10,000 Acres Abandoned?

This seems overly dramatic (h/t naked capitalism):

 Farmers over-relied on Monsanto’s revolutionary and controversial combination of a single “round up” herbicide and a high-tech seed with a built-in resistance to glyphosate, scientists say.

 

Today, 100,000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed resistance to glyphosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper from the University of Georgia.

 “Farmers are taking this threat very seriously. It took us two years to make them understand how serious it was. But once they understood, they started taking a very aggressive approach to the weed,” Culpepper told FRANCE 24.

 

“Just to illustrate how aggressive we are, last year we hand-weeded 45% of our severely infested fields,” said Culpepper, adding that the fight involved “spending a lot of money.”
In 2007, 10,000 acres of land were abandoned in Macon country, the epicentre of the superweed explosion, North Carolina State University’s Alan York told local media.

Based on reading the story about Macon county, I assume that 10,000 acres of crops in 2007 were left in the fields.  It seems strange to me that the anti-GMO, anti-Monsanto crowd is crowing about Roundup resistance, but ALS resistance is rarely noted.  This isn't a new trend, it is just a new herbicide being affected.  People who are opposed to GMO crops are excited by this trend, but the GMO horse is out of the barn, and we will just get GMO seeds with different herbicides they are tolerant to.  We aren't going back to non-GMO seed, at least I don't anticipate that.