Roundup. Glyphosate! Those have become very
scary words for some people. Lately we've been seeing a lot of talk about
Glyphosate, and there is no shortage of negativity about the subject. I mean we
could talk about the allegations that Glyphosate causes cancer, we could talk
about it being banned in Brazil. We could talk about the controversy surrounding
the IARC's decision to call it a probable carcinogen. Or heck, we could even
talk about Glyphosate residue in kids breakfast cereals. We could talk about
all that, and it still wouldn't answer the most important question of all that
leads to all these stories. Why do farmers use Glyphosate? And why do they
fight so hard to be able to keep using it? First, the broad-strokes.
Glyphosate reduces tilling. Tilling
essentially means turning the soil, loosening it up, and tearing through all
the weeds. Tilling is, among other things, basically just weed control, and a huge
benefit to using Glyphosate with crops that tolerate it is that farmers can
adopt minimum or zero till growing systems they don't need to rip up the
dirt for the sake of weeds. They can just spray it.
So why no-till? Are farmers just like, lazy and looking to cut corners? No.
Tilling to control weeds is really really bad for soil erosion. Like all that good topsoil?
Just blows away. Tilling also releases greenhouse gases from the decomposition of organic matter
in the soil, and it decreases the overall water holding capacity of the dirt.
Why do farmers use Glyphosate? Because tilling less is better.
That was a simple one. That's done. Easy one out of the way.
To get a little deeper into this, we need data, which I have. For two crops in one Canadian province
We're talking corn and soy in Ontario Canada.
So between Return of The Jedi and Frozen... Because I measured time in movie releases,
The total amount of herbicide used in field corn in Ontario dropped 39% because: Glyphosate.
Glyphosate is applied at a lower rate of active ingredient per acre
than the herbicides that it replaced, and total herbicide applied still dropped
even though there was an 11% increase in the area of field corn grown so more
corn, but less chemical. Sounds like a win.
And in that same 30 year period the corn increased by 74% while the use of
herbicide per bushel of harvested corn declined by a whopping 70%
So that's like a lot more corn for a lot less chemical.
So that was corn. Now soybeans.
Between Risky Business and The Wolf of Wallstreet, the amount of soybeans grown
in Ontario increased by a hundred and eighty eight percent and total herbicide
use increased too - but just by 47%. And just like the corn this is largely due to
Glyphosate replacing other herbicides, and it did that in spectacular fashion.
In terms of all the herbicides used in Ontario, Glyphosate went from accounting
for 2% of all of it, to 82% in that 30 year period. Soybean yield increased by
53% in that same time frame and the amount of total herbicides applied
per bushel produced declined by 67 percent so again the main question: Why
do farmers use Glyphosate? Because using Glyphosate means using less chemical overall.
But the Assumption nowadays is that Glyphosate is super bad for you, right?
So the next question to get a handle on is does less chemical overall,
but like way more glyphosate overall actually mean a reduced risk for farmers or consumers?
And how would you measure that anyways? We need more data.
Luckily Ontario also publishes a report on the environmental risk associated
with the pesticides they use there. Smart. This report uses an environmental
impact quotient, an EIQ, to estimate the hazard associated with the use of a
given pesticide. An EIQ is basically like an indicator of a pesticide's potential to cause harm and it's
important because once you've determined a pesticide's EIQ you can compare it with
other pesticides to get a sense of the risk of each chemical. Now there are a
few acceptable ways to figure out an EIQ the one used by Ontario in this
report is based on 12 different data points collected by testing pesticides in the lab.
Things like short and long term toxicity in lab animals, half-life,
does it leach into runoff? Does it tend to circulate through a plant's tissues?
How toxic is it to organism that it's not meant to affect. Like that kind of stuff
So you run the EIQ for Glyphosate and you get 15.3 which the tenth lowest EIQ of all the
pesticides measured in this report. And compared to other herbicides that it's
replaced like Atrazine or Metolachlor,
Metolachlor... Is that right?
Anyways Glyphosate is just a better choice.
