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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Until recently, Monsanto was adamant that continuous use of the chemical wouldn’t create resistant weeds. “Now that it has kind of blown up, it’s like, ‘We told you so,’” says William G. Johnson, a weed scientist at Purdue University. Creating crops that tolerate two, three, or four weedkillers, as seed companies plan, should help control the spread of Roundup-resistant weeds, Johnson says. Yet it may be only a matter of time before the alternatives face the same resistance. Says Johnson: “We could get these new technologies and be in wedded bliss for 10 or 15 years, but they do select for their own failure.” Indeed, ALS inhibitors, a class of herbicides that DuPont is engineering crops to tolerate, already has the biggest weed-resistance problem due to its popularity in the pre-Roundup era.
As the use of alternate herbicides rises, so does the risk of accidentally killing nearby crops, Purdue’s Johnson says. In the hot summer months, Dicamba and 2,4-D both tend to volatilize, turning the chemicals into vapor that can drift onto neighboring land. (Volatility isn’t a problem with glyphosate, which also is less of a threat to water than many herbicides because it binds to the soil, Johnson says.) That’s a big risk for row crops, grapes, vegetables, and flowers. To address that concern, Dow has formulated a less-volatile 2,4-D that buyers of its modified seeds will be required to use, says Tim Hassinger, vice-president of Dow’s global crops business. BASF also is developing a less-volatile dicamba product to work with Monsanto’s crop products, says Nevin McDougall, a senior vice-president.
In Tunica County, Miss., Cariker and his neighbors are returning to time-consuming and costly weed-control methods that had largely disappeared. Cariker this year plowed weed seedlings under the soil in the spring, sprayed a cocktail of costly chemicals before and during the growing season, and sent his crew out in the hot summer sun to hack down the surviving weeds with hoes and machetes. The goal is to keep the pigweeds from flowering; each plant can produce 500,000 seeds. Although the added fuel, labor, and chemicals plus lower yields will cut into Cariker’s income by more than $100,000 this year, he has little choice. Explains the farmer: “This can change the whole farming industry if we can’t get a handle on it.”
The bottom line: Weeds are developing resistance to Monsanto’s Roundup, the top-selling herbicide, giving rivals an opening to revive older products.
Kaskey is a reporter for Bloomberg News.
