"Looking beyond the field level to the farm level you see the real problem was a set of factors that eroded the normal process of farmer evaluation of technologies — there were too many rapid, undecipherable changes," Stone says. "Each new technology — hybrids, then pesticide after pesticide — brought short-term gains but further eroded farm management. Bt cotton has raised yields on average, but already we are seeing erosion of benefits as non-target pest populations are booming. It has also brought a quickening of technological change and undecipherability, which is the real underlying problem."
Washington University in St. Louis
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