Why do farmers use Glyphosate? Because the stuff it replaced was worse. But wait!
You say, CANCER! You yell. Yeah okay, let's yes let's talk about the cancer. So this Glyphosate
causes cancer things started with a 2015 report from the International Agency for
research on cancer the IARC, which in turn is part of the World Health Organization.
So the IARC classified Glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans.
and from there things got crazy.
Glyphosate has kind of been in a global downward spiral since then, but
when you look at this ruling by the IARC some interesting details begin to
emerge that frankly cast a little doubt on it. The IARC report took account of
only published toxicity data on Glyphosate even though more data existed,
some of which might have changed their ruling. The IARC report also did not
include a health risk assessment that would have taken into account how
Glyphosate is actually used. I mean alcohol is carcinogenic too but you can still
drink a little bit of it every day and still live a long fulfilling life and
have grandchildren and all that so how much glyphosate exposure over time is safe?
They never said. Interesting... Also interesting: The IARC had an early draft
of this report that contains some findings that didn't fit with their
carcinogenic conclusion, so they edited those out. Oh, and my favorite detail: One
of the IARC's advisors Christopher Portier didn't disclose that he was paid
160 grand by law firms bringing claims by cancer victims against the
manufacturers of Glyphosate. Like for example the law firms who will
potentially make millions from that recent 289 million dollar lawsuit
against Monsanto. Hmmm... That's like, the scandalous tabloid stuff. On the boring
data-driven side though there's more. It's pretty important to understand that
the department's that govern Glyphosate in a given country have access to like
way more data than the IARC does, and besides double-checking published
data, these government agencies also look at the huge body of toxicity studies
from other countries that use Glyphosate. There's quite a bit of double-checking
and confirmation happening across so many countries that if a problem did
show up, every country would know about it before the IARC would anyways.
Countries also update their information on all the pesticides they use on a
really regular basis, like Canada and the USA do so every 15 years and basically
all of the countries that have reviewed Glyphosate recently have reconfirmed its
safety in spite of the IARC's findings. So in March 2017 the European Chemicals Agency,
yes that's Europe as in the anti-GMO EU, they said that they didn't find
Glyphosate to be carcinogenic. Huh. In December 2017 the US Environmental
Protection Agency released a paper stating that it reviewed close to 170
epidemiological, animal carcinogenicity and genotoxicity studies and that the
data didn't support a carcinogenic label for Glyphosate. In April 2017 Canada's
Pest Management Regulatory Agency released its reevaluation of Glyphosate
and said that it's unlikely to pose a human cancer risk. When asked why their
findings differed from the IARC's findings, they said "...the level of human
exposure, which determines the actual risk, was not taken into account by the IARC
Now I'm not a regulatory expert but it seems as though the IARC has
fallen victim to fear-based rhetoric and bad science at best and like straight-up
bribery and altering of evidence at worst. I think I probably need to do a
video on this "probably carcinogenic" thing just on its own. Then again that
probably carcinogenic finding is also key in the recent US 289 million
dollar lawsuit against Monsanto that alleges that Roundup caused a man's
non-hodgkins lymphoma. So that's a video too... That lawsuit also fired up the EU's
Anti-chemical protesters too though, and that had a major impact on the EU's
recent decision to ban crops made with CRISPR technology and mutagenesis.
That needs its own video too - that's a lot of Glyphosate talk. But the timing is right
for Glyphosate talk, which is partially why the Environmental Working Group
recently pitted mothers against Cheerios with their suspiciously timely study that
alleges that there are dangerous levels of Glyphosate residue in kid's breakfast
cereals. That's a heaping pile of video That I need to make right there.
Okay, times are just generally tough for Glyphosate, it's getting squeezed all
over the world by people who just want to see its use discontinued. But banning
Glyphosate doesn't make weeds disappear. Banning Glyphosate doesn't stop farmers
from having to choose something to deal with weeds. So why do farmers use
Glyphosate? Because it works. Thanks for watching.
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