1.Killer pig weeds threaten crops in the South
2.Research findings indicate human, amphibian impacts from glyphosate

NOTE: Cotton and soybean farmers in eastern Arkansas are interviewed in this ABC News story reporting that more than 1 million acres may be affected by the "killer pig weed" problem.

COMMENT from the Rodale Institute: Chemical-based no-till farming rose to prominence in the '70s thanks to the efficacy and low cost of glyphosate-based herbicides, which offered broad-spectrum weed control. Initially a burndown treatment, they became over-the-top weed controls as varieties were modified genetically to tolerate the lethal chemistry. This started first in soybeans, then cotton and corn.

This seemed to be the perfect system by the late '90s, allowing farmers to plant many more acres than they could ever do if they depended on mechanical cultivation alone.

The mirage of continuous weedless perfection is fading, however. As predicted from the start by weed ecologists, repeated use of glyphosate on the same weed species in the same crops year after year had an unwanted result. More weed varieties are surviving the chemical that used to kill every plant that had not been genetically designed to withstand its biological monkey-wrenching.
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20090625/nf1
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1.Killer Pig Weeds Threaten Crops in the South
Steve Osunsami
ABC News [USA], 6 October 2009
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/pig-weed-threatens-agriculture-industry-overtaking-fields-crops/story?id=8766404

*The Tenacious Weed Has Adapted and Is No Longer Susceptible to Pesticides

Across the South, there's a weed that man can no longer kill. It's called the pig weed, and for decades farmers controlled it by spraying their fields with herbicides.

"I've never seen anything that had this major an impact on our agriculture in a short period of time," said Ken Smith, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas.

This past summer, Pace Hindsely of Coffee Creek Farms and other farmers started noticing the chemicals they routinely used were no longer working.

"The last three years it's really just exploded. There is no rhyme or reason as to how we can control it," Hindsely said. "I am worried about the future or what these fields will look like next year and the year after if we don't control this weed."

The weeds have adapted, and this year they're choking more than a million acres of cotton and soybeans.

In the last three months, Jim Hubbard of Double H Farms has spent more than $500,000 fighting the pig weeds, and they still won't die.

"Technology is great, but it can only go so far," said Hubbard. "As technology goes forward, so does mother-nature. As far as the weeds and everything, they adapt and overcome."

"Some of the causes related to the issue are the use of a single crop year after year. There are issues around using the herbicide without any other herbicides, and quite frankly, trying to control weeds that were too big," said Rick Cole, technology development manager at chemical maker Monsanto.

Pig weed is one formidable weed. It grows up to three inches a day, and at its base it's as thick as a baseball bat. It kills crops and destroys heavy machinery, keeping farmers from bringing their combines and cotton pickers into the fields.

"They get so big that sometimes you can't pull them up, so it's getting to be an extremely, extremely bad problem," Hubbard said.

Farmers Desperate for a Solution

Farmers are on the attack, hiring laborers to walk through their crops and chop the plants down before they spread. The scientists who created the herbicide blame their customers -- the farmers -- for over-use. They say it was only a matter of time before Mother Nature came up with a way to work around the chemicals.

Scientists are engineering a solution, but it won't be ready for another seven years.

"Herbicide resistance is not a new issue to us," Smith said. "We've always known we'd have herbicide resistance. But we always had new technology coming into the marketplace. We have no new technology coming in now."

In the meantime, farmers will continue to lose their fields to the enemy, and in the coming weeks some of them may be forced to harvest their crops -- by hand.
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2.Research findings indicate human, amphibian impacts from glyphosate
Betsy McCann
Rodale Institute
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20090625/nf1

Glyphosate's ability to trigger resistance in weeds is only one issue being addressed in the public forum. Use of glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides is being confronted on several fronts by citizens and scientists.

In Argentina, a petition was filed by a group of environmental lawyers in May 2009 to ban glyphosate after Dr. Andres Carrasco’s scientific report was publicized linking the herbicide to embryonic mutations affecting the nervous system and skeletal development in amphibians.

Additionally, Dr. Rodolfo Paramo, in government-funded research, found human birth defect and cancer rates well above normal in areas with glyphosate fumigation. Since glyphosate is the most widely-used herbicide in Argentina, a ban of this magnitude will necessitate restructuring the agricultural industry in the country to adopt practices not reliant on chemical herbicides.

As the world’s third largest exporter of soybeans and the top exporter of soy meal and soy oil, most of Argentina’s crops rely on genetically-modified seeds that are engineered to be resistant to glyphosate.

Other research has been done regarding glysophate’s toxicity to humans. In Environmental Health Perspectives, Richard, Moslemi, Sipahutar, Benachour and Seralini (2005) tested differential effects of glyphosate itself and in the prepared herbicide Roundup on human development. Their findings indicated glyphosate is toxic to placental cells at concentrations lower than what is used in agriculture within 18 hours of exposure. Roundup was found to be more toxic than glyphosate, due to the addition of adjuvants formulated to increase the chemical's effectiveness. Roundup was found to disrupt aromatase, an enzyme responsible for estrogen synthesis.

Benachour and Seralini (2009) did another study published by Chemical Research in Toxicology finding that presence of glyphosate in the food chain is increasing.Their study examined bioaccumulation and increased permeation of glyphosate through plasmatic membranes. Their findings indicate the glyphosate and its commercial formulas induce DNA fragmentations and cell death in umbilical, embryonic and placental human cells.