Pandora’s Pantry
December 3rd, 2007Via: Celsias:
Monsanto’s key selling point for Roundup Ready seeds has been to tell farmers that one or two good dousings with Roundup will solve all their weed problems. The corporation placed print ads telling farmers that Roundup was “the only weed control you’ll ever need,†even while, in the words of University of California Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology J. B. Neilands, “the quantities of Roundup Monsanto is planning to apply to their proprietary Roundup Ready cultivars [varieties] humbles the imagination.â€(23)
Because so much Roundup is used on Roundup Ready crops, the residue levels in the harvested crops greatly exceed what until very recently was the allowable legal limit. For the technology to be commercially viable, the FDA had to triple the residues of Roundup’s active ingredients that can remain on the crop.(24) Many scientists have protested that permitting increased residues to enable a company’s success reflects an attitude in which corporate interests are given higher priority than public safety, but the increased levels have remained in force.
Advertisements and glossy brochures, seeking to convince farmers to plant Roundup Ready seeds, speak proudly of “clean fieldsâ€â€”clean in this usage meaning enormous fields with nothing growing in them but soybeans or corn or cotton or canola. This is intended as a selling point, and many farmers go for it, but it is an odd use of the word. The fields are actually so chemicalized that they are virtually sterile, and they bear no resemblance whatsoever to a healthy, flourishing, and biodiverse ecosystem. The soil, relatively void of decaying plant matter, and often impoverished of the worms, insects, and bacteria that feed off it, becomes completely dependent on chemical fertilizers.
Ironically, we’re spraying our fields and food with a toxic substance to make use of a sophisticated technology that is largely unnecessary. There are simpler mechanical ways to deal with weeds, including no-till farming, mulching, and companion cropping. But of course, none of these Earth-friendly methods can be patented and sold for profit, and none fit with massive mono-cultures and reliance on chemicals, so they hold no interest for Monsanto and the other agricultural chemical companies that dominate the business of genetic engineering.(25)
YEE-UCK.
This story grosses me out even worse than the prospect of a worldwide depression!
I used Roundup once, about 10 years ago and then was read the riot act by a friend who told me that it causes weeds to mutate into monsters.
Sure enough, where I had hoped to kill the poor dandelions, I got another type of weed instead. I don’t know what the weed is, but only by patient hand weeding can I get myself rid of this new weed. Ten years later, I’m still working at at. I actually cherish the dandelion in comparison.
I drove by what I thought was an Amish field the other day, but realized there has been always something that looks wrong with this field. Its beautiful, but I think sterile, just as described above. I never see them putting anything alive on the field, like leaves, or compost. Each year the soil gets lighter in color. I believe it has to be a Roundup field. Dump more chemicals to get the desired effect. Now that’s really “smart.”
Actually, its quite depressing as well as digusting.
All the more reason to grow your own.
Spent most of Saturday chipping leaves and hauling them off on a plastic tarp to put on the garden where they will be almost, if not, the nectar of the gods come spring.
And the more we subject the soil to this sort of treatment, the more the soil will become degraded until not even the chemical soaking will enable it to yield enough food to feed our overpopulated world.