by Carey Gillam
Kremer’s work to document how soil properties, plant growth, and soil microorganisms were influenced by agricultural practices was done quite literally in the shadow of Monsanto—his office was located near a Monsanto-funded building on campus that housed Monsanto Auditorium. The university is located only about one hundred miles west of Monsanto’s St. Louis–area headquarters, and the company’s influence in the state and at the university was well known. Early in Kremer’s career there, he was part of a team of researchers who received roughly $500,000 in Monsanto grant money. At that time, in the late 1990s, there was little controversy in soil science. Kremer was well regarded by the USDA and well-liked by the student scientists he mentored at the university. While his study of the soil was interesting to other scientists, rarely did it get much attention from the general public.
But with the rise of genetically modified crops and the surge in the use of glyphosate to go with them, Kremer’s research findings took a disturbing turn. He started seeing that the roots of Roundup Ready crops that had been sprayed with glyphosate became ravaged, swarmed with harmful fungi. While the aboveground part of the crop appeared to be tolerating the herbicide treatment well, the roots showed that was not necessarily the case. The soil changes left plants more vulnerable to disease, interfered with the absorption of beneficial nutrients, and could leave the harvested grain with a reduced nutritional composition, in Kremer’s view. It became apparent to him over time that repeated use of glyphosate was damaging farm fields given over to glyphosate-tolerant cropping systems, even if the effects were largely invisible to the farmer. He also found that glyphosate, released into the ground through the roots, can persist in the soil for one to two years, depending upon several variables, including the type of soil. That meant farmers wanting to rotate or plant conventional crops that weren’t glyphosate tolerant risked crop damage from the chemical lingering in the soil. Kremer published his ongoing research in scientific journals, hoping to alert regulators and others to the concerns.
“We might be setting up a huge problem,” Kremer said. This is supposed to be a wonderful tool for the farmer … but in many situations, it may actually be a detriment. We have glyphosate released into the soil which appears to be affecting root growth and root-associated microbes.”27
Monsanto has always maintained that glyphosate does nothing to harm the delicate and highly complex soil microbial communities that are critical to maintaining the health and quality of soil. “Soil microbes and microbially influenced processes are not adversely impacted by field-rate applications of glyphosate,” the company asserts.28
After Kremer started to speak out about his findings, he found they weren’t necessarily welcomed by the agricultural and regulatory community—even within his own agency, the USDA. He had been allowed to talk freely to members of the press in the past, but starting in the late 1990s, as GMOs and glyphosate use were surging in popularity, the ability to speak freely as a government scientist faded. “There was this whole atmosphere that we didn’t want to offend anyone in the ag industry,” Kremer recalled. “Well, I offended some people.”
Kremer was told that if he spoke about his research findings involving glyphosate or GMO crops, any presentations he made must be approved not only by his local USDA supervisor but also by staff at national headquarters. “There was, I don’t want to say censorship, but quite a bit of editing that went on,” Kremer said.
Kremer knew how influential Monsanto could be; when he and a colleague were awarded the $500,000 Monsanto grant a decade earlier, the company had “wanted to completely control the research,” he said. But he was still surprised when several USDA colleagues, one whom he considered a very close friend, authored a report that he felt dismissed much from his years of research.
The study was led by botanist Stephen O. Duke, the same USDA scientist who in 2008 declared glyphosate an “environmentally benign” resource and asserted that there was no conclusive documentation of harmful glyphosate impacts on or within the soil.29 Duke told me he does not see his research as contradicting Kremer, but Monsanto has touted the Duke report to discount Kremer’s findings. It’s noteworthy that Monsanto and Duke have had a long and close affiliation through an agrochemical industry–sponsored organization called AGRO. Duke has served as a member of the AGRO executive board for several years and chaired the group in 2014. There is no financial arrangement or benefit associated with serving as chair or fellow to AGRO, Duke said. Still, the group, a division of the American Chemical Society, is funded by Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta, and other corporate chemical powerhouses. Having government scientists so closely affiliated with corporate interests can jeopardize the independence of their research, critics say.
