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But new research shows that, at least in the case of one pesky insect in the U.S. Corn Belt, fields planted without the modified corn are enjoying its pest-killing benefits too.  Planting Bt corn ― so called because it has been engineered to produce insecticidal proteins from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis -- pushes numbers of the European corn borer so low that non-Bt cornfields are also losing less corn to the critters.
It seems obvious that farmers who plant genetically modified crops designed to wipe out pests would see fewer nasty critters in their fields.



That could be great news for farmers supplying corn for organic dairy farms,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], said study co-author Paul Mitchell, an agricultural economist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
The GMO fields depend on nearby non-GMO fields, known as refuges, to help prevent the corn borers from developing immunities to the insecticidal toxins generated by Bt corn. This research,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], published Thursday in the journal Science,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], could encourage farmers to plant more, not less, non-engineered corn.
Mitchell crunched the numbers and discovered that using GMO corn to wipe out the borers has saved farmers in Minnesota,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Illinois,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska $6.9 billion over 14 years. About two-thirds of the savings came from fields planted with non-Bt corn -- where farmers save more because they're not paying for the more expensive, genetically engineered seeds.