It's not enough that we have antibiotic-resistant bacteria proliferating. Now we're developing Roundup-resistant weeds.
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.”
“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.
The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn...
The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.
MUCH more at the
Gray Lady article (where the embedded graphic scrolls with time to show the progression of resistance)
I don't use herbicides at all.
ReplyDeleteI try not to use pesticides.
I do however use Frontline for my dog, but that is pretty much it.
Round Up is a poison bordering on future genocide- hasn't Monsanto killed and harmed enough of us with Agent Orange?
ReplyDeleteJust another reason for me to boycott Monsanto and Round-up, as I have been trying to do for a couple of years now. It's hard to do though, as they are involved in everything.
ReplyDeleteI don't use any herbicides or pesticides either. In fact, this morning I was out spraying the giant lubbers with a hose as they ran away from my new vegetable garden and chastising them severely! I'm sure they won't do that again!
Tx for the comment nfmgirl, because I'd never heard the word "lubber" used to refer to a... ?grasshopper.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it's a regional dialect slang. From Florida? or perhaps you picked up the term elsewhere.
In the early '70s, I worked as an administrative assistant to the ad agency account executive for Roundup. Quit the job in '76 to work for myself as a freelance editor, but I've subsequently felt horribly guilty about having made any contribution to Roundup's popularity. Never occurred to me at the time there was anything wrong with it, but still...
ReplyDeleteDDT works - perhaps we should revisit the political and regulatory process that took this product off the market and contributed to deaths of millions around the world from starvation.
ReplyDeleteIf you really think Roundup is too toxic for regular use (like DDT or thalidomide) this should be good news.
ReplyDelete