant, is that it may not be a good idea. What do you guys think and is someone well versed in this area of science on the forum? TIA.


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## prairie (Jun 20, 2008)

I am both a farmer and seed company owner.
Unnecessary and risky are my thoughts. 
If an alfalfa stand is properly established and managed, weeds are at the most a minor issue. If weeds are a problem we already have an arsenal of herbicides that have proven to work well.
I beleive genetic pollution from cross pollination is almost guaranteed, and to risky of a gamble to take.
Also the tech fee involved makes money for Monsanto and the initial company they license the technology to. Once it becomes mainstream, all the other distributors and dealers can only pass the cost through to the retail customer with no profit margin. This is what has happened in the seed corn and soybean seed industry. 
I have heard several seedcorn/soybean salesmen refer to RR technology as _Simple & Stupid _. They say the farmers can't get enough of it and are playing right into Monsanto's hands.


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## Feno (Feb 16, 2009)

hey does this rr alfafa really works? no pest, etc?
alafafa grown very well here in my region of Brazil.the problem is the lot of other stuff the tries to grown togheter. a alfafa filed here can last for 5 or 6 year.that turns the alfafa stand very expensive to keep
are the seeds cheap to buy or very expensive?
how many liters or gallons of Roundup u must use on each acre?


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## UpNorth (Jun 15, 2009)

Round-ready alfalfa will open the door to other traits that companies can incorporate to improve the quality, disease resistance, and other traits of alfalfa. Not every farmer may have the need for round-up ready alfalfa, but they will benefit from other genetic modifications to alfalfa.


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## nwfarmer (Jun 16, 2009)

In Wyoming we irrigate with water from Buffalo Bill Reservoir. The majority of our weeds are in the area 3 to 4 ft out from out gated pipe or siphone tubes. I would plant the roundup ready alfalfa where the water enters the field on the top end of the field.


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## hay wilson in TX (Jan 28, 2009)

Geertson Seed is a case enlightened self interest. They mostly sell seed that is in the public domain or older commercial varieties. They are not in the loop for genetically modified varieties.

As for the RR varieties they usually have a diminished pest resistance from the same seed sources that are not modified.

As I said they have a self interest involved while some of their customers have a phobic reaction to anything different.


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## markofmuckleford (Jun 30, 2009)

When I look at a crop and see weeds my first reaction is "oh no I'm going to have to do something about that" but the next thing I try to do is look at it objectively- how much damage will it do will it be a weed bank if left un treated and on the flip side what will benefit from it if its left, bees, butterflies wild birds etc.

As a conventional farmer I've got used to beating myself up about the appearance of the crop to others. It is one of the only things that you can not say is better from a distance of someone else's perspective. What I mean is that only you know how much the weeds will affect your crops output and how much you can afford to spend on sprays and expensive field operations.

When the price of a ton of wheat drop right off the scale a few years back we had to stop our tidying obsession (over the whole farm) cause it was killing our profit right off with the weeds. 
I can see that RR crops could have a use in some areas but when I look at a field with a view to spraying we don't always spray the whole field so why would I plant the whole field with an RR crop? Just in case- I don't think so. To be honest it scares the crap out of me, maybe it is a phobic reaction but I can't help it. I'm a control freak.


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## UpNorth (Jun 15, 2009)

Quick clarification for Hay Wilson in TX. I never claimed that RR Alfalfa _had_ better disease resistance than convential varieties. I was stating that alfalfa breeders would have more options available to breed things like better disease reistance into alfalfa. USDA breeders at the Cereal Crops Research Unit have done this with barley. They screened a bunch of barley varieties and then used biotechnology to take those traits from low yielding varieties and put them in high yielding varieties.

RR Alfalfa is the first GM alfalfa variety. Even if it is not used on many acres it opens the door to other GM varieties of alfalfa with enhanced traits. One genetic modification that will help many alfalfa growers is low-lignin alfalfa. Pioneer has bred this alfalfa to have lower lignin content. This may enable farmers to go from a 4-cut system to a 3-cut system because the alfalfa can be harvested later, but still retain a higher feeding quality. This would drastically reduce the fuel use and machinery wear-and-tear.


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