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Loading...Research Links Monsanto’s Roundup to Root Fungus
A guitar and cello play soothing music in the background. The camera pans over farm fields while a voice talks about the living planet beneath our feet. Then the bucolic scene shifts to overcrowded cities, farmers in poverty.
No need to despair, the marketing video reassures us. Monsanto’s innovative approach to agriculture is leading us to a sustainable future, where harvests are more plentiful on less land, with less water and energy.
The only problem with this scenario is that it is becoming increasingly tattered. The most recent shredding comes from Bob Kremer, a microbiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. A Reuters news release reports the result of a 15-year-study of Monsanto’s Roundup.
The longitudinal study shows repeated applications of glyphosate (the primary ingredient in Roundup) “could be causing fungal root disease.” Though Kremer emphasizes more research is needed to tie the chemical directly to fungal diseases, the risk is only one of many already documented. Others include the spread of Roundup-resistant superweeds, risks of health problems in people and livestock, increased use of pesticides and failure to deliver on the promise of higher yields.
With mounting evidence that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops carry unacceptable risks, the last paragraph in the Reuters announcement is chilling: “Neither the USDA nor the Environmental Protection Agency, which is reviewing the registration of glyphosate for its safety and effectiveness, have shown interest in further exploring this area of research, Kremer said Friday.”
The biotech-industry fox is in the agricultural hen house. For a very different perspective from the bucolic marketing video, watch The World According to Monsanto. The full version can be viewed online.
Related Care2 Stories
Monsanto Corn at Farm Markets?
Read more: agriculture, commercial agriculture, genetically engineered crops, genetically modified food, gm food, gmo crops, monsanto, real food, roundup, sustainable food
Photo from bark via Flickr Creative Commons
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67 comments
+ add your ownnow this is scary
Hope this word gets out
No to Monsanto! No to GMO!
Thanks for the article
EPA and USDA need to get out of the faces of our local farmers who sell good produce in the local markets, including at the nearby farmer's market.
They need to get all over corporations like Monsanto, and prevent them continuing the lies that they are doing good things for everyone.
Whatever happened to "Truth in Advertising"? Whole truth, not bent truths.
Monsanto has a virtual monopoly on roundup ready seeds. It's outrageous and they should be prosecuted!
Funding for these organizations, (EPA and USDA), are being cut dramatically over and over again. Use your voice with your vote. Large corporate chemical companies, PAC, and special interest groups, plus the GOP (Grease Our Pockets), are counting on your silence.
Thanks for the article.
I'd say BOYCOTT, but with Monsanto buying up farmers all over the globe, I don't think that
my not buying roundup or their GMOs (if I actually had a right to know where they were) is
going to make much of a difference. Clearly, our "government" doesn't give a damn, they
want the EPA and other stewards to vanish. :(
Namaste everyone. How about worrying about what all of the things that they are doing is affecting all of us? How about governments starting to think about all of humanity, FOR WE ARE ALL ONE FAMILY, instead of lining their own pockets with our hard-earned money. Remember Jesus's parable about the rich man, heaven, a camel and the eye of a needle? There was a reason for it wasn't there?
If only humanity as a whole would stop acting so selfishly. Let us begin to think about how are actions will affect those who come after us once and for all.
Blessings, people, blessings.
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