Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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How the agrichemical industry turns failure into market opportunity
by Tom Philpott 9 Jun 2010 4:00 PM
http://www.grist.org/article/How-the-agrichemical-industry-turns-failure-into-market-opportunity/

It\'s always blue skies for the agrichemical industry Monsanto rolled out 
seeds genetically engineered to withstand its Roundup herbicide back in the 
mid-1990s. Today, Roundup Ready crops blanket U.S. farmland. According to 
USDA figures, 90 percent of soybeans and 60 percent of corn and cotton 
planted in the United States contain the Roundup-resistant gene.

Back-of-the envelope calculations tell me that total land devoted to Roundup 
Ready crops equals nearly 200,000 square miles -- about two-thirds the size 
of Texas.

Roundup Ready's conquest of U.S. farmland has been an unmitigated boon for 
Monsanto shareholders. Not only could the company charge a fat premium for 
its biotech seeds, but sales of the Roundup herbicide surged. By 2008, 
Monsanto was clocking more than $1 billion annually in profit from Roundup 
sales alone.

For years, Monsanto presented its economic triumph as an environmental gift 
to humanity. According to company talking points, the sudden ubiquity of 
Roundup, whose active ingredient is a chemical called glyphosate, eliminated 
the need to use other, more toxic herbicides. Moreover, Roundup Ready 
technology allows farmers to control weeds without having to till, 
dramatically reducing soil erosion.

Now, however, the Roundup juggernaut has run off course. Roundup's status as 
ecologically benign is turning to dust. A study by France’s University of 
Caen last year found that the herbicide's allegedly "inert" ingredients 
magnify glyphosate's toxic effects. According to the study, "the proprietary 
mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death" at 
levels commonly used on farm fields.

The annual cascade of Roundup on vast swaths of prime farmland also appears 
to be undermining soil health and productivity, as this startling recent 
report cited by Tom Laskawy shows.

Meanwhile, the endlessly repeated claim that Roundup Ready technology saves 
"millions of tons" of soil" from erosion appears to be wildly trumped up. 
According to Environmental Working Group's  reading of the USDA's 2007 
National Resource Inventory, "there has been no progress in reducing soil 
erosion in the Corn Belt since 1997." (The Corn Belt is the section of the 
Midwest where the great bulk of Roundup Ready corn and soy are planted.) "The 
NRI shows that an average-sized Iowa farm loses five tons of high quality 
topsoil per acre each year," EWG writes.

Finally, there's the ecological liability that will likely doom Roundup 
Ready's dominance of U.S. farmland. It's perhaps the least surprising, 
most-anticipated major development in the history of U.S. agriculture: After 
years of annually dousing millions of acres of farmland with a single 
herbicide, farmers are finding that certain weeds have developed resistance 
to that herbicide.

Reports of Roundup-defying "superweeds" have circulated for years. The Union 
of Concerned Scientists has has been expressing concern about them since 2001 
if not before. By last summer, the issue was causing serious consternation 
among large-scale farmers, especially in southern cotton country. In late 
2009, a report from the Organic Center (PDF) showed that farmers were 
dramatically boosting Roundup application rates in a desperate attempt to 
control ever-hardier weeds.

"The average annual increase in the pounds of glyphosate applied to cotton, 
soybeans, and corn has been 18.2%, 9.8%, and 4.3%, respectively, since HT 
[herbicide-tolerant] crops were introduced," the report showed.

As application rates have ramped up, the superweed menace has become so 
obvious the mainstream press has taken notice. "Superweeds Hit Farm Belt, 
Triggering New Arms Race," declares a Wall Street Journal headline from last 
week. The article documents a trend I've been writing about since last year: 
Rather than spark a reassessment of the wisdom of relying on toxic chemicals, 
the failure of Roundup Ready has the U.S. agricultural establishment 
scrambling to intensify chemical use.

The Journal reports that Dow Chemical, DuPont, Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta are 
"together spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically 
modified soybean, corn, and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their 
herbicides," most of which are "many decades old" and highly toxic. Dow 
AgroSciences, for example, is viewing the collapse of Roundup Ready as an 
opportunity to revive use of 2,4-D, which the Journal describes as a 
"powerful herbicide introduced nearly 65 years ago." 2,4-D is indeed vile 
stuff -- Pesticide Action Network lists it as a "bad actor." But rather than 
phase it out, Dow "hopes by 2013 to be selling seeds for corn crops that will 
be unaffected if farmers splash 2,4-D on their fields," the Journal reports.

Meanwhile, Monsanto hardly plans to surrender the lucrative GMO 
seed/pesticide market to its rivals. For one, it's developing a line of GMO 
soybeans resistant to the highly toxic herbicide dicamba, the Journal 
reports. Dicamba, too, is a Pesticide Action Network "bad actor." For 
another, it's working on "next-generation" biotech seeds that can withtand 
other herbicides along with Roundup. I hate to imagine the "thug weeds" that 
will evolve to withstand such herbicide cocktails.

In another words, Roundup Ready technology didn't bring the war between 
herbicides and weeds to a draw, as Monsanto claimed it would; instead, it has 
escalated that war. What ecologists call the pesticide treadmill has 
accelerated -- to the delight of the agrichemical industry and the detriment 
of the land, farmers, and consumers.

Industry execs don't even try to hide their glee. "The herbicide business 
used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it out," a Syngenta told the 
Journal. "Now it is getting fun again."

In a better world, farmers would be looking to non-chemical methods for 
controlling weeds: crop rotations, mulching, cover crops, etc. The USDA's 
research arm, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), would be 
scrambling to help farmers develop appropriate, non-toxic technologies for 
controlling weeds.

In reality, however, President Obama tapped agrichemical-friendly Roger 
Beachy to run NIFA last year. Beachy came to NIFA after years at the St. 
Louis-based biotech research institute the Danforth Center -- which launched 
with Monsanto cash and has maintained a tight association with the 
seed/agrichemical giant. When I met Beachy at a conference in Mexico last 
February, he expressed open contempt for organic ag and referred to GMOs with 
the industry's favored phrase: "improved crops."

With friends like that, it's no wonder that the agrichemical industry can 
spin failures like Roundup Ready into the next marketing opportunity.