For his part, Kremer is glad to be retired and free of the political pressures. He spends his time teaching a few classes at the university and making presentations about his research to agricultural groups around the country. Soil is a “limited, nonrenewable resource,” Kremer now warns farmers, advising them that careful stewardship is needed to protect it. He suggests that farmers reduce their glyphosate use, use cover crops, and rotate herbicide-tolerant crops with non-GMO crops. It’s a hard sell, Kremer knows.
Even his family’s farm, located in the Missouri foothills of the Ozarks, grows glyphosate-tolerant corn and soybeans. The cropland is rented to a cousin, while Kremer’s brother raises free-range hogs that are fed non-GMO grain and are raised without use of antibiotics, reflecting a growing divergence in farming practices. The family is working on a plan to transition to non-GMO corn and soybeans to reduce, and possibly eliminate, glyphosate on the farm fields.
Kremer has not been alone in his concerns about glyphosate’s impacts on soil and plant health. Similar concerns have been raised by agronomist Michael McNeill, who consults with farmers in and around Algona, Iowa, right in the heart of corn country. The corn crop is so important to the area that a local newspaper produced an eight-page special section in January 2016 titled “Salute to Corn.” Corn, after all, is king in Iowa. The state typically produces more than 2 billion bushels per year and not only is the top U.S. corn-growing state but also usually grows about three times the amount grown in all of Mexico. Most Iowa corn is glyphosate tolerant, which means applications of a lot of glyphosate. It’s been fertile ground for research by McNeill, who holds a doctorate in quantitative genetics and plant pathology from Iowa State University and has been a crop consultant for more than three decades.
As farmers have applied more and more glyphosate over the years, McNeill has seen what he believes is nothing less than man-made destruction of soil health. “When you spray glyphosate on a plant, it’s like giving it AIDS,” he has said. His own observations dovetail with Kremer’s findings, and he also has tried to sound the alarm, warning that overuse of glyphosate makes crops more susceptible to disease. He sees glyphosate as similar to DDT in its trajectory—hailed initially as a boon for society, only to be found later to carry hidden dangers.30
Some agricultural experts believe overuse of glyphosate has played a role in the devastation of Florida’s citrus crop—a phenomenon that has been unfolding unbeknownst to most consumers, but one that has been all too real for the farmers who have been struggling to save their orange groves from the crippling disease referred to as “citrus greening.” The disease also affects lemons, grapefruits, and other citrus crops, but it is the plague’s impact on the orange industry that has left the state reeling. Florida produces more oranges than any other U.S. state, and citrus production is worth an estimated $9 billion to the state’s economy. But since the disease showed up, around 2005, orange trees have been dying off faster than new ones can be planted, and yields from trees that survive have been in decline in recent years. Growers largely blame bacteria that take hold in the roots for causing their trees to produce green, disfigured, and bitter fruit, the “citrus greening” effect, which some scientists refer to by its Chinese name, huanglongbing. The bacteria choke off nutrient flow to the tree, sickening
and ultimately killing it. As many as 69 million citrus trees in nearly all the state’s groves have been infected, and orange production has slipped to the lowest levels in decades, costing the industry billions of dollars in lost sales. Florida’s orange production was a robust 242 million boxes in the 2003–2004 season before the disease set in, but it was only 81 million boxes in the 2015–2016 season. Total U.S. orange production in 2015–2016 was down to an estimated 5.4 million tons, largely because of citrus greening, which has spread to Texas and California—a drop of 57 percent over 2004, according to the USDA.31 The declines are not only harmful for orange producers; they also mean higher orange juice prices for consumers and—if not reversed—the scarcity of a staple of American breakfast.
The problem is so dire that the federal government has spent well over $200 million to try to come up with ways to combat the disease. Among the solutions explored is genetic engineering; research has been under way for the past few years to develop genetically modified orange trees that could resist the disease. The industry has expressed concern that consumers might reject GMO oranges and orange juice. But many researchers say it’s the best way to address the problem.
