Organic Lawn Fertilizer: Great Reason Not To Use Roundup Weed Killer

When the weed killer Roundup was launched in the seventies, it proved it could kill almost any plant yet still be less dangerous than a number of other herbicides, and it helped farmers to give up harsher chemical compounds and lower tilling which could promote erosion. But 24 years later, a couple of sturdy types of weed immune to Roundup have developed, driving farmers to go back to a number of the less environmentally safe methods they left behind many years ago. The situation is the most severe within the South, in which a number of farmers now walk fields using hoes, eliminating weeds in ways their great-grandfathers were happy to leave behind.

When the weed killer Roundup was launched in the seventies, it proved it could kill almost any plant yet still be less dangerous than a number of other herbicides, and it helped farmers to give up harsher chemical compounds and lower tilling which could promote erosion. But 24 years later, a couple of sturdy types of weed immune to Roundup have developed, driving farmers to go back to a number of the less environmentally safe methods they left behind many years ago. The situation is the most severe within the South, in which a number of farmers now walk fields using hoes, eliminating weeds in ways their great-grandfathers were happy to leave behind.

St. Louis-based Monsanto maintains the resistance is frequently overstated, noting that a lot of weeds present no indication of defense. "We think that glyphosate will continue to be an important tool inside the farmers' arsenal," Monsanto spokesperson John Combest stated. The corporation has started paying cotton farmers $12 an acre to cover the price of other herbicides to work with along with Roundup to enhance its usefulness. The trend has confirmed some food safety groups' notion that biotechnology won't lessen the use of chemicals over time.

Agricultural specialists stated the use of other chemical substances has already been sneaking up. Monsanto along with other companies are developing new seed products made to withstand old herbicides like dicamba and 2,4-D, a weed killer formulated during the second world war as well as an ingredient in Agent Orange, that was utilized to eliminate rainforest vegetation throughout theVietnam War and is blamed for health conditions among veterans. Penn State University weed scientist David Mortensen estimates that in 3 or 4 years, farmers' use of dicamba and 2,4-D can increase by 55.1 million pounds per annum because of resistance to Roundup. That could push both far up the listing of herbicides intensely used by farmers.

Dicamba and 2,4-D both easily drift past the areas where they are dispersed, which makes them a threat to neighboring vegetation and wild plants, Mortensen said. That, subsequently, may also endanger wildlife. "We're discovering that the (wild) crops that grow on the field edges actually assist beneficial insects, just like bees," he stated. In Australia, weed scientist Stephen Powles has been a sort of evangelist for preserving Roundup, calling it a near-miraculous farming device.

Australia has been coping with Roundup-resistant weeds ever since the mid 1990s, but changes in farming practices have helped ensure that it stays successful, Powers said. That has included by using a broader array of herbicides to kill off Roundup resistant weeds and employing other ways of weed control. Those alternative methods, such as planting so-called cover crops like rye to hold back weeds throughout the winter as well as other instances when fields are not grown with corn, soybeans or cotton, would be the key, said Freese, the Center For Food Safety chemist. Or else, he said, "We're talking a pesticide treadmill here. It's only finding its way back to kick us in the butt now with resilient weeds.