Big Ag Fails to Learn its Lesson About GMOs and Herbicides

Earlier this week, I covered how weeds are becoming resistant to Monsanto's Roundup Ready herbicide. The situation's gotten so out of control that herbicide-resistant "superweeds" are choking out cotton, soybean, and corn crops throughout the U.S., sending farmers into a toxin-spraying tizzy to control problem plants.

You would think that lessons learned from the Roundup debacle would prompt farmers and government agencies to look into non-chemical, non-GMO weed solutions. But as Tom Philpott at Grist points out, agrichemical companies are back to their old tricks, concocting up GMO seeds and herbicides so toxic they make Roundup look like whipped cream.

Manufacturers like Dow, DuPont, Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta are all working on genetically modified soybeans, corn, and cotton that are resistant to some old-school (read: super toxic) herbicides. Dow AgroScience is developing biotech corn resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D. The company says the GMO seed-herbicide package could be ready by 2013. And Monsanto is cooking up GMO soybeans that are resistant to the herbicide dicamba. Pesticide Action Network, a non-profit, denounces both herbicides as being way too toxic to spray all over the nation's crops.

What's really disappointing here is that Big Ag, farmers, and the government could have used our country's current Roundup woes as a wake-up call to move away from GMOs and chemical herbicides. Instead, it's back to business as usual, monkeying around with biotech seeds and a host of noxious chemicals. If GMO seeds and Roundup created America's current aggressive, superweed problem, what's preventing this exact same situation from happening again with new GMO seeds and their accompanying herbicides? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing.

There's a ton of herbicide-free, earth-friendly ways to farm, and this is what the country's agricultural system should be shifting toward. Biodynamics, organics, weed-eating goats, crop covers, mulching, and probably a lot of other strategies that haven't even been developed yet could all help wean our food production system off its chemical- and GMO-dependency problem. GMOs and herbicides have come as far as they have because of their limitless funds and scientific innovations. If Roundup and superweeds show us anything, it's that these funds and innovation should start focusing on chemical-free farming methods.

Photo credit: USDA via Wikimedia Commons