Pesticide News Every Family Needs to Know

by Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network

Spring has sprung, and farmers across the country are preparing for planting season. One of their biggest headaches will be dealing with the millions of acres of cropland that have been infested with superweeds and with new generations of superbugs. These superpests have evolved as the direct — and inevitable — consequence of Monsanto’s aggressive promotion of its genetically engineered “RoundUp-Ready” and insecticidal seed packages over the past 15 years. 

I’d like to be able to say that help is on the horizon, and that USDA is preparing to launch a full-scale effort to enable farmers to transition off the failing pesticide-GE treadmill once and for all, and onto cleaner, greener methods of farming more suited to the 21^st century. But alas, the reverse is true.

At this moment, USDA is on the verge of approving Dow Chemical Company’s new “2,4-D resistant” corn seed, the first in a pipeline of “next generation” herbicide-tolerant crops that Big Six pesticide/biotech companies like Dow, Monsanto and BASF are planning to bring to market over the next couple of years. This is industry’s response: more of the same, only the next generation is worse: their new crops will be resistant to more, older and deadlier weedkillers.

Weed scientists are calling this chemical arms race a losing battle with evolution. And farmers too are up in arms; already 2,000 farmers and food companies have joined the burgeoning new Save Our Crops Coalition to protest this unwanted and destructive product.

An old killer

Just as with Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready lines, the herbicide with which Dow’s new corn seed is designed to be used — the highly toxic World War II era weedkiller, 2,4-D —will surge in use. Only this time, the fallout will be far worse. Here’s why:

• 2,4-D is a more toxic herbicide, both to humans and to plants.
• 2,4-D is a reproductive toxicant, suspected endocrine disruptor and probable carcinogen. Children are particularly susceptible to its effects.
• 2,4-D is much more toxic to plant life than glyphosate. Most food crops (like grapes, tomatoes, beans and sweet corn) and non-GE soy and cotton are extremely sensitive to 2,4-D.
• 2,4-D does and will drift off of target crops – both through spray drift and volatilization. This will devastate adjacent ecosystems and entire landscapes, and poses a very real threat to rural economies and farmers growing non-2,4-D-resistant crops. Conventional farmers will lose crops while organic farmers will lose both crops and certification, resulting in an economic unraveling of already-stressed rural communities. Farmers from across the country have launched the Save Our Crops Coalition in response.
• 2,4-D-resistant “superweeds” will arise and spread just as RoundUp-resistant “superweeds” have taken over farms and countryside in the Midwest and Southeast.
• Corn is wind-pollinated which means that genetic material from 2,4-D corn will contaminate non-GE corn. You cannot put a GE genie back in the bottle.

Growth engine of the pesticide industry

Simply put, 2,4-D resistant corn is a bad idea. It will drive a massive increase in pesticide use, placing the burden of increased costs and health risks on farmers and local communities. The big winners will be the pesticide-biotech companies that stand to benefit from the sustained increase in herbicide sales that will coincide with the widespread adoption of these new herbicide-tolerant GE crops.

Imagine if we could have stopped Roundup Ready in its tracks 15 years ago. American agriculture now stands at another, equally important crossroads. Do we speed up the GE-powered pesticide treadmill, or do we transition off of it?

Take Action » Tell USDA that we want off the GE-pesticide treadmill. The dangerous and antiquated herbicide 2,4-D shouldn’t be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up its use by introducing 2,4-D resistant corn.