Friday, February 15, 2013

A post roundup world

According to findings by the USDA, 59%of US farmers are reporting Roundup resistant weeds in their fields.  For non farmers, Roundup is a chemical which revolutionized agriculture during the past 30 or so years.  By allowing farmers to kill weeds down to their roots in one or two applications, the herbicide increased crop yields, led to the rise of "no till" farming and spawned the genetic tailoring of  "roundup ready" corn and soybeans.  These genetically modified organisms (GMOs for short) were designed to thrive under a rain of Roundup.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature has been able to select out Roundup resistant weeds within a single human generation.  Now we are back to square 1 only now we have patented GMO varieties with no redeeming qualities.  Thank you Monsanto.  Now the chemists will try to find another herbicide which will allow us to indiscriminately bomb the countryside with another toxic substance which our Mother will quickly counteract.  Only this time, the chemicals may not be as benign as Roundup and the unintended consequences may be much worse than useless GMOs and resistant weeds.

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