by Hal Hamilton
— March 1, 2003 —
The weed-killer Roundup and “Roundup-Ready” biotech crops have become dominant features of U.S. crop farming as well as the subject of trade disputes with the rest of the world. Do we really want our negotiators promoting the products of a few chemical companies? Shouldn’t they be promoting a wider range of solutions for agriculture and the public?
The most widely used herbicide in the world is now glyphosate, originally patented by Monsanto as Roundup, but now also available from other manufacturers. When I first started using Roundup on my farm, I was delighted with its effectiveness at killing weeds and its relatively low level of toxicity. It replaced Paraquat, which is much more toxic. I was (and am) afraid of these poisons. I once spilled some Lasso, also made by Monsanto, on my boot while in the farm supply store, and I didn’t worry about it until falling seriously ill for a couple of days. I know very few crop farmers who haven’t been sick from pesticides a time or two. According to the Lymphoma Foundation, a Swedish study of people exposed to pesticides includes glyphosate as statistically linked to lymphoma.
Why do farmers use these things? Herbicides enable farmers to grow crops with less soil erosion than if they were to use more mechanical tillage. But the most powerful reason to use these chemical tools is to be competitive. No farmer can survive with corn, soybeans and similar commodities without producing more for less – particularly less labor.
Monsanto, the company that pioneered Roundup and genetically engineered crops, is similarly pedaling harder to stay in business. Roundup has been extraordinarily profitable. Revenues in the peak year of 2000 were more than $2.65 billion. Each gallon that sold in the United States for an average price of $23.67 cost $8.45 to make. Although this sounds almost too good to be true for a company, Monsanto plowed these revenues into research and development of biotechnology, coming out first with a hormone for dairy cows and later with crops that tolerate Roundup so farmers can spray fields of soybeans, for example, and kill the weeds without hurting the beans. The cost of developing these technologies was incurred with the assumption that the market was worldwide and would keep growing.
Again, as with farmers, competitive survival in this system seems to require constant growth.
The plan ran into obstacles, though. The European union is not allowing most biotech grains to be imported. As a result, U.S. farm crops have lost an important market outlet.
How did we all get caught in this trap of having to force things on customers they don’t want, using our trade negotiators to beat up on European politicians for following the will of their electorates? Why can’t we back off and just produce what markets want?
We need to remember that technology, profits and trade are not goals in themselves but rather tools. What is it we really want? Abundant food, surely. Our European neighbors, however, remind us that agriculture is also about landscape, culture and health.
© Sustainability Institute
