Articles

Every year, about half of all US farmland is planted in corn and soy. Upward of 90 percent of soy and 70 percent of corn is engineered to withstand a herbicide called glyphosate through Monsanto's Roundup Ready seed lines. And after so many years of lashing so much land with the same herbicide, glyphosate-resistant superweeds are now vexing farmers and "alarming" weed control experts throughout the Midwest. Dow's 2,4-D-ready corn and soy seeds will be engineered to withstand glyphosate and 2,4-D, so farmers can douse their fields with both herbicides. According to an analysis of USDA data by the Center for Food Safety, farmers applied 4.9 million pounds of glyphosate to soybean crops in 1994, the year before Roundup Ready seeds hit the field. By 2006 (the last year for which there is data), glyphosate use in soybeans had hit 96.7 million pounds—a nearly 20-fold increase.