By Christopher Walljasper
and Ramiro Ferrando/Midwest Center for Investigative
Reporting | May 26,
2019
Farmers have been using the
weed killer glyphosate – a key ingredient of the product Roundup – at soaring
levels even as glyphosate has become increasingly less effective and as health
concerns and lawsuits mount.
Nationwide, the use of
glyphosate on crops increased from 13.9 million pounds in 1992 to 287 million
pounds in 2016, according to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey.
A review of the agency’s data
by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting shows that farmers across the
Midwest used an estimated 188.7 million pounds of glyphosate in 2016 – nearly
40 times more than in 1992 when they used a total of 4.6 million pounds.
The data for the year 2016 is the latest available.
Farmers in those 12 states –
including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska – grow most of the country’s
soybean and corn crops. Glyphosate is now the primary way farmers manage weeds
that would otherwise reduce the amount of grain they can produce. The Midwest
accounts for 65 percent of the nation’s use of glyphosate for crops, according
to the Center’s analysis.
The estimates are from data
collected through surveys of farms and may be high in some cases. However, the
estimates provide an overview over decades on how dramatically glyphosate use
has increased.
As a caution, the Midwest
Center reviewed data with low estimates of pesticide use on crops and crop
fields to avoid overestimation. And not all crops can be sprayed with
glyphosate. Therefore, the rate applies only to crops engineered to survive the
pesticide.
Pesticide is the broad term
for substances that can kill bugs, weeds and other pests. Specifically,
herbicides kill weeds and insecticides kill bugs.
Roundup was manufactured by
agriculture company Monsanto until it was bought by German pharmaceutical
company Bayer in 2018.
Once thought of as a miracle
product, overreliance on glyphosate has caused weeds to grow resistant to the
chemical and led to diminished research and development for new weed management
solutions, according to Bill Curran, president-elect of the Weed Science
Society of America and emeritus professor of weed science at Penn State
University.
“We’re way over-reliant on
roundup,” Curran said. “Nobody thought we were going to be dealing with the
problems we are dealing with today.”
Meanwhile, juries have
recently awarded at least $2.2 billion in damages to plaintiffs in three
separate cases who claimed that glyphosate caused the cancer, non-Hodgkin
lymphoma.
Glyphosate is at the center of
thousands of more similar lawsuits against Bayer.As Bayer faces the fourth
lawsuit over Roundup this
August in St. Louis County Circuit Court, the company is also receiving
backlash from investors and the public. The company’s stock price
has dropped more than 40 percent since it bought Monsanto.
The EPA, during a routine
review of its glyphosate registration, said earlier this year glyphosate
does not cause cancer, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer
in 2015
classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration has reported trace amounts of glyphosate
in food samples after testing for the first time in 2016, though levels
remained below acceptable thresholds. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention has
called for more research on the chemical’s effects on humans.
Resistance to glyphosate grows
Despite warning that overuse
could lead to weed resistance, manufacturers of glyphosate have continued
selling the product to farmers at increasing rates.
James Benham has been farming
in Southeast Indiana for nearly 50 years. Benham said, as resistance grew,
Roundup went from a cure-all to a crutch.
"Sometimes if you timed
it just right, you could get away with just one spraying. Now we’re spraying as
often as three or four times a year," he said.
Benham said farmers continue
to spend more on seed and chemicals but aren't seeing more profit.
"That puts the farmer in
that much more of a crisis mode. Can’t do without it, can’t hardly live with
it,” he said.
As glyphosate became less
effective, farmers also turned to even more pesticides to try and grow
successful crops each year.
Glyphosate was first
introduced by Monsanto in 1974.
But it wasn’t until the 1990s,
when the company released genetically modified corn, soybean and cotton seeds
that could withstand the weed killer that the use of glyphosate saw a dramatic
increase, said Sarah Ward, associate professor of plant genetics at
Colorado State University.
“I think it did become too
much of a good thing. I think growers locked on to the simplicity, and the
effectiveness of using glyphosate as your primary, or in many cases your only
means of weed control,” Ward said.
When the patent for glyphosate
expired in 2000, it opened the door for generic production, and usage increased
even more.
By 2007, the University
of Nebraska’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources noted at
least 40 generic glyphosate-based herbicides, including offerings by DowDupont
(now Corteva Agriscience) and Syngenta.
Charla Lord, spokeswoman for
Bayer, said in an email statement that glyphosate is safe and still effective
for farm and residential use.
“Glyphosate-based herbicides
are supported by one of the most extensive worldwide human health and
environmental effects databases ever compiled for a pesticide product.
Glyphosate’s ability to effectively control unwanted vegetation provides
benefits that extend from individual farms to global trade to national parks to
golf courses to local governments to gardeners,” Lord said.
But as glyphosate use shows
little sign of slowing, some experts fear what it means for farmers and
consumers.
In 2017, Monsanto reported net
sales of $3.7 billion in its agricultural productivity division, which includes
glyphosate, up $213 million from 2016, according to its annual report.
Market researchers predict
the glyphosate market to grow to $8.5 billion to $10 billion annually by
2021 up
from $5 billion now.
“The increase in agricultural
productivity reflects increased volume of Roundup and other glyphosate-based
herbicides globally,” Monsanto said in the report.
Market researchers predict
sales of glyphosate will be between $8.5 billion and
$10 billion by 2021.
Game changer
Before glyphosate was
available, farmers used a variety of other pesticides to combat specific weeds.
Jack Boyer, a farmer who
plants around 800 acres of corn, soybeans and cereal rye in northeast Iowa,
said before Roundup, he would apply a mixture of pesticides to the soil before
planting, or or spray on patches of weeds after the crop emerged from the
ground.
“It was quite a
labor-intensive process, as well as more chemicals,” Boyer said. “When Roundup,
or glyphosate came along, it made things a whole lot simpler and really cleaned
up the area, for a long time.”
Even after applying
pesticides, farmers or farm workers would walk the fields, chopping weeds out
by hand.
“As a young teenager, I spent
a good chunk of my summer with a hoe in hand, chopping those weeds out,” said
Mary Boote, chief executive officer of Global Farmers Network, a non-profit
group based in Des Moines, Iowa,that advocates for farmers around the world.
In the late 1990s, when
glyphosate was combined with genetically modified seeds that could withstand
the herbicide, it was a scientific breakthrough in crop biotechnology,
according to Boote.
She said glyphosate did more
than just help farmers grow better crops.
“The advent of glyphosate was
a game-changer. Not only did it effectively kill the weeds that were
threatening and taking away maximum crop production, there was a quality of
life issue,” Boote said.
The combination of planting
glyphosate-resistant seeds, then applying the chemical over the top of the crop
allowed farmers to apply a fewer number of chemicals, and led to the rise of no-till
farming, which prevented soil erosion.
Alan Kadolph, a farmer in
Hardin County, Iowa, said some moved away from other weed management practices,
like cultivation or hand-chopping, all together.
“It all went back to
cost-effectiveness. Roundup was such a cheap product per acre,” Kadolph said.
Victims of success
Dane Bowers, technical product
lead for herbicides at Syngenta, said glyphosate worked so well in the late
1990s and early 2000s, people didn’t
believe that weeds could develop a resistance to it .
“We’re kind of a victim of our
own success here,” Bowers said. “It is such an effective herbicide, it was
really difficult to convince people to reduce their reliance on it. It made
weed control so simple, effective and affordable.”
But with that dramatic shift
to glyphosate came a drastic increase in use as well, especially in the
Midwest.
Farmers were applying it
multiple times a year to keep weeds at bay.
Kadolph said some farmers got
used to how versatile glyphosate could be.
“It was so easy. You didn’t
have to worry about what stage the weeds were (at) out in your field. You just
changed your rate of Roundup. ‘I’m not going to spray this week, I’ll spray
next week,’” he said.
Aaron Hager, a weed scientist
at the University of Illinois, said the overreliance on glyphosate accelerated
the growth of weed resistance.
“In any biological system,
when you make such a dramatic shift to a very limited number of options to
control a pest, that system is very likely going to evolve,” Hager said.
Lord said weed resistance is
not a new problem for farmers.
“Farmers have been dealing
with this issue of herbicide resistant weeds since the 1950s, and it is a
reality that growers know how to manage,” Lord said in an email.
Ward said this resistance is
different because of how widespread glyphosate use has become
“Growers locked on to the
simplicity, and the effectiveness of using glyphosate as your primary, or in
many cases your only means of weed control,” Ward said.
Charles Benbrook, an
agricultural economist who has published several studies on glyphosate, and
testified as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs, said the overuse of
glyphosate has presented farmers with real financial challenges.
“The sad reality is that, weed
management on conventional, biotech-dependent corn, soybeans and cotton farms
is out of control,” he said. “It’s created a serious economic problem for
farmers, because they’re spending far more for seed and weed control.”
In 2017, farmers spent $17.6
billion on chemicals according to the USDA’s 2017 Census of Agriculture.
That more than doubled in 20
years. During the same time, farmers spent $21 billion on seed, up from $6
billion in 1997, when genetically modified seeds were just hitting the market.
The adoption of genetically
modified seeds was rapid. For example, genetically engineered corn made
up 17 percent of all corn planted in 2000; by 2016, 92 percent of all corn
planted was genetically engineered, according
to USDA data.
“It’s just a whole different
ballgame, because of how powerful, and how successful glyphosate has become,”
Curran said.
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