Monsanto in dispute with veggie farmers
Developing new tougher crops may have a downside
American farmers are among the biggest supporters of genetically modified crops on the planet, saying you can’t argue with the results of higher yields for less work, in spite of concerns — especially in Europe — about Frankenfoods. But even U.S. farmers have their limits.
They’re going public in what to date has been a back-room battle with two big agricultural giants over herbicides sprayed on certain crops. The farmers believe what’s at stake is not only their livelihoods but possibly the social fabric of America’s farming communities.
The problem: One agricultural company has agreed with the farmers’ concerns and changed its plans. Another, is resisting.
This group of Midwest vegetable farmers has failed to convince Monsanto to reformulate an herbicide that could become one of the most widely used in the nation. But Dow AgroSciences agreed to make changes.
Monsanto officials “have just dug their feet in,” said Steve Smith, chairman of the Save Our Crops group. The trouble concerns two herbicides, 2,4-D and dicamba. Both have been used for more than 40 years in small amounts, but are about to get a lot more popular. The reason: New corn and soybean varieties genetically modified to withstand these herbicides are expected to be approved in the next few years.
The veggie farmers are concerned about a long-standing problem with the herbicides — something called drift — when pesticides sprayed to kill weeds in one field waft into neighboring fields, damaging and killing nearby crops. In California in 2012, herbicide sprayed in the San Joaquin Valley drifted and damaged cotton fields 100 miles away.
Since 1996, farmers have been planting genetically modified crops that can survive being sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate, known to backyard gardeners as Roundup. Farmers let both crops and weeds grow up a few weeks, and then spray with glyphosate. The weeds die. The glyphosate-resistant crops don’t.
But through “overuse and misuse,” weeds have become resistant to the herbicide, said Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. That’s pushed agricultural companies to work double time to come up with new seed varieties resistant to stronger herbicides.
ONE YEAR AWAY
If the regulatory process continues without hiccups, Dow is about a year away from the first sales of its Enlist corn and soybeans, resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D. Monsanto is estimated to be about two years away from selling Roundup Ready 2 Extend corn and soy. These are resistant to the herbicide dicamba.
Both 2,4-D and dicamba are known to drift. The herbicides are applied to fields as a liquid, said Franklin Egan a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Most falls to the ground but some “can evaporate and move as a gas,” he said.
Farmers fear with millions more acres being sprayed with drift-prone chemicals, their fields of potatoes, tomatoes, squash, beans and peas will be in danger.
“You have a lot of crops that are sensitive to these herbicides,” said Neil Rhodes, director of the herbicide stewardship at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Egan agrees. Vegetable farmers in the Midwest, where large amounts of corn and soybeans are grown, will be at “high risk” because they’ll be in close proximity to fields being sprayed with 2,4-D and dicamba, he said.
Save Our Crops member Jody Herr has seen it happen. He farms 2,800 acres in Lowell, Ind.
“I grow sweet corn, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant as well as corn and soy,” he said.
In June, the plants in one of his tomato fields began to grow wrong. “The leaves were curled, the branches were twisted and misshapen,” he said.
Herr recognized the damage as typical for dicamba. He hadn’t used it on his fields, but a neighbor had — on a field a mile and a half away.
NEIGHBOR VS. NEIGHBOR
He worries that if use of these two herbicides ramps up and nothing is done, it won’t just damage fields, it will damage the fabric of farming communities themselves.
“You’re accusing your neighbor of harming your stuff. You’ve got to live with these people your whole life, and your children will live with their children,” he said.
The vegetable growers and processors came together to work on the issue. They first approached Dow in 2011.
“They weren’t exactly thrilled,” said Save our Crops’ Smith. But “we ended up finding some solutions that work for both of us.”
“We can’t create an issue for one set of our customers to benefit another set of customers,” said Dow spokesman Garry Hamlin.
Dow not only reformulated 2,4-D to make it less prone to vaporize and drift, but also rewrote the label to restrict farmers from using it when the wind was blowing toward a sensitive crop.
“They were good corporate citizens,” said CSPI’s Jaffe.
Save Our Crops met with Monsanto in 2013. “It became real apparent they were intent on not making any changes,” Smith said.
Monsanto’s director of corporate affairs, Tom Helscher, said via e-mail, “We are confident that Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant crops will provide farmers an additional tool for effective weed control that can coexist with the row and specialty crops grown by the Coalition’s members.”
Smith called Monsanto’s proposed label restrictions “woefully inadequate.” The company “has so far been unwilling to constructively address, as Dow did, the very real threats growers face.”