A tip of the hat to chatnoir.
http://www.grist.org/industrial-agri...rweeds-go-main
stream
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
Superweeds go mainstream
I don't expect that Monsanto takes much notice when articles about
superweeds -- plants that have developed resistance to its flagship
RoundUp herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate -- appear in
Grist, Scientific American, Mother Jones or even The New York Times.
That's nothing but typical "fearmongering" from the "liberal media"
and the biotech behemoth can laugh it off all the way to the bank.
But when the mainstream business press writes lead paragraphs like
this:
Justin Cariker grabs a 7-foot-tall Palmer pigweed at his farm, bending
the wrist-thick stem to reveal how it has overwhelmed the cotton plant
beneath it. This is no ordinary weed: Over time it has developed
resistance to Monsanto's best-selling herbicide, Roundup. Hundreds of
such "superweeds" are rising defiantly across this corner of the
Mississippi Delta. "We're not winning the battle," Cariker, owner of
Maud Farms in Dundee, Miss., says as he looks at weeds that tower over
his infested cotton field like spindly green scarecrows.
....as Bloomberg BusinessWeek did under the headline "Attack of the
Superweeds," I have to believe that Monsanto's top brass starts to
worry.
The language in the article is striking. Reporter Jack Kaskey tells
how "unrelenting" use of glyphosate has led to an "invasion" of
resistant weeds across the country. Of course, Monsanto has a plan --
and it involves engineering resistance to older (more dangerous
pesticides) into its seeds.
The article even quotes Chuck Benbrook, director of the Organic Center
and the type of sustainable agriculture spokesperson who doesn't often
get quoted in magazines like BusinessWeek. Benbrook says Monsanto's
strategy is "akin to putting gasoline on a fire to put it out... It's
a very high-risk gamble for the U.S. biotechnology and pesticide
industry to go down this road."
And missing in this account is the inevitable declaration that the
solution to the problem lies "just around the corner" in the form of
new technology and advanced seeds. In fact, one scientist in the
article points out that many of the herbicides biotech companies are
turning to in their search for a solution already have huge resistant
weed problems of their own. The bulk of these herbicides pre-date
glyphosate, so weeds have had decades to develop resistance. No easy
techno-fixes there!
Of course, it will take more than a good article in the business press
for sustainable ag to stake a real claim on our nation's future. But I
was struck by Kaskey's choice of a kicker. After describing his
efforts to battle superweeds the old-fashioned way (by industrial ag
standards, that is), with lots of tilling, dangerous chemicals and
manual labor, farmer Cariker declares:
"This can change the whole farming industry if we can't get a handle
on it."
It says a lot about these anthropomorphic superweeds that even the
business press has begun warning of their real and present danger. Next
thing you know, BusinessWeek might just tell us that the best solution
to this problem is agro-ecological farming. A guy can hope, can't he?
--
- Billy
Both the House and Senate budget plan would have cut Social Security and Medicare, while cutting taxes on the wealthy.
Kucinich noted that none of the government programs targeted for
elimination or severe cutback in House Republican spending plans
"appeared on the GAO's list of government programs at high risk of
waste, fraud and abuse."
http://www.politifact.com/ohio/state...is-kucinich/re
p-dennis-kucinich-says-gop-budget-cuts-dont-targ/
[W]e have the situation with the deficit and the debt and spending and jobs. And itıs not that difficult to get out of it. The first thing you do is you get rid of corporate welfare. Thatıs hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The second is you tax corporations so that they donıt get away with no taxation.
- Ralph Nader
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/19/ralph_naders_solution_to_debt_crisis