Check out this article to learn what we know about some aspects of the environmental and crop effects of glyphosate:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6918143
The upshot of the above journal review is simply that we don’t know much. The other takeaway is that there are, in spite of the general understanding of glyphosate in the ag world, some serious concerns that have been ignored or glossed over. We learned the hard way that the presumed lack of soil activity following glyphosate application is false. Highly sensitive species of native plants definitively suffer POST_EMERGENCE decline and mortality. This isn’t supposed to happen, according to the word on the street, and the label on the product itself. Here is the label for Round-up Ultra-Max:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9697524
Interestingly, the label is formatted to prevent copy-paste functions. I have found that people with things to hide throw up these kinds of flimsy barriers. In any case, a deeper dive into reputable literature reveals that Round-up does indeed have soil activity. We lost tens of thousands of spiraea and mock orange entirely to post-emergence effects of Round-up before we decided enough is enough.
Pride, greed and ignorance + chemicals = unintended consequences. That’s a formula we should all know by now.
So I’ll admit to all of the above. I went along with the general consensus in ag and forestry that glyphosate is harmless. I accepted that it is 1) immobilized in soils through adsorption, 2) rapidly degraded into harmless metabolites by soil microbes, 3) not a groundwater contaminant, and 4) not a threat to human or other animal health. Having already accepted items 1-3 twenty and thirty years ago, I read a few journal articles on toxicity, yawned and then went on to use my share of round-up.
Turns out, 1 is true but leaky and unreliable, and 2 and 3 are false. Glyphosate is frequently found in groundwater, and even more frequently found in surface water. Groundwater detections in areas of intensive ag use in the US range up to 40%. That ain’t nothing. Of even greater concern, the primary metabolite of glyphosate, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), is more mobile, more toxic and more persistent in soils, groundwater and surface water. And as usual, any research into metabolites is just an afterthought because the metabolites themselves are not the pesticides being studied and registered. How dumb is that? That’s like worrying about a nuclear detonation but then ignoring the fallout. Geez..thanks again, EPA.
Trump might dismember the EPA for all the wrong reasons, but gosh they deserve it. And anyone that would argue the point hasn’t bothered to look at the data and think about what it means. What it means is that from fertilized eggs to babies to adults to the grave, humans are awash in round-up and round-up metabolites. And as per usual, kids get the brunt of the chemical burden. In this study ( https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9697524/ ), 60-67% of kids had detectable quantities of AMPA in their urine, compared with 38-60% for adults. Is this OK? No it is not.
So to be very clear, this is not some raving, chemo-phobic Mother Earth rant. The peer-reviewed studies that I’m referencing are published in measured, reasonable journals. Like all such studies, they avoid unsupported claims of causation or hysterical alarmist language. This allows us to apply logic and thought to their findings. And the logic is pretty simple. We know so very little about biology. It is complex beyond our ability to comprehend, but it functions to support human life and all life on Earth. We are throwing monkey-wrenches into this marvelous machine left and right and expecting it to continue supporting us. Questioning the wisdom of our doing this is not raving, it’s just common sense.
So we have shed ourselves of Round-up here at the Farm, beginning this year. From 2026 on, we will no longer be applying Round-up or ANY inorganic pesticides anywhere on the property. For a large bare-root nursery, this is uncharted territory, but we have been in uncharted territory since the beginning. Just as we have for nearly a quarter-century, we are confident that we can make it work and still provide quality plants.
This is my challenge to the nursery industry, especially the farms producing native plants for environmental restoration. You cannot reconcile the application of methyl bromide on your farms and the intended end-uses of your plants. Methyl bromide is a powerful ozone-depleting chemical, and unlike Round-up, methyl bromide is violently toxic to humans. It is associated not only with tragic deaths, but also with debilitating neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and Parkinson’s, and you are unquestionably subjecting yourselves, your families and your employees to these risks. The rationale for the continued use of methyl bromide on nurseries when most other uses were banned in 2005 was predicated on the impossibility of economically growing nursery stock without it. We proved this false almost 25 years ago. We have matched or beaten your pricing the whole time, and we have not used an ounce of methyl bromide. I know the arsenal of other chemicals you are also using, and we have chosen not to use most of these either and are now forgoing all inorganic pesticides. If you can’t imagine taking this leap, at least please consider ditching methyl bromide. You don’t need it and we would be happy to share our techniques with you for free. Just give me a call and we’ll set up a time to look around.
My challenge to our customers: please hold the entire industry to account for its use of chemicals. The ends in this case (native plant restoration) do not justify the means.
Final note on glyphosate. We are at a point in time when we have to think about what we are doing and where we are headed. There MAY be a rationale to continue using chemicals like glyphosate for a while. There are 8 billion humans on Earth and counting, and if glyphosate was seriously toxic, most of us would be dead already. The health concerns with glyphosate, while serious and worthy of concern, are probably small relative to the burden of hundreds of thousands of other man-made toxic chemicals to which we are constantly exposed. Meanwhile, money doesn’t grow on trees, and Round-up is unquestionably one of the most powerful and economical tools we have to re-set landscapes severely infested with plants like Phalaris arundinacea and many other weeds, allowing us to re-establish long-lasting native cover. While we are exploring other ways to achieve good results without it, it may be that we have to continue to rely on this and a few other chemicals (e.g. metsulfuron-methyl, triclopyr) for a few more years.
But there are definitively other ways to go, including combinations of fire, intensive grazing and competitive exclusion, and it’s high time we start investigating these options in a serious way. I personally have demonstrated that it is possible to manage Phalaris, Rubus armeniacus and others by establishing heavy woody cover, for instance, without the use of any herbicides at all. Once converted to woody cover, it is also possible to use biomass removal (logging) followed by fire and grazing to restore prairies and woodlands. Let’s commit to exploring these sorts of long-term methods while we phase out chemicals and all of their associated damage, both the known and the unknown.
Until next time,
-George