Farther Afield

Farther Afield
Tom Willey
T & D Willey Farms

Farm implement dealers across the rural south relish selling a $100,000 tractor or $300,000 combine or picker, but the field tool in greatest demand from them this season was a $25 long handled hoe.

“Chopping” used to engage many a thousand field hands across the Cotton South but pretty well became an anachronism nearly fifteen years back with the advent of seductively convenient “Roundup Ready” varieties.

This seemingly miraculous, universal weed-zapping chemical can be sprayed over RR genetically engineered crops to no ill effect and has inspired some growers to exclaim, “Roundup is the greatest thing in agriculture in my lifetime” while others grouse, farming is now rather a bore.

What’s presently upsetting this chemical wizardry in the cotton patch is a newly evolved Roundup (glyphosate) resistant strain of Palmer amaranth, a.k.a. “pig” or “careless” weed, which has seemingly overnight infested a million plus Southern acres. Amaranthus palmeri, described by scientists as a “perfect storm” weed, is capable of growing an inch per day and over ten feet tall, easily out competing a crop for water and nutrients, achieving stalk girth equal to a baseball bat’s which can destroy a mechanical cotton-picker in its tracks.

Palmer pigweed is just one of nine, out of control, newly emerged glyphosate resistant species just reported to EPA by Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) officials and examined in a fresh “Critical Issue Report” released last week by The Organic Center, titled “The First Thirteen Years”.

A delegation of which I was a member, organized by The Union of Concerned Scientists some fifteen years ago, warned giddy proponents of these recombinant technologies, during an EPA sponsored GMO conference in Washington D.C., about the inevitability of evolved resistances.

Biological systems are cleverly adaptable and their complex survival mechanisms are never gamed for long by such simple chemical foils.

According to USDA data, analyzed in TOC’s report, genetically engineered crops have so far failed to deliver reduced pesticide loads on the farmed environment as promised; rather chemical applications to GE crops over thirteen years since their adoption have actually increased by over three hundred million pounds.

Farmers now inclined to “run for the exits” will find it quite difficult to source conventional seeds. Monsanto and cohort conglomerates have cannibalized nearly every significant commercial seed producer and often prosecute seed saving farmers and millers assisting them. The Roundup Ready convenience scam may be about to play itself out or another genetic-genie might emerge from the bottle. However, nature will always have the last word, as biology is mightier than the sword.

–Tom Willey

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