Mother Jones: New York Times report on GMOs used misleading statistics

Kevin Drum | November 3, 2016 | Mother Jones

[Editor’s note: A recent article in the New York Times claims that GMO crops have not lived up to their promises of increased yields and reduced herbicide use. In this Mother Jones article, Kevin Drum writes that a dispassionate reading of the story suggests Danny Hakim manipulated statistics, perhaps even deliberately so.]

According to Nathanael Johnson of Grist, The Times story says that in the US, despite the wide use of GMO seeds, use of insecticides has fallen but the use of herbicides has gone up. In France, by contrast, where they don’t use GMO seeds, “use of insecticides and fungicides has fallen by a far greater percentage — 65 percent — and herbicide use has decreased as well, by 36 percent.”..........So what's the best comparison to make: percentage change or raw volume? In this case, presenting only the percentage change leaves you with a very misleading impression. Presenting raw volumes, however, makes everything pretty clear. You can see that France started out far higher than the US and that its use of herbicides and insecticides has been decreasing. So why present only percentages?.....To Read More....