Monsanto's Glyphosate: "Armegeddon for Biodiversity"

In Midwest, Flutters May Be Far Fewer



.....Not anymore. Fields are now planted with genetically modified corn and soybeans resistant to the herbicide Roundup, allowing farmers to spray the chemical to eradicate weeds, including milkweed......
....Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, and their larvae eat it......
“This milkweed has disappeared from at least 100 million acres of these row crops,” said Dr. Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas and director of the research and conservation program Monarch Watch. “Your milkweed is virtually gone.”

...... attributes the decrease partly to the loss of milkweed from use of “Roundup Ready” crops. Other causes, it says, are the loss of milkweed to land development, illegal logging at the wintering sites in Mexico, and severe weather.

snip

......This year, 94 percent of the soybeans and 72 percent of the corn being grown in the United States are herbicide-tolerant, according to the Department of Agriculture.
That in turn had led to an explosion in the use of glyphosate, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. About five times as much of the weed killer was used on farmland in 2007 as in 1997, a year after the Roundup Ready crops were introduced, and roughly 10 times as much as in 1993.

snip

.....It kills everything,” said Lincoln P. Brower, an entomologist at Sweet Briar College who is also an author of the paper documenting the decline of monarch winter populations in Mexico. “It’s like absolute Armageddon for biodiversity over a huge area.”
The amount of milkweed on farms in Iowa declined 90 percent from 1999 to 2009, according to Robert G. Hartzler

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12butterfly.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&src=dayp

I've been using it for a year or more in what seems like a neverending battle with the stuff on my property, but I don't spray it. I cut the bamboo about an inch above the ground and immediately dropper in some glyphosate, which then gets sucked down into the rhyzome. This prevents re-growth of the cut stalk and sometimes actually kills a few stalks off of its runners. Just hoping the EPA doesn't take it away from me before I manage to clear the entire stand of that damned monstergrass.

"These plants are engineered to withstand Natural Disasters and terrorist attacks.
They are perfectly safe",
and so are GM Crops!

Did I tell you that I know science,
and you're stupid to worry about these things?

Nasty shit!

I am interested in what you claim you read and I have done a few simple google searches to find what you read and so far, I can only find articles on pesticides lowering IQ's. Do you remember where you got your information?

used to be?

There was no regulation on its use. Also DDT is a chlorinated hydrocarbon residual insecticide which breaks down very slowly and its byproducts stay around for years. Glyphosate is a non residual herbicide which lasts a couple of weeks at most if it is taken up by a plant and has no residual activity in soil.

Evidence is accumulating about the dangers of glyophosate. I wonder if it may be banned someday as well. All of these chemicals were once thought to be safe for food crops.

http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-groups/one-list.tcl?short_list_name=brpest

safe and still are. So it is not a useful analogy. One must look at the individual chemistry, modes of action, and experimental data. That is what the EPA does now. They didn't when DDT was being widely used because EPA didn't exist then. That is my point. As I said, apples and oranges. Just as with apples and oranges both being fruit, DDT and glyphosate are both pesticides. That is pretty much where the comparison ends.

Where is the accumulated evidence of the dangers of glyphosate? Your link doesn't refer to glyphosate at all. Glyphosate is a general use pesticide with a Caution label. That is the lowest possible signal word. Warning and Danger are the other two signal words found on pesticides which can be sold. Usually pesticides with Warning or Danger are restricted use, meaning you have to be certified to buy them. So glyphosate is relatively safe. It doesn't mean you can drink it. You can't drink salt water either and it will kill grass, milkweed and most other plants also. Not only that, but unlike glyphosate, it will stay in the soil and keep things from growing for years. I don't hear anyone talking about banning salt water.

How's this?

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/roundup-weed-killer-is-toxic-to-human-cells.-study-intensifies-debate-over-inert-ingredients

Mentions several studies, most not in the US and raises questions about safety of the inert ingredients.

http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Issue/pn41/PN41p5.htm

Compares Monsanto's claims about glyophosphate to independent research findings.

http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.7728

Very technical and frankly a bit over my head but it looks like it is bad for mammals. Part of the conclusion says, " glyphospahte is a disruptor of mammalian cytochrome P450 aromatase activity from concentrations 100 times lower than the recommended use in agriculture; this is noticeable on human placental cells after only 18 hr, and it can also affect aromatase gene expression."

The Wiki entry on glyophosate says: "A study published in 2010 proposed commercial glyphosate can cause neural defects and craniofacial malformations in African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis). The experiments used frog embryos that were incubated with 1:5000 dilutions of a commercial glyphosate solution. The frog embryos suffered diminution of body size, alterations of brain morphology, reduction of the eyes, alterations of the branchial arches and otic placodes, alterations of the neural plate, and other abnormalities of the nervous system. The authors suggested glyphosate itself was responsible for the observed results because injection of pure glyphosate produced similar results in a chicken model. The results cast doubt on previous clinical studies of offspring of glyphosate-exposed agricultural workers, which have failed to demonstrate a teratogenic effect.<55>

There is more at the Wiki entry.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2005-10-01/Hazards-of-the-Worlds-Most-Common-Herbicide.aspx

Mentions several studies, seems to be very bad for tadpoles and aquatic life in general. This article has a good summary of the accumulating evidence that glyophosate is bad stuff.

http://inteldaily.com/2011/05/more-problems-with-glyphosate-rice-growers-sound-alarm/

Glyophosate apparently destroys some sort of microflora that rice crops need.

http://www.bluegrassbulletin.com/2011/02/the-dangers-lurking-in-your-food.html

This article ties glyophosate use with fusariam rot in soybeans among other claims.

http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org/glyphosate.html

Good site with a summary of links.

There is much more but I ain't got time to point them all out and summarize them. I gota get up early to go pull weeds and mow the south 40.

Every pesticide which is sold has to be registered with the EPA. Companies have to submit independent test data to get products registered. The registration is specific for application on particular crops and pests. Anyway, Monsanto is one of nearly 20 companies which manufacture products containing glyphosate. So even if Monsanto quit selling glyphosate altogether, there would still be plenty around and in use, not just by farmers, but by ordinary homeowners, parks and rec departments, highway departments, etc.

http://www.btny.purdue.edu/Pubs/ws/ws-16/HerbGlyphosate.pdf

It is because of habitat destruction and the number one cause of that is building houses, roads, etc to accommodate people who want to live in areas which are still fairly open rather than moving into cities and other areas where the wildlife habitat is already destroyed. Monarchs depend on milkweed in farm fields because the areas which used to support milkweed are no longer there.

If you truly beleive otherwise, you have never witnessed 60 acres of what once was a cow pasture turned into a 60 acre stand of GMO corn or soybeans. The building of roads and houses mentioned in the article refers to the forest in Mexico where Monarchs overwinter, not the cornfields of Iowa and Kansas.

Most corn and soybean fields OR cow pastures (at least well managed cow pastures) do not have a lot of milkweed growing in them - before or after the corn/soybeans are planted - with or without glyphosate, GMO soybeans or GMO corn. You obviously don't know anything about my experience with field crops. I know what I am talking about. I have been working as an ag extension agent with corn and soybean farmers for 17 years and I grew up on a farm which raised corn and soybeans long before there was any GMO or glyphosate. We had lots of milkweed on our farm, but it was not mainly in the corn and soybean fields OR the cow pastures.

Also I would note that glyphosate is not the only herbicide which kills milkweeds. If milkweed is in a soybean field, corn field, or pasture, farmers are going to find a way to get rid of it, either with tillage or a herbicide. Farmers are trying to grow crops, not milkweed.

But it ain't. While the NYTimes article fouses on milkweed and monarchs the researcher/entymologist studying the subject said this about glyophosate, "it kills everything...It’s like absolute Armageddon for biodiversity over a huge area.” That sure sounds like a destruction of a habitat to me and it agrees with my 25 years of observations, experience and research.

Look it up......

There are almost 20 different companies selling glyphosate products.

http://www.btny.purdue.edu/Pubs/ws/ws-16/HerbGlyphosate.pdf

All herbicides are generally bad for biodiversity, this is why they were invented. On rare occasion they can be used to control non-endemic species and actually enhance biodiversity, but this is quite rare and more of an accident than a design feature.