Racing Backwards on Protecting the Food Supply

To the long list of 20th-century liberal achievements making progress toward equality and liberation of race, sex and income that repugs are rapidly reversing, you can add protecting health and safety.

Yes, now giant corporations are demanding the right to bring back deadly poisons that were permanently banned decades ago.

From Richard Schiffman at Truthout:

In a match that some would say was made in hell, the nation's two leading producers of agrochemicals have joined forces in a partnership to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2,4-D, one half of the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which was used by American forces to clear jungle during the Vietnam War. These two biotech giants have developed a weed management program that, if successful, would go a long way toward a predicted doubling of harmful herbicide use in America's corn belt during the next decade.

The problem for corn farmers is that "superweeds" have been developing resistance to America's best-selling herbicide Roundup, which is being sprayed on millions of acres in the Midwest and elsewhere. Dow Agrosciences has developed a strain of corn that it says will solve the problem. The new genetically modified variety can tolerate 2,4-D, which will kill off the Roundup-resistant weeds, but leave the corn standing. Farmers who opt into this system will be required to double-dose their fields with a deadly cocktail of Roundup plus 2,4-D, both of which are manufactured by Monsanto.

But this plan has alarmed environmentalists and also many farmers, who are reluctant to reintroduce a chemical whose toxicity has been well established. The use of 2,4-D is banned in several European countries and provinces of Canada. The substance is a suspected carcinogen, which has been shown to double the incidence of birth defects in the children of pesticide applicators in a study conducted by University of Minnesota pathologist Vincent Garry.

SNIP

Some agricultural scientists advocate developing a system of integrated weed management to replace the unsustainable use of chemicals. But the big agrochemical companies have no interest in supporting the sustainable agriculture that would put them out of business. So long as there are billions of dollars to be made in selling herbicide and herbicide-resistant genetically modified seed, there won't be much research money available to explore the natural alternatives to the destruction of our nation's heartland.

It is misleading to call non-chemical methods of fertilization and weed/pest control "alternatives" to Monsanto and Dow's deadly cocktails, because chemical additives do not benefit crop growth in any way. They destroy healthy soil, weaken plants and poison the natural systems that strengthen and protect plants.

Chemical farming is not an effective system with toxic side effects that we just have to live with; chemical farming is a massive, lethal failure that poisons the very food supply it purports to benefit.