When the weed killer Roundup was launched in the seventies, it proved it could kill almost any plant yet still be less dangerous than a number of other herbicides, and it helped farmers to give up harsher chemical compounds and lower tilling which could promote erosion. But 24 years later, a couple of sturdy types of weed immune to Roundup have developed, driving farmers to go back to a number of the less environmentally safe methods they left behind many years ago. The situation is the most severe within the South, in which a number of farmers now walk fields using hoes, eliminating weeds in ways their great-grandfathers were happy to leave behind.

St. Louis-based Monsanto maintains the resistance is often overstated, observing that a lot of weeds present no sign of immunity. “We think that glyphosate will remain a significant tool inside the farmers’ collection,” Monsanto spokesperson John Combest said. The company has started out paying cotton farmers $12 an acre to pay for the price of other herbicides to use alongside Roundup to improve its effectiveness. The popularity has proved some food protection groups’ notion that biotechnology will not reduce the use of chemicals over time.”That is getting reversed,” said Bill Freese, a chemist with the Washington, D.C.-based Center For Food Safety, that promotes organic agriculture. “They are going to considerably enhance use of those chemical compounds, and that is not so great. “The first weeds within the U.S. that survived Roundup were observed about a decade ago in Delaware.

“That’s being reversed,” said Bill Freese, a chemist with the Washington, D.C.-based Center For Food Safety, which endorses organic farming. “They are going to significantly maximize utilization of those chemicals, and that’s bad news.” The first weeds inside the U.S. which lived through Roundup were discovered about 10 years ago in Delaware. Farming experts said the usage of other chemicals has already been sneaking up. Monsanto and other companies are developing new seeds designed to withstand older herbicides such as dicamba and 2,4-D, a weed killer formulated in the second world war and an element in Agent Orange, that was used to destroy rainforest foliage in the course of the Vietnam War and is blamed for health issues among veterans.

Dicamba and 2,4-D both easily drift past the areas where they are dispersed, which makes them a threat to neighboring vegetation and wild plants, Mortensen said. That, subsequently, may also endanger wildlife. “We’re discovering that the (wild) crops that grow on the field edges actually assist beneficial insects, just like bees,” he stated. In Australia, weed scientist Stephen Powles has been a sort of evangelist for preserving Roundup, calling it a near-miraculous farming device.

Australia has been coping with Roundup-resistant weeds ever since the mid 1990s, but changes in farming practices have helped ensure that it stays successful, Powers said. That has included by using a broader array of herbicides to kill off Roundup resistant weeds and employing other ways of weed control. Those alternative methods, such as planting so-called cover crops like rye to hold back weeds throughout the winter as well as other instances when fields are not grown with corn, soybeans or cotton, would be the key, said Freese, the Center For Food Safety chemist. Or else, he said, “We’re talking a pesticide treadmill here. It’s only finding its way back to kick us in the butt now with resilient weeds.