The June 4 Wall Street Journal features a front page story detailing how chemical companies are now in an outright war to develop new herbicides and new herbicide-resistant seeds, since more and more weeds are becoming resistant to Monsanto's "Round Up" herbicide. Farmers had sold off their tilling equipment, because Round Up had been doing such a great job of killing weeds. Not any more. At least nine species of weeds (sorry, Cliff, ragweed is one of them) have developed resistance to Round Up, and have spread to millions of acres across the United States. Other chemical companies are "dusting off" older, more potent herbicides that had lost the battle to Round Up in the 1990s. Companies such as DuPont, Bayer (you mean those guys who make my aspirins?), Dow Chemical, and others are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to come up with seeds that can survive a "dousing" with their potent chemicals. Some of their chemicals are more harmful to the environment (Round Up tends to stick to the ground, and not drift onto the neighbors' fields). For example, if a cotton farmer uses a chemical called 2,4-D, it is likely to drift in the air and kill the grapes in the neighboring vineyard.
Not a word in this article about the effect of all of these chemicals on us human beings,
1 comment:
Hard to balance all this information. While I understand we shouldn't just race to a bigger better chemical still it is chemicals that have allowed our standard of living to increase every century. Sobering thoughts Bob as I looked over the tar balls this weekend on the Gulf Coast. The oil is now here, and a lot of people are going to suffer from it...not to mention the heartbreaking photos of the wildlife.
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