Roundup - the culprits

Times of TW

Countryside Chemicals Conceal Rural Divide

By Kent Barker

Myrtle and I love our country walks at this time of year. The bines in the few remaining hop gardens are being loaded onto trailers. Grapes which have replaced so many of the hops round here are still on the vine waiting for the harvest. The friendly foreign fruit pickers are working their way through the orchards, while ancient tractors scuttle about with bins of ripe apples.

Most of the arable harvest is in and the fields have yet to be ploughed so it’s easy to walk or, in Myrtle’s case, run over them. Soon we’ll have to wend our way round the edges to avoid the furrows. But I have recently discovered some extremely scary facts about arable production. 

It began when I volunteered to write a regular feature on farming in our revamped village magazine. To be honest, I don’t know a huge amount about the subject, despite having lived in the country on and off for half a century, and being a habitual Archers’ listener. But, as a parish councilor, I’ve found there is a huge disconnect between residents of the countryside and those who make their living from it.

It’s most keenly felt on planning matters. A farmer wants a new barn or an anaerobic digester or an array of solar panels and there is an outcry from other rural residents—mainly, I have to say, from those who have most recently relocated from the city. So, the job of my column will be to try to bridge the divide and get both sides to see the other’s point of view. It will not be easy, as I am about to demonstrate.

Talking to one farmer, I discovered that arable land is no longer ploughed every autumn. Instead, they adopt a minimum cultivation technique or Min-Till.  Essentially, instead of turning the earth over with a deep plough, they use discs which do not penetrate nearly so deeply and which anyway, leave up to 30% of crop residues on the surface. This method is designed to be friendlier to the soil. But is it friendlier to us?

            Before being drilled (seeded) for next year’s crop, quantities of herbicide are used to kill off ‘volunteer’ plants or weeds. And the herbicide of choice is Roundup, and the active ingredient of Roundup is—glyphosate.

            Now the news may have passed you by earlier this year that the World Health Organisation deems glyphosate to be a ‘probable human carcinogen’.  Which is to say that it can or does cause cancer. Which is bad. But possibly not as bad as all the other things that glyphosate does.

            Just last month, the august if unfortunately acronymed body ISIS—the Institute of Science in Society—launched a campaign to ban all levels of spraying of glyphosate. Why? Because it has also been linked, among other things, to: coeliac disease, autism, diabetes, birth defects, increased levels of aluminum in the brain and to arsenic in the kidneys resulting in acute renal failure.

            And this is the herbicide that you quite probably use in your garden.  Come on. Hands up who’s got a little bottle of Roundup spray in the shed? And don’t look smug because you don’t have a garden. Most local councils use it routinely to kill weeds in public parks and spaces near you.

            Now, for the sake of balance, I should say that the manufacturer of Roundup, the chemical giant Monsanto, denies these links and repudiates the scientific studies that established them. But it’s worth noting that around a third of the company’s earnings come from Roundup and the associated GM seed business. And since, in 2014, Monsanto’s revenue was $3.14 billion, that makes Roundup worth more than a billion dollars a year to them, so you can draw your own conclusions.

            Dig a little deeper and you find just how deeply embedded glyphosate is in agriculture. A number of farmers use Roundup on their crops immediately before harvest as a ‘desiccant’ to get more even ripening and to reduce moisture. Something like 75% of all oilseed rape in the UK is subject to this regime. But it means that greater quantities of the chemical are likely to remain on the plant as it enters the food chain. 

And then there are the superweeds. These are glyphosate-resistant plants that seem to be spreading at an exponential rate in the US, South America and South Africa. How long before they appear in Britain?

The question is, though, how am I going to raise this all with the farming community round my village? I just have the feeling that few divides are likely to be bridged if I start telling them they should return to bio-diversity and crop rotation as the non-toxic way to control weeds.