Other researchers say they have a much simpler answer—stop using glyphosate. Farmers don’t spray glyphosate directly on their orange trees, of course, but they commonly use it around the base of the trees and in the rows between trees to kill weeds that compete for moisture and nutrients in the soil. Over time, glyphosate’s harmful effects on the micronutrients in the soil, seen by Kremer in soybean fields and by McNeill in cornfields, have left orange groves unable to fight off disease, some scientists believe.
“Extended use of glyphosate can significantly increase the severity of various diseases,” Purdue University scientist Gurmukh Johal wrote in a research paper published in 2009. “Ignoring potential non-target detrimental side effects of any chemical, especially used as heavily as glyphosate, may have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops non-productive, and plants less nutritious.”32 Along with glyphosate, many growers mix in additional herbicides to tackle weeds, loading up the soil with toxins.
“They don’t understand it’s the practices that are causing the problems,” said crop consultant Frank Dean, who has been pushing the USDA and Florida farmers to consider soil deficiencies as part of the problem.33 Dean is a product manager at a Texas company that sells agricultural fertilizers and microbial-based agricultural treatments to aid plant health, including a product that Dean says can help restore the health of orange groves. Many say his claims about soil problems being connected to citrus greening are nothing more than an effort to sell more products. But his work has the support of at least one USDA scientist. Craig Ramsey, who works with the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, has collaborated with Dean on trying to alert government officials and farmers about the soil problems related to glyphosate. “All animals and humans, if we have a compromised immune system, we can be more susceptible to illness or diseases. Plants are the same; they have a great immune system to be able to fight off disease, but they have to have the nutrients to be healthy,” Ramsey said.34
The USDA has given short shrift to theories that glyphosate damages the soil. Still, the questions aren’t going away. Iowa farmer Mike Verhoef learned the hard way after he started growing glyphosate-tolerant corn and soybeans on his 300-acre farm in the tiny community of Sanborn. He made sure to rotate the corn and beans with oats to try to help replenish and balance the nutrients in his soil. Still, he noticed that the soil started to change, becoming harder to work, and his oat production dropped precipitously. He eventually gave up on the glyphosate-tolerant crops and went back to conventional crops that could not be doused directly with glyphosate. “I’m not turning back,” he said, “because I haven’t seen anything that is going to change my mind about glyphosate.”35
CHAPTER 11
Under the Influence
So where, one might ask, are the regulators? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has top authority over glyphosate, just as it does for other chemicals, but the agency has repeatedly discounted concerns about the chemical’s impact on people and the environment, relying on a helping hand from industry to guide its actions. We’ve seen the cozy relationship between Monsanto Company and regulators play out over and over. We saw it in the 1980s, when EPA officials reversed the findings of agency scientists who considered glyphosate to be a possible human carcinogen; when the EPA followed Monsanto’s lead in ignoring concerns about weed resistance until it was too late; when the EPA raised the legal tolerance levels for the amount of glyphosate that could be in our food even as cancer concerns were growing; and again in 2016, when the EPA rearranged its Scientific Advisory Panel on glyphosate at industry demand. And, of course, Monsanto’s connections to, and appearance of assistance from, the EPA’s top cancer assessment official, Jess Rowland, speak volumes about the strength of corporate influence within the agency.
