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How often do we have to say it?  Mother nature bats last.

When we try to control mother nature, mother nature adapts.  And yet it seems as though we learn nothing.  Our latest case in point: Roundup resistant superweeds.

Roundup — originally made by Monsanto but now also sold by others under the generic name glyphosate — has been little short of a miracle chemical for farmers. It kills a broad spectrum of weeds, is easy and safe to work with, and breaks down quickly, reducing its environmental impact.

Sales took off in the late 1990s, after Monsanto created its brand of Roundup Ready crops that were genetically modified to tolerate the chemical, allowing farmers to spray their fields to kill the weeds while leaving the crop unharmed. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for about 90 percent of the soybeans and 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States.

But farmers sprayed so much Roundup that weeds quickly evolved to survive it. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast-forward,” Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, said.

Now, Roundup-resistant weeds like horseweed and giant ragweed are forcing farmers to go back to more expensive techniques that they had long ago abandoned.

While mainstream media, such as The NY Times, may just be awakening to the issue of Roundup Resistant weeds, it is a problem that has been growing for 10 years.  Even Monsanto acknowledges that there have been herbicide resistant plants since the 1950s.   On the Monsanto blog,  Mica suggests that we go to the International Survey of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds,  so I did, and I found this graph

Now, maybe some of you find this graph reassuring, but it makes me say HOLY SH*T this problem is exploding!  Worse, the way our industrial farms have responded to the increasing resistance of weeds has been to use ever increasing amounts of herbicides.

“The basic finding is that compared to pesticide use in the absence of GE crops, farmers applied 318 million more pounds of pesticides over the last 13 years as a result of planting GE seeds. This difference represents an average increase of about 0.25 pound for each acre planted to a GE trait. GE crops are pushing pesticide use upward at a rapidly accelerating pace. In 2008, GE crop acres required over 26% more pounds of pesticides per acre than acres planted to conventional varieties. The report projects that this trend will continue as a result of the rapid spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds” ^[1]. “‘This report confirms what we’ve been saying for years,’ said Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety. ‘The most common type of genetically engineered crops promotes increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of resistant weeds, and more chemical residues in our foods. This may be profitable for the biotech/pesticide companies, but it’s bad news for farmers, human health and the environment’

It is doubly bad news because of the way Roundup Ready Genetically Engineered crops have changed the way that glyphosate (Roundup) is used.  Originally, Roundup and other herbicides were applied to soil before the planting of crops.  Now, glyphosate is applied directly TO the crops, where it can be absorbed and become part of the food we eat.

To date, almost no study has been done of the effect of low level, continuous exposure of glyphosate to human health.

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