Andrew Kniss

Occam’s Razor rarely includes conspiracy theories

June 19, 2018August 4, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

Proponents of genetically engineered crops (often called GMOs) often decry the anti-GMO movement for promoting implausible conspiracy theories. I’ve been blocked on Twitter by people claiming the Department of Agriculture and Supreme Court of the United States were simply pawns of Monsanto and the pesticide industry. I’ve pushed back against those saying that pesticides are the cause of microcephaly (instead of the Zika virus). I’ve written blog posts explaining the evidence that debunks some of these improbable stories. Spreading these …

Soybean Response to Dicamba: A Meta-Analysis

May 20, 2018November 9, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

UPDATE: This article has now been published in Weed Technology. The open access, formatted and copy-edited article is available here: Kniss AR. Soybean Response to Dicamba: A Meta-Analysis. (2018) Weed Technology. 32:507-512. doi: 10.1017/wet.2018.74 Abstract. A meta-analysis of 11 previously published field studies was conducted with the objectives to 1) estimate the no observable effects dose (NOED) for dicamba on susceptible soybean; 2) evaluate available evidence for hormesis, or increased soybean yield in response to low doses of dicamba; 3) …

Herbicides / Pesticides

What does a pesticide taste like?

February 23, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

I honestly can’t believe I just typed that title. But here we are. The notorious Gilles-Eric Seralini published a paper recently called “The Taste of Pesticides in Wines.” As a part of the study, people were asked to choose a preference between organic and conventional wines. Okay, fine. But then the participants were given glasses of water, some of which were spiked with pesticides at doses purportedly found in bottles of wine. This is bizarre on so many levels. For …

Preprint

Herbicide diversity and herbicide-resistant weed evolution in the United States

July 18, 2017February 18, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

The manuscript previously posted here has now been published in the journal Weed Science: Genetically Engineered Herbicide-Resistant Crops and Herbicide-Resistant Weed Evolution in the United States.

GMOs and Herbicides: it’s complicated

April 10, 2017November 22, 2019 - by Andrew Kniss

Herbicide use patterns in the US have changed a lot over the last 25 years. Depending on who you talk to, those changes are either proof that modern American agriculture will feed the world with fewer inputs, or proof that the US agricultural system is irreparably broken. There seems to be no middle ground in this discussion. Herbicide use is especially controversial when discussed in the context of genetically engineered crops (often called GMOs, for genetically modified organisms). The most …

Could GMO corn be responsible for increasing childrens’ IQ?

November 9, 2016May 16, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

This is a follow-up to my last post on the recent New York Times article written by Danny Hakim. A small but very important section of the NYT article has been bothering me ever since I read it, but it took me a while to find the time to actually find the data to explain why it bothered me. In my last post, I mostly looked at herbicide use; I’m a weed scientist so I already had that data downloaded and analyzed. …

The tiresome discussion of initial GMO expectations

October 30, 2016May 16, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

A new article in the New York Times has questioned the benefits associated with genetically engineered crops (which I’ll call GMOs for brevity). The response to the article has been pretty predictable; folks who don’t like GMOs are circulating it to say “I told you so.” And ag-twitter has exploded with claims that the New York Times is biased against the technology. The article makes some reasonable points that GMO crops are not a ‘silver bullet’ cure all technology. But almost any …

Is the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ) better than nothing?

September 3, 2016May 18, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

This post is probably more technical than most that I write, but it is something that I think needs to be written. I actually debated submitting a short article to a peer reviewed journal, but really didn’t want to wait the months to a year that would require before it saw the light of day. So I’m putting the nuts and bolts here, and perhaps someday I’ll submit some version of this analysis to a journal where “serious academics” can read it. …

New study confirms herbicide use changed after adoption of GMO corn and soybean

August 31, 2016February 15, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

But, once again, we are left to wonder whether that’s good or bad. A new paper was just published in the journal Science Advances that analyzes pesticide use data for farmers in the U.S. between 1998 and 2011. The authors (Edward Perry et al.) are currently agricultural economists at four different universities (Kansas State, Virginia, Michigan State, and Iowa State). Their goal was to determine if pesticide use differed between farmers using GMO varieties and farmers who did not use GMO varieties. Overall, …

How much yield is enough?

August 28, 2016February 15, 2018 - by Andrew Kniss

Last week, two colleagues and I published a paper in PLOS ONE titled “Commercial crop yields reveal strengths and weaknesses for organic agriculture in the United States.” The article presents an analysis of USDA crop yield data to compare organic and conventional farms in the US. We were pretty careful in the paper not to overstate our conclusions, since our goal was simply to see where organic yields were competitive (or not) with conventional crop yields. I explain more about …