U.S. congressman Ted Lieu, in early 2017, called for the U.S. Department of Justice to probe any EPA misconduct with its review of glyphosate. “We need to find out if Monsanto or the Environmental Protection Agency misled the public,” he said.1 Four other members of the U.S. House of Representatives called for a congressional investigation of the EPA’s actions, saying, “We owe it to the American public to make sure … that the health of our children is prioritized over the profits of chemical companies.”2
Lieu also asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate any potential collusion between Monsanto and Rowland to bias the agency’s review of glyphosate, and in May of 2017 the OIG agreed. Investigators were looking into several agency glyphosate review-related matters, the Inspector General’s office said. That followed notification in 2016 by the OIG that it was probing the EPA’s handling of glyphosate weed resistance problems.3
But the EPA is hardly unique in its attitude toward glyphosate or its willingness to bend to corporate pressure. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not only green-lighted but promoted the use of glyphosate-tolerant crops, all while repeatedly refusing to scrutinize what levels of residue the chemical has been leaving in our food. Even when the FDA did start—and then suspend—limited efforts to look for glyphosate residues in food in 2016, the agency tried to keep negative findings a secret, telling scientists not to answer questions from the press and public about their work. It certainly could not have hurt to have former Monsanto vice president Michael Taylor sitting at the helm of the FDA as deputy commissioner for foods. Taylor has been held up as an example of the “revolving door” between industry and regulators, working at the FDA in the 1970s before joining a law firm that represented Monsanto, then going back to the FDA, and then joining the USDA just prior to a four-year stint at Monsanto. He returned to the FDA in 2009.4 Such volleying of individuals between industry and government has become common.
Indeed, all three agencies have a history of close connections not just to Monsanto but to the chemical industry as a whole, and all have come under harsh criticism by consumer advocates for appearing to prioritize corporate pursuits over the health and well-being of private individuals.
But it is also true that each agency has deep wells of scientific knowledge and expertise—dedicated specialists who toil as mostly anonymous public servants with no industry affiliation. I’ve talked with several myself over the years, including during the writing of this book, and have found many good people—talented and honest soldiers hoping to use their skills to serve the public good. But I have also found time and again that many fear speaking “on the record,” being quoted by name, regarding the work they are doing. They are proud of their research, but they also know that if their findings don’t dovetail with powerful corporate interests, there can be hell to pay. They say research findings are sometimes suppressed, censored, and altered if not perceived as industry friendly. It often boils dow
n to a simple calculation. As one senior government scientist who was worried about glyphosate but fearful of talking publicly told me, “I need to keep my paycheck.”
One former EPA research scientist, retired now for over a decade, has no hesitation in expressing his view. “These pesticide companies, they claim they are helping to feed the world. That is a bunch of garbage,” said Ramon Seidler, a microbiologist and retired senior scientist and former team leader for the EPA’s biosafety program. “They are just helping themselves sell more products, and those products are deadly. Glyphosate should be banned entirely, but the industry has brainwashed folks in key decision-making positions in Washington. That’s the way the system works.”
Seidler says the fact that regulators rely on the chemical companies to run the safety testing of their own products is a fundamental problem but one that is deeply ingrained in the system. “Everybody knows that is not right. Industry should not be running the tests,” he said.
Seidler, who has been listed by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge, England, as one of the 2,000 outstanding world scientists of the twentieth century, and who was a recipient of the EPA’s Bronze Medal for research service, says research indicating that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor warrants strong and independent regulatory oversight. It angers him that the agency where he spent seventeen years doesn’t do more to protect people, particularly children.5
A look inside these regulatory bodies shows decades of internal struggles to balance the interests of the public with those of powerful corporations that pressure agencies to protect profitable products such as glyphosate. This dynamic is seen in the handling of issues ranging from formaldehyde to arsenic and clean air to climate change.
If and when the EPA does move to ban a chemical from the market, it’s often only after long-drawn-out battles with environmental and public health organizations and overwhelming scientific evidence of harm. Dow’s battle to keep chlorpyrifos on the market despite evidence of detrimental effects on brain development in babies and young children is but one example. Insiders say that when millions, or billions, of dollars are at stake, political winds blow hard and sometimes public safety is sacrificed. Key pressure comes from members of Congress, who are recipients of the often-lucrative campaign donations doled out by industry and who control the budgets for these agencies. Elected officials not only control the purse strings but also can interfere through legislation or investigations. And, of course, the agencies themselves are run by political appointees who answer to the White House. It all adds up to a system of oversight that is often ineffectual, overwhelmed, and corrupt.