First, the company had been selling Roundup for years without any
problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company’s
scientists had just spent more than a decade, and many millions of
dollars, trying to create the Roundup-resistant plants that they
desperately wanted — soybeans and cotton and corn. It had been
incredibly difficult. When I interviewed former Monsanto scientists
for my book on biotech crops, one of them called it the company’s
“Manhattan Project.”
Considering how hard it had been to create those crops, “the
thinking was, it would be really difficult for weeds to become
tolerant” to Roundup, says Rick Cole, who is now responsible for
Monsanto’s efforts to deal with the problem of resistant weeds.
So they thought small scale would be the same as saturating
90+% of every corn, soybean, peanut, and cotton field in the U.S.
and numerous other countries with virulent poisons.
Because they wanted the money.
Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath found this YouTube version of a Georgia Farm Monitor
report on an Organic Peanut Field Day:
Note the cultivator. The host had to explain what it was and show it
several times so people would understand it.
Yes, that’s how farmers used to control weeds before pesticide
vendor propaganda convinced people of things like “don’t throw dirt
on peanuts.”
The cultivator throws dirt on weeds next to the peanuts, thus
suppressing the weeds and releasing the peanuts.
Gretchen remarks:
Organic growing isn’t a specialty market, it’s a matter of safety. Chemicals sprayed on peanuts, soy beans, cotton and corn are TOXIC. Good management and kindness to the earth can grow crops in a sustainable way. Just say no to chemical spraying.
Peanut growers may not like manual labor, but
they’re having to resort to that anyway, because their pesticides
have produced
the mutant pigweed, which pesticides don’t kill.
Spraying more and different herbicides doesn’t do it, either.
The only way is physical removal of the pigweed.
And a cultivator can do that without manual labor
(the report mentions that).
Oh yeah: and you don’t have to pay for pesticides to apply with
a cultivator.
So, it’s time to stop poisoning our air, water, plants, animals, and people
and move away from petrochemical pesticides.
Organic is the way to go, and we know how to get there.
problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company’s scientists had just spent more than a decade, and many millions of dollars, trying to create the Roundup-resistant plants that they desperately wanted — soybeans and cotton and corn. It had been incredibly difficult. When I interviewed former Monsanto scientists for my book on biotech crops, one of them called it the company’s “Manhattan Project.”