Our current, conventional food system is based on the use of glyphosate, an herbicide which is designed to kill all green plants.  (Remember for a minute that all of our oxygen and food comes from green plants. Then consider a business plan that depends on selling more of this green-plant-killing chemical every year.)

In 1970, a Monsanto scientist discovered that glyphosate killed plants. The company started marketing it as Roundup® in 1973 and held exclusive rights in this country until its patents expired in 2000.  Now glyphosate and its formulations are made by many other toxic chemical companies all over the world. Over 100 million pounds of this herbicide are applied in this country alone; about half a billion pounds are applied worldwide, every year!

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup.  You can buy it almost anywhere in a convenient spray bottle or by the gallon. You may presently have some in your home.   Town and state governments spray it freely along our roadsides. (For a long time Monsanto advertised Roundup as “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly.” In 1997, the New York Attorney General sued the company to stop that deceptive advertising.  Monsanto paid a fine and stopped using that marketing strategy, at least in New York.)

Glyphosate’s most extensive use, however, is in the industrial food system where it is sprayed on the vast majority of our food crops.  That’s because the plants have been engineered by the makers of Roundup and other herbicides to resist death when sprayed with this chemical.  What is actually sprayed on our food crops is mixture of glyphosate with various, undisclosed “other ingredients” that make up over half of this toxic cocktail.

Roundup Ready® is the dominant brand in herbicide-tolerant crops.  Roundup Ready corn, Roundup Ready soybeans, Roundup Ready canola, alfalfa, sugar beets, cotton, lawn grass, etc.  You get the picture.  Roundup Ready wheat, potatoes, tomatoes and lettuce aren’t on the market yet, but they have been in development for years.  (Just so wheat doesn’t feel left out, helpful agricultural scientists discovered that they could spray Roundup on wheat just before harvest, to help it dry and kill weeds for the next crop.  More sales. Farmers are encouraged to spray Roundup before harvest, called dry down, to barley, oats, canola, flax, peas, