Gyphosate, commonly know by its brand name Roundup, is the world’s most popular herbicide. That’s mainly because farmers have been using it in tandem with genetically modified, Roundup resistant seeds — mostly soybeans, corn and cotton — which can be sprayed with the herbicide without posing a danger to the crop. Using Roundup along with GMO seeds means that the weeds die, but the plants they’re trying to grow don’t, and that’s been huge news for the world’s industrial food system.
But score one for evolution. Over the past decade, weeds resistant to glysophate (and to three other common action modes) have begun to crop up around the country. At least 10 glysophate resistant strains of weeds in at least 22 different states have been identified. For farmers, the new weed varieties mean herbicides are potentially useless, and for big multinational chemical companies like Monsanto — which makes Roundup — and Dow, they represent billions of dollars potentially lost.
For people like Stephen Powles, professor and director of the Western Australia Herbicide Resistance Initiative at the University of Western Australia, the solution is clear: fight with more fire. “Glyphosate is the world’s greatest herbicide,” he told AgricultureOnline. “It is a one-in-100-year discovery. It is right up there with penicillin for humans in terms of discovery. We should do everything we can to keep it.”
However, for others, these new weed strains might open the door to an opportunity to prove the viability of organic farming.
The knock against organic farming has generally been that organic methods produce smaller yields than farms using chemical and fossil fuel-based pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. But more than one recent study has found that organic farming can produce just as much food as “conventional” farming, and in some cases, many times more.
Further, organic farming practices, which advocate rotating crops, are better for soil in the long run and help to keep weeds from adapting as quickly. Rotating crops, so that weeds must compete with varied evolutionary pressures, helps keep weeds from developing resistance to control methods, even when herbicides are used. In Canada, for example, farmers grow glyphosate-resistant canola, but rotate those crop with wheat and barley and use different herbicides based on the crop. Roundup resistant weeds are unheard of there.
Monsanto actually encourages farmers to rotate crops (though they generally want growers to stick to using their own brand of GMO seeds, which still encourages something of a monoculture), but farmers in the U.S. have been hesitant to “reduce their use of an effective herbicide for an intangible future benefit, especially when few have experienced glyphosate-resistant weeds,” according to NewScientist. As more Roundup resistant weed strains pop up and spread, however, farmers may begin to rethink their approach to crop management. Organic farming advocates are hoping that these adapted weeds may also have created a window of opportunity for farmers to try out other organic methods.
That window might not be open for long, however. Both Monsanto and Dow are working on new herbicides and genetically-modified seeds that could be available between 2012 and 2015 for corn, soybeans and cotton.
Image via Roger Smith.
