Roundup Ready Crops

With increasing pressure for higher crop yields, there has been extensive use of the broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which is manufactured in the United States by Monsanto and makes use of the active ingredient glyphosate. Since 1980, Roundup has been the best-selling herbicide around the world. To use the herbicide, Monsanto has been involved in the production of seeds that have been genetically engineered so that they are tolerant to glyphosate; these are known as Roundup Ready crops. This allows farmers to plant their seeds—purchased from Monsanto—and then use Roundup to prevent the emergence of weeds. With Roundup heavily used by private individuals in garden maintenance and also by local governments in removing weeds from roadsides, glyphosate has been found to be effective in removing grasses and also woody and broadleaf plants.

Essentially, much of the debate about green food centers on the nature of genetically modified (GM) crops and whether these are safe for human consumption over long periods of time. The debate over GM crops hinges not only on whether they are safe for consumption but also on whether they should be labeled as “GM crops” when sold in stores; the other factor is that most of the seeds sold by Monsanto are capable of crops for only one season. This means that each year the farmers have to buy seeds from Monsanto, making them dependent on the company, which can, after it has achieved a monopoly position, increase the price at which it sells the seeds.

At this time, the available Roundup Ready crops include soybeans, maize/corn, canola, sugar beet, and cotton—the latter obviously not for consumption and therefore having far fewer problems with environmental activists. Roundup Ready wheat and alfalfa are currently in development. The arguments for Monsanto's promoting Roundup Ready crops essentially rest on the fact that crop yields are higher and that the crops themselves are safe. They also argue that there is no major effect on the environment.

All these debates are also central to the Roundup Ready crops, and all are keenly contested. According to Monsanto, the crop yields produced are between 7 and 11 percent higher than would otherwise be the case. In contrast, some environmentalists have claimed that there is a 6.7 percent lower yield. However, many would argue that whichever is the case, the yield is not important because the crops themselves are contaminated by the use of Roundup.

Clearly, as an herbicide Roundup is toxic and not meant for human consumption, and hence its use on food crops has brought the issue of its use in conjunction with food crops into focus. Monsanto initially countered by arguing that Roundup is “practically non-toxic” to mammals, birds, and fish. There are claims that Roundup is far safer for use with [Page 378]crops than many other herbicides, and the research has tended to bear this out. That some types of clover, often found in gardens, are not affected much by Roundup shows that some plants have, or have developed, a resistance to the herbicide. But Monsanto has gone further and has argued that Roundup does not pollute the environment, and at one stage the company even went so far as to state that it was safer than table salt—the latter, obviously, in large quantities is detrimental to the growing of many crops, as in the apocryphal story of the Romans sowing the ruins of Carthage with salt to prevent the locals from growing any crops there afterward—a story believed now to be untrue.

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