US Ag Secretary Purdue needs a weed-management 101 briefing after claiming Europe will suffer from not adopting GM crops
US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue has claimed (see item 2 below) that Europe is an “[ag] technology-free zone” and will pay a big price as agricultural productivity suffers, due to its aversion to growing GM crops with herbicides.
His comments are especially ludicrous given the meltdown in US agriculture caused by herbicide-resistant weeds (item 1 below), which have spread in farmers' fields due to this very same failed agricultural model.
1. As weeds outsmart the latest weedkillers, farmers are running out of easy options
2. Secretary Purdue needs a weed-management 101 briefing
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1. As weeds outsmart the latest weedkillers, farmers are running out of easy options
Dan Charles
NPR, 11 Apr 2019
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/11/710229186/as-weeds-outsmart-the-latest-weedkillers-farmers-are-running-out-of-options
[links to sources at URL above]
There was a moment, about 20 years ago, when farmers thought that they'd finally defeated weeds forever.
Biotech companies had given them a new weapon: genetically engineered crops that could tolerate doses of the herbicide glyphosate, also known by its trade name, Roundup. Farmers could spray this chemical right over their crops, eliminate the weeds, and the crops were fine.
Stanley Culpepper remembers that moment. He'd left his family's farm to study weed science at North Carolina State University. "I was trained by some really, really amazing people," he says, "and I was even trained that there would never be a weed that was resistant to Roundup."
These scientists believed that plants couldn't become immune to Roundup because it required too big of a change in a plant's biology.
In 2005, though, Culpepper reported that he'd found some weeds that Roundup could not kill. They were growing in a field in Georgia. And this was not just any weed. It was a kind of monster weed called Palmer amaranth, or pigweed.
Over the following years, these glyphosate-resistant pigweeds spread like a plague across America's farmland. They're practically everywhere in the South now and increasingly common in the Midwest.
"The impact is just unbelievable," Culpepper says. "We've invested over $1.2 billion, just in the cotton industry, for control of glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth since we first discovered it."
So biotech companies rolled out a new answer: new genetically engineered varieties of soybeans and cotton that can tolerate two other herbicides, called dicamba and 2,4-D. Farmers can plant these crops and then spray those chemicals, often in addition to glyphosate, to kill their weeds.
There's a lot riding on these new products, for farmers and for pesticide companies. Dicamba-tolerant crops, in particular, have provoked controversy. But now, even before they've been fully launched, there's evidence that this weed-killing tactic may be starting to fail.
The evidence is sitting in a greenhouse at Kansas State University, carefully tended by Chandrima Shyam, a graduate student there.
"These are plants that were sprayed with 2,4-D. And these are the resistant plants," she says. "You can see that the resistant plants are pretty vigorous."
I see trays and trays of green, flourishing pigweeds. They are the offspring of weeds that another Kansas State scientist, Dallas Peterson, noticed last summer in a field where he conducts research. They seemed to survive every chemical he threw at them.
"We were just not able to control or kill those weeds following those herbicide applications," he says.
He called in a colleague who specializes in research on herbicide resistance, Mithila Jugulam, who in turn enlisted Shyam's help.
"So we went to the field. We dug out the whole plants, brought them to the greenhouse and kept them in isolation," Shyam says.
They grew 10 Palmer amaranth plants until they produced seeds, then replanted those seeds to produce new generations of plants in order to study them. They found that these pigweeds can survive sprays of 2,4-D. Some plants also appear to be immune to dicamba, although that still needs to be confirmed. The plants probably are resistant to glyphosate as well.
Basically, they're a farmer's nightmare. And if they showed up in one field, they're probably in other fields, too.
Culpepper, at the University of Georgia, says he's not surprised. Nobody should be surprised anymore by the superpowers of pigweed, he says. "I'm telling you, as a weed scientist, it's just an absolutely fascinating plant," he says. "You have to respect it, and the first thing to respect it is, [know that] this plant will outsmart me if I do the same thing over and over again."
Culpepper tells farmers that they still can control this superweed, but they need to use a bunch of different tools. That means deploying multiple chemicals, alternating the crops that they plant, and planting extra "cover crops" in the off season to cover the soil and make it harder for weeds to emerge.
Matt Coley, a farmer in Vienna, Ga., says most growers learned a lot from their experience losing Roundup as a cure-all for weeds. "As long as we continue to follow the recommendations not to rely just on one chemistry, I think we'll continue to be able to manage pigweed," he says.
But dicamba and 2,4-D are among the herbicides he uses on his cotton crop, and he admits it's a little unsettling to hear about Palmer amaranth plants that these chemicals won't kill. He's hoping for new weapons in his arsenal. "The industry, the manufacturers — for them to be in business, they've got to have farmers," he says. "Hopefully they're utilizing their research and development to continue to provide us with products that will help us control our pests in our crops."
The arsenal is running out, though. And that's what worries Culpepper the most. "We haven't had a new way to kill a weed with a herbicide since 1984," he says.
Meanwhile, weeds like Palmer amaranth and ryegrass have been defeating one chemical after another. "This is a monumental challenge we're facing. Is dicamba- and 2,4-D-resistant pigweed surprising? No," he says. "[But] the overall issue with resistance is flat-out overwhelming."
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2. Secretary Purdue needs a weed-management 101 briefing
Hygeia Analytics, April 11, 2019
https://hygeia-analytics.com/2019/04/11/secretary-purdue-needs-a-weed-management-101-briefing/
[links to sources at URL above]
In a carefully orchestrated exchange during an April 9, 2019 House Appropriations Committee hearing, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue asserted that Europe is an “[ag] technology-free zone” and will pay a big price as agricultural productivity suffers.
What prompted this striking assertion?
Coverage of the Secretary’s comments in EURACTIV.com identifies what prompted the Secretary’s comment:
“’What we’re seeing in the EU along this route [GMOs and glyphosate use], I call it the ‘technology-free zone.’ […] I think again they will pay the price for this in the future,’ Perdue said.
"The US official made this statement following a question about the future of the world’s most commonly used weedkiller, Bayer’s Roundup, which contains the controversial chemical substance glyphosate.”
In the same hearing, the Secretary expressed concern over the future of Roundup, citing the impact of ongoing litigation on the linkage between long-term Roundup use and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
According to the Secretary, Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) are crucial to the productivity of American agriculture, but are in jeopardy after two unanimous jury decisions in favor of plaintiffs suffering from NHL, coupled with multiple-million dollar financial awards.
The Secretary has also voiced concern over the decision by several countries and political jurisdictions to ban further use of Roundup and GBHs. For example, the USDA issued an official, April 11, 2019 statement by the Secretary in response to a decision by Vietnam to stop importing glyphosate-based herbicides:
“We are disappointed in Vietnam’s decision to ban glyphosate, a move that will have devastating impacts on global agricultural production.”
The USDA release does not go on to quantify the “devastating impacts” on global food production from Vietnam’s decision to end use of GBHs.
In the EURACTIV.com story, Secretary Purdue had more to say:
“’I’m afraid that while groups that oppose these types of uses [of herbicides] have not been able to win on the science side, they’ve chosen the litigation route,’ the US minister said, adding that he hoped the judges will make better decisions in the appeal process.”
Secretary Purdue obviously needs a briefing on the litigation from parties not associated with Bayer.
The Secretary needs to know that “groups” have nothing to do with the NHL litigation. All the plaintiffs are people who personally sprayed a lot of Roundup over many years and, after being diagnosed with NHL, heard about the IARC’s 2015 classification of glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen.” Sadly, in many cases suits are being brought by surviving family members of deceased plaintiffs.
Bayer/Monsanto has lost the first two jury verdicts because the science is NOT on their side. Indeed a deep, compelling body of evidence supports the conclusion that the repeated exposures to Roundup by plaintiffs contributed to their disease.
Beyond the need for better understanding of the ongoing litigation, the Secretary’s assertion that Roundup is a pillar of U.S. agricultural productivity is troubling for another, 800-hundred-pound, gorilla-scale reason:
"On most conventional corn, soybean, and cotton farms, the overuse and mismanagement of Roundup and GBHs by U.S. farmers have triggered an explosion in glyphosate-resistant weeds, pushing the herbicide treadmill into high gear."
An April 11, 2019 NPR report by Dan Charles quotes weed scientist Stanley Culpepper on perhaps the grand-daddy of glyphosate-resistant super-weeds, Palmer amaranth:
“‘The impact is just unbelievable,’ Culpepper says. ‘We’ve invested over $1.2 billion, just in the cotton industry, for control of glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth since we first discovered it [in 2005].'”
These added herbicide costs are one of the main reasons U.S. cotton farmers are now less competitive in world markets.
In 2019, ubiquitous herbicide-resistant weeds in corn, cotton, and soybean fields, including dozens resistant to several if not nearly all herbicides, are pushing production costs up, while driving productivity and global competitiveness down.
European farmers and regulators chose to take a pass on herbicide-resistant, GMO crops, and as a result, have largely stayed off the herbicide use (and cost) treadmills that are now sapping the economic vitality from U.S. row crop farmers.
The EU, and farm businesses and organizations across Europe, are instead investing in the infrastructure needed to enhance the productivity and sustainability of organic and regenerative agricultural systems. At least in the case of today’s GMO crops, the major distinction between the path chosen in the EU, and Secretary Perdue’s vision of the future of food, boils down to the EU’s confidence in better on-farm management of ecological processes and interactions, versus Secretary Perdue’s continued faith in GMOs and more herbicide.
While our Secretary of Agriculture is sticking with the inherently flawed notion that farmers can spray their way around today’s problems with herbicide-resistant weeds, ag leaders and farmer-innovators across Europe are moving toward systems in which a much greater diversity of tools, including a pound of prevention, keep weeds in check at a fraction of the cost facing many U.S. farmers as they return to the field this planting season.
Hopefully, a weed-management 101 briefing can be scheduled for Secretary Perdue with a resistant-weed veteran like Dr. Culpepper.
The goal — deeper understanding of the degree to which resistant weeds in the U.S. are eroding the productivity and profitability of American agriculture, and as a result, creating new opportunities for farmers abroad to capture export market share the U.S. has owned for nearly half a century.
Source:
Sarantis Michalopoulos, “US agriculture minister: Europe will pay the price for ignoring science,” EURACTIV.com, Date published: April 10, 2019, Date accessed” April 11, 2019.