Monsanto Math

I read recently in the Daily Mail that part of the problem with the Indian farmers committing suicide is that Monsanto promised higher yields due to lack of pests which simply was not suited to India. In the first place, the cotton wasn't resistant to pests found in India. In the second place, the cotton required twice as much water as normal cotton.

Wait, what? Why would you modify a plant to require more resources? This just gets even more interesting when you walk into the Farragut West metro station in Washinton, DC and see the following ad:

Uh...what? That says "How do you squeeze more food from a raindrop?" It's an ad claiming that Monsanto's Genetically Modified plants require fewer resources to grow. The tagline is (laughably) "Producing More, Conserving More, Improving Farmers' Lives."

Now, I've only taken up to Calculus 2, so maybe it's in Calculus 3 that we learn that "twice as much" is the same as "fewer," but I don't think so.