Failing Monsanto Weed Killer, Spurring Crisis in
American Agriculture
Crooks & Liars
2010-05-07
Yep, thanks to Monsanto Roundup, American agriculture is in quite a
fix now. See, Monsanto sells genetically modified seed that's supposed
to survive spraying with their weedkiller. Unfortunately, the weeds
learned to resist it - and now their GMO seed is struggling against the
pesticide-resistant weeds that evolved as a result of their own product.
Wouldn't it be nice if companies thought that far ahead before they
pushed their products into the mainstream? And wouldn't it be nice if we
had government agencies that didn't rubber stamp them?
DYERSBURG, Tenn. — For 15 years, Eddie Anderson, a farmer, has been a
strict adherent of no-till agriculture, an environmentally friendly
technique that all but eliminates plowing to curb erosion and the
harmful runoff of fertilizers and pesticides.
On a recent afternoon here, Mr. Anderson watched as tractors
crisscrossed a rolling field — plowing and mixing herbicides into the
soil to kill weeds where soybeans will soon be planted.
Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of
drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the
weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new
superweeds.
To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and
South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull
weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular
plowing.
“We’re back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Mr. Anderson, who will
plow about one-third of his 3,000 acres of soybean fields this spring,
more than he has in years. “We’re trying to find out what works.”
Farm experts say that such efforts could lead to higher food prices,
lower crop yields, rising farm costs and more pollution of land and
water.
[...] Pigweed can grow three inches a day and reach seven feet or more,
choking out crops; it is so sturdy that it can damage harvesting
equipment. In an attempt to kill the pest before it becomes that big,
Mr. Anderson and his neighbors are plowing their fields and mixing
herbicides into the soil.
That threatens to reverse one of the agricultural advances bolstered by
the Roundup revolution: minimum-till farming. By combining Roundup and
Roundup Ready crops, farmers did not have to plow under the weeds to
control them. That reduced erosion, the runoff of chemicals into
waterways and the use of fuel for tractors.
If frequent plowing becomes necessary again, “that is certainly a major
concern for our environment,” Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the
University of Arkansas, said. In addition, some critics of genetically
engineered crops say that the use of extra herbicides, including some
old ones that are less environmentally tolerable than Roundup, belies
the claims made by the biotechnology industry that its crops would be
better for the environment.
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