by Carey Gillam
One of the most prominent of the new herbicide products combines glyphosate with 2,4-D, the sixty-five-year-old chemical that became infamous as an ingredient in the Agent Orange defoliant used by the United States during the Vietnam War. Dow AgroSciences raised the ire of environmentalists and health advocates alike when it asked for the EPA’s approval for the product it calls Enlist Duo. According to USDA estimates, by 2020 the new glyphosate and 2,4-D herbicide is likely to lead to a 700 percent rise in the use of 2,4-D, which the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies as “possibly” carcinogenic to humans. Some scientists say that 2,4-D is a suspected endocrine disruptor that has been linked to reproductive harm and that children are particularly susceptible to its effects. Dow’s own research has shown harmful impacts, but the EPA has agreed to allow more than forty times more 2,4-D into the American diet than was previously permitted, all in an effort to fight glyphosate-resistant weeds.11
Another highly touted new herbicide combination, glyphosate and dicamba, also spells trouble, according to assessments by some scientists and environmental groups. Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready Xtend system is expected to push dicamba use from less than 1 million pounds annually to more than 25 million pounds annually. Farmers are encouraged to plant GMO crops that are tolerant of both dicamba and glyphosate so they can be sprayed directly with both to kill weeds. While many farmers have welcomed the new options, dicamba exposure has been associated with lung and colon cancer and birth defects and, like glyphosate, with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And a rise in dicamba use is also expected to be harmful to birds and mammals, including some endangered and fragile species.12 Several farm groups and environmental organizations filed a federal lawsuit in January 2017 alleging the EPA violated its charge to protect people and the environment by approving the new use of dicamba along with glyphosate pesticides.
The growing use of dicamba and 2,4-D may also be bad news for farmers because the herbicides are generally known to have “high volatility,” meaning they tend to drift easily into neighboring fields, where they can kill crops not genetically designed to be sprayed. Documented crop losses from just such drift have already been seen in many states. The Missouri Department of Agriculture tallied more than one hundred drift damage complaints in 2016, for instance. Farmers there alleged that dicamba sprayed by other farmers wafted into more than 41,000 acres of Missouri soybeans, peaches, tomatoes, rice, cotton, peas, watermelon, and more, killing or severely injuring the crops. The issue often pits farmer against neighboring farmer, and it is so serious that law enforcement authorities cited drift damage as a motive in the murder of a fifty-five-year-old Arkansas farmer who was shot to death during an argument over apparent herbicide damage to his crops. The farmer had filed a complaint with Arkansas officials about the crop damage before he was killed, and he had spoken publicly about his anger over the issue. A farm manager who was working land just across the border, in southern Missouri, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the case. The two men had arranged a meeting to discuss the drift problems when the shooting occurred, in October 2016, according to law enforcement.13
Monsanto and the other agrochemical companies have worked to reduce the volatility of the herbicide products they are introducing to combat glyphosate resistance. And the EPA is placing some restrictions on use to try to reduce the risk of drift damage. Both the companies and the regulators argue that more and better chemicals are the best answers to fighting the failures in the field. But critics say this perpetual chemical race against Mother Nature amounts to an ever-faster and more dangerous pesticide treadmill that loads more and more chemicals onto an already ravaged landscape. And, they say, it won’t work. Combining old chemicals into new mixtures used on top of herbicide-tolerant crops may provide a short-term fix, but the strategy has no hope of success over the long term. Weed resistance will only increase with the increased chemical use.
“Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops created an environmental disaster by causing infestation of tens of millions of acres of farmland with herbicide-resistant weeds and spurring an enormous increase in pesticide use,” said Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, who has sued the EPA over these issues. “Planting more GE crops and dousing them with more noxious chemicals isn’t the answer. The Environmental Protection Agency should be protecting health and the environment, not Monsanto’s profits.”14
The current model simply isn’t sustainable, says Stanley Culpepper, a professor at the University of Georgia who specializes in crop and soil science. Georgia, the United States’ second-largest cotton-producing state, has been hit harder than many others by weed resistance; the problem impacts most of the state’s 1.1 million acres planted to cotton. Culpepper, who grew up on a cotton plantation, works closely with cotton farmers across the state to try to come up with the best ways to beat back the weeds, and he has tracked the rising costs and challenge for growers. More than 90 percent of the state’s farmers now hand-weed their cotton fields, he said. The need for reforms is immediate—and obvious, in his view. And while pesticides are an important tool, they can’t be the only tool.
“My opinion as a scientist, if our goal is to feed the world, we cannot do it today without pesticides,” said Culpepper. “But we have to treat them with respect. Anytime we can use them more economically and in a more environmentally friendly way, that’s what we want to do. We’re not sustainable if all we’re going to do is go out and spray stuff.”15
Back in Indiana, Purdue’s Young said it may be a message farmers don’t want to hear, but it is an inescapable reality: “When you talk about managing herbicide resistance by using more herbicides, it’s just counterproductive. Right now it may seem like the best option because it’s the most available and effective. But in the long term, is it sustainable? No.”16
Jumping off the pesticide treadmill in favor of more sustainable solutions is easier said than done, especially when the corporations developing and selling the chemicals keep pressing for more. It’s understandable; every gallon sold adds to corporate revenues, after all. But just as they’ve done in other dicey debates involving their products, the chemical industry players have turned to some friendly—and financially linked—academics to help convince regulators and the public to embrace their new herbicide and herbicide-tolerant crop combinations.
