On September 28, the New York Times featured an article by industry shill Michael Grunwald titled “Spraying Roundup on Crops is Fine. Really.” Carrying such a claim under the Times’ “series on environmental health” was ironic if not oxymoronic. Mr. Grunwald’s pesticide apologetics gaslight Americans about the profound long-term threats posed by chemicals such as glyphosate
The usual corporate tropes predominated: that “[t]here’s overwhelming evidence that GMOs are safe” and that “glyphosate happens to be one of the most benign forms of weed control,” and that “less intensive farms …make less food per acre need more acres and more deforestation to make the same amount of food.” All of these claims are easily debunked.
Some 181,000 people have sued glyphosate’s manufacturer, Bayer, claiming the substance caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma, with several juries awarding punitive damages in excess of a billion dollars against the company for failing to adequately warn users of the chemical’s risks. Calling this chemical benign ignores its impacts on soil and gut microbes, which are inadequately tested. Cocaine is “more benign” than fentanyl – that doesn’t mean cocaine is harmless. There is nothing “benign” about glyphosate: the proper description would be “less toxic,” itself debatable given industry capture of the EPA and other U.S. regulatory bodies.
Second, even if regenerative agriculture were less productive on a per-acre basis (it isn’t), the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides Mr. Grunwald praises as salvific increase soil erosion and water loss, threatening future productivity and water supplies. Organic farming traditions preserve water and rebuild soils – bison on the plains built the soils being decimated by industrial-scale tilling and chemical applications that also release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Rotationally grazed livestock are the key to restoring that which Mr. Grunwald’s praised methods have destroyed.
Glyphosate becomes less effective over time as “superweeds” develop resistance to its toxic effects, requiring increased levels of application or the use of “less benign” pesticides. Aldo Leopold warned about exactly this biological reality in his 1939 essay, “A Biotic View of Land.” Leopold depicted the plant and animal community through a ‘biotic pyramid’ as an energy circuit, with soil as its foundation. Farming extracts energy from soil, which must be recharged naturally. Leopold explained:
“The process of altering the pyramid for human occupation releases stored energy, and this often gives rise, during the pioneering period, to a deceptive exuberance of plant and animal life, both wild and tame. These releases of biotic capital tend to becloud or delay the penalties of violence.”
Grunwald ignores this biological reality in favor of ever-greater soil destruction through chemical violence. In his shameless article, he praised the techno-mystical promises of mRNA technologies and bashed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for reducing funding for mRNA-related research with the platitude “Maybe it isn’t purely natural, but it’s good.”
Where is the science for such a claim? Mr. Grunwald writes, “Chemical fertilizers do help crops grow. Chemical herbicides and insecticides do kill weeds, insects, and other pests.” More gaslighting – soil microbes are what feed plants: chemical fertilizers deplete them and soil nutrients. The herbicide atrazine readily enters drinking water supplies, where it can remain for a long time. Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that mimics estrogen and causes cancer. It is “more benign” than paraquat, though, so using Grunwald’s logic, it’s A.O.K. for children’s food supplies.
What Mr. Grunwald labels as “pseudoscientific MAHA opposition” to pesticides is simple common sense. What he offers in defense of GMO cropping and their chemical dependency is worse than pseudoscientific – it is dangerous misinformation that undermines small-scale family farms and 500,000,000 peasant farmers globally.
This is faux environmentalism and corporate propaganda. Americans are learning what the truth is, and do not want their children drinking this toxic ideological Kool-Aid any longer.
(Note: This piece was submitted to the New York Times for publication as a rebuttal to this obnoxious corporate propaganda but was declined.)
