Page 60 - Spring2015

T echnology as Ser vant
Technology as Servant

HERBICIDES FROM HELL: THE NEXT GENERATION
By John Moody

While I have generally focused on the posi- active ingredient glyphosate) became the herbi-
tive contributions technology makes to our lives, cide par excellence among farmers and suburban
and the opportunities it creates to benefit both home owners alike. Indeed, Roundup is used not
people and planet, this column will sadly have solely for weed control, but also as a desiccant
to take a different tack. Technology can bless to hurry harvest of such crops as wheat. The
us, but it can also burden and even bury us. The problem? It also killed many crop plants along
story of herbicides is a somber case of the latter. with those pesky weeds. The solution? Genetic
modification (GM) technology, to create plants
WEEDS, WEEDS, EVERYWHERE that would withstand dousing with this potent
For home gardeners and food growers, poison. Roundup's use is so widespread that in
weeds can be a perennial problem. The more 2007 it was estimated that just under two hundred
the ground is disturbed, the more the weeds million pounds of it was used in the U.S. alone. 1
appear and advance. As agriculture became Yet people tend not to learn the lesson that
more and more dependent upon tillage and soil nature cannot be scorned. Nor can she be so
disturbance, weeds became more and more easily beaten. Over the past four decades of
problematic, especially for larger-scale grow- herbicide and pesticide dependence, like a drug
ers. Intensive monoculture agriculture from the addict needing ever greater highs, industrial ag
Roman Empire on has always faced this issue. finally hit a snag. The law of diminishing returns
The ancient solution was slave or similar cheap set in. Nature adopted and adapted. She fought
manual labor to carry out the back-breaking work back. As with the rise of antibiotic resistance and
of crop cultivation. new, deadlier strains of bacterial diseases, weeds
As with the For modern agriculture, the solution has and insects have also adapted to this ill- informed
rise of not been to move toward more environmentally approach to agriculture.
antibiotic sensible, ecologically smart farming systems, but Now we find ourselves surrounded by
to a dependence upon chemicals, especially the quickly spreading super weeds and super bugs,
resistance leftovers from chemical arms developments in resistant to glyphosate and Bt (found in crops
and new, times of war. While many people claim that the containing a gene from the insect-toxic bacte-
deadlier strains U.S. has never experienced a war with invaders rium Bacillus thuringiensis). Roundup-resistant
on its own shores, our native soil, plants and weeds now occupy well over sixty million acres
of bacterial animals would likely differ. of real estate in the U.S., are found on fifty per-
diseases, Defoliants and other warfare chemicals re- cent of surveyed farms, and include over two
2
weeds and lated to nerve gases were found to be effective dozen types of plants. The spread was sudden,
not only against enemy troops but to annihilate expansive and certain.
insects have at-home pests, of both the plant and insect vari- Undaunted, Big Ag came up with a solu-
also adapted eties. A new paradigm of agriculture was born, tion. Supported by nearly all departments of the

to this built not on partnership with nature, but on the federal government and subsidized heavily by
the same, their plan is perfectly positioned to
violent terms of war, plunder and domination.
ill-informed ensure the continued dominance of industrial
approach to GLYPHOSATE GANGBUSTERS agriculture at the high cost of citizens’ dollars
Now a household name, and in some circles and health, while assuring the continued spread
agriculture. a four-letter word, Roundup (brand name of the of new generations of resistant species, both plant
58 Wise Traditions SPRING 2015 Wise Traditions

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