One key ally has been David Shaw, vice president for research and economic development at Mississippi State University and past president of the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA). Shaw has had significant influence in helping shape policy on weed resistance in the United States, chairing a task force that developed a USDA report that made recommendations on how to address the problem, and counseling the EPA on the same. As many other agricultural experts were warning of the dangers of new herbicide-crop combinations, Monsanto could count on Shaw’s help to convince the USDA to green-light the company’s new Xtend herbicide-tolerant soybeans and cottonseed. Monsanto had supported Shaw with research grants totaling at least $880,000 since 2002, and the company seemed quite comfortable asking him to step in on its behalf. Monsanto specifically wanted Shaw to refute arguments made by environmental and consumer advocates that the company’s new products would increase potentially harmful herbicide use.17 As Monsanto knows, when the message comes from an expert who appears to be independent of industry, it usually carries more weight.
Monsanto executives asked for Shaw’s help on multiple occasions in 2012 and 2013, asking him to write letters of support to regulators—conveniently providing specific prose and policy points that Shaw should include—and to engage in other activities, such as participating in a government-held meeting on the controversy. E-mails obtained between Monsanto executives and Shaw showed that the company was feeling pressured by the chorus of opposition to the company’s new herbicide-tolerant cropping system.
“In a way this boils down to a numbers game which means we can’t just sit back and let the opposition dominate the conversation,” Monsanto’
s in-house weed expert, John Soteres, wrote to Shaw in June 2013, asking him to call in to a USDA meeting on the company’s dicamba products. Soteres helpfully suggested what Shaw should say, and Shaw agreed to call in. Soteres wrote to Shaw after the call: “I think I owe you a really good steak for this one.”18
Dow AgroSciences also relied on Shaw to help it win over regulators for its new 2,4-D and glyphosate herbicide and cropping system. Just as Monsanto did, Dow asked Shaw to reach out to regulators in support of its products, even offering suggestions for how Shaw should word his message. In one communication, a Dow scientist named Larry Walton reminded Shaw that the company was “providing some very good scholarship funding” for Mississippi State University graduate and undergraduate students.19
Both Monsanto and Dow ultimately received government approvals for their new products, victories that are expected to bring well over $1 billion in added revenues to the companies. Monsanto’s win was also a win for consumers, according to the company. “Weeds represent a key pest to agriculture operations around the world and limit crops of much-needed nutrients, sunlight and access to available water resources,” Robb Fraley, Monsanto’s chief technology officer, said in touting the regulatory approval. “We’re excited to provide additional tools that can help improve efficiencies on farm and support farmers in bringing more food to harvest for consumers.”20
For farmer Campbell, the challenges ahead will soon be someone else’s to manage. He expects to be the last in his family to run the 2,800-acre farm. His son declined to follow in his father’s footsteps, instead pursuing a career as an electrical engineer, and his daughter became an attorney; neither has a desire to build a future in the small rural community of Coulterville, Illinois, population 945, that borders the family farm. Campbell doesn’t blame them a bit, he says. Making a living as a farmer has never been easy, and the evolution of agriculture is always challenging. His generation’s intensive use of agrochemicals may not be the best choice for the future. He hopes that the next phase of technology and tools for farmers will support, rather than thwart, sustainability.
“Who can fathom what we’ll be doing sixty to seventy years from now?,” he said. “I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, but I am a realist. I have a grandson and two granddaughters…. I want them to all have somewhere to live and something to eat. The environment … it’s fragile. We don’t want to destroy it.”21
While weed resistance has drawn intense scrutiny because of the immediate economic impacts, the widespread use of glyphosate has created many other less visible, but potentially just as costly, environmental problems. And one of the most poignant is the demise of the iconic monarch butterfly, a migratory creature that typically winters in central Mexico or coastal California and then moves to summer breeding grounds in the northern United States and Canada. The fluttering of the monarch’s distinctive black, orange, and white–patterned wings as it flits from flower to flower has long been a familiar sight in gardens, fields, and meadows. But the population has been in steep decline over the past few decades, dropping by more than 80 percent between the mid-1990s and 2016. Since 1990, about 970 million have vanished, according to the federal government. Researchers project that the monarch could disappear almost entirely by 2036.22
The losses mean much more than extinction of a beloved North American species; they translate to a direct impact on the health of the environment. Monarchs, like their butterfly brethren, are among a group of insects and animals that pollinate an array of living plants. Bees are considered probably the most important, as they pollinate key food crops. But butterflies are also significant, particularly for pollination of native wildflowers, as they pick up pollen and carry it to other plants in their search for sweet nectar.
And why should anyone care too much about wildflowers? Other than adding color to the landscape, flowering plants produce breathable oxygen, they help purify water and prevent erosion by means of root systems that hold soil in place, and they return moisture to the atmosphere. The delicate environmental interplay is one we tamper with at our own peril.
Both bee and monarch populations have been in decline, and while scientists have tied bee deaths to a class of agricultural insecticides known as neonicotinoids, research shows that the demise of the monarch is linked directly to heavy use of glyphosate. The proliferation of the herbicide that came with genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops has obliterated native plants that are key food sources for young monarchs, primarily a plant known as milkweed. Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed to provide places to lay their eggs and offer nourishment for the caterpillars that hatch. But in Iowa, for example, crop-land lost 98.7 percent of its milkweed from 1999 to 2012, and it is estimated that in the same time span there was a 64 percent overall decline in milkweed in the Midwest. Glyphosate, either sprayed directly or drifting on the breeze, has sharply reduced both the abundance and diversity of milkweed and other plants that provide nectar for butterflies. In the past twenty years, monarchs have lost an estimated 165 million acres of habitat—an area close to the size of Texas.
In a petition to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which has responsibility for upholding protections within the Endangered Species Act, a consortium of environmental and food groups explained the problem this way:
A primary threat to the monarch is the drastic loss of milkweed caused by increased and later-season use of the herbicide glyphosate in conjunction with widespread planting of genetically-engineered, herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans in the Corn Belt region of the United States and to planting of genetically-engineered cotton….
Glyphosate used in conjunction with Roundup Ready crops has nearly eliminated milkweed from cropland throughout the monarch’s vital Midwest breeding range.23
Other threats endanger the monarch’s survival, including shifting weather patterns attributable to climate change; conditions that are too hot or too cold at critical times in monarch development can kill both young and adult monarchs. Development of millions of acres of natural habitat has also played a role. But without their essential food supply, the monarchs are doomed regardless of other factors, scientists say.
To try to save the monarch, a partnership of U.S. state and federal agencies and environmental groups launched the Monarch Joint Venture in 2014. As part of that effort, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service started encouraging people to plant milkweed—in flower boxes, in parks, along roadsides, anywhere and everywhere. The agency itself said it would plant milkweed in refuges and other areas it controls, with a goal of creating 200,000 acres of habitat for the monarch along the butterfly’s north–south migration route.24 To motivate the public, the joint venture also launched multiple social media campaigns, including a monarch Facebook page and Twitter account. The group sells T-shirts and water bottles emblazoned with butterfly images, asking members of the public to become monarch “ambassadors.”
Even the White House, under President Barack Obama, got involved, announcing a “national strategy” in 2015 to save the bees and butterflies. One goal: restoring populations to at least historic averages of about 225 million monarchs overwintering in Mexico by 2020. The White House said at least 7 million acres would need to be restored as friendly habitat for the bees and butterflies, and it called on all federal agencies, which control more than 41 million acres across the United States, to incorporate “pollinator-friendly” practices in landscaping and construction projects on federal land.25 As part of the president’s national strategy, the EPA said it would evaluate a number of actions that could be taken to protect monarch butterflies, including restrictions on how glyphosate and other agrochemicals are handled. But as of this writing, little has been done on that front.
Monsanto has not shied away from the monarch issue; instead it has acknowledged that a reduction in milkweed plants in farmland across the Midwest is among factors contributing to the butterfly losses and that glyphosate has been linked to those losses. The company has sought out discuss
ions with the EPA regarding glyphosate and the monarch, saying it wants to be part of a solution:
As research continues, the pressing question for all of us is: what can we do to help? We’re talking with scientists about what might be done to help the monarchs rebound. And we’re eager to join efforts to help rebuild monarch habitat along the migration path by joining with conservationists, agronomists, weed scientists, crop associations and farmers to look at ways to increase milkweed populations on the agricultural landscape.
There’s no reason agriculture can’t coexist with natural wonders like monarch butterflies and their annual migration.26
Monsanto pledged at least $3.6 million and 100,000 milkweed plants to aid in monarch restoration efforts. Still, the company’s push for the use of glyphosate in combination with other herbicides to address weed resistance, critics say, will only add to the threat to the monarch.
Potentially even more worrisome than the superweeds and the declining monarch butterfly population is the subtle change glyphosate appears to be having on the soil, the lifeblood for plant life, including the fruits and vegetables we eat and the crops that feed our cattle, chickens, and hogs.
Robert Kremer, a research microbiologist who served in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for thirty-three years before retiring in 2014, stumbled across unsettling changes in the soil several years ago while conducting his government research in a laboratory at the University of Missouri. Born and raised in a farming family, Kremer knew, through both his upbringing and his education, that maintaining a healthy balance of the microorganisms living in the soil is critical to healthy crop production. When the balance is off, crops are more susceptible to disease and can lack needed nutrients. Farmers might need to use more chemicals to try to aid the ailing crops, or watch them wither away.