Even farmers in USA, the major GE food exporter, decreased their use of GE crops last year, breaking a trend of fast annual growth of this sector. The North Dakota bill has made headway precisely because its main backers are some of the state's own farmers, not the usual biotechnology opponents. Some research indicates that viruses created in this way may tend to be less species specific and more aggressive than the natural varietes. New such viruses might cause extensive damage to crops and to the environment. A group of scientists propose that DNA from genetically engineered plants might cause changes or disturbances in soil microorganims such that soil ecology is disrupted.
Soil fertility is greatly dependent on the very complex interplay of soil microorganims.
If this hypothesis is right cultivation of GE crops might damage soil fertility. In everyday language the talk is about a gene for this and a gene for that. We are now finding that that is rarely so. The number of genes that work in that way can almost be counted on your fingers, because we are just not hard-wired in that way. President of the Celera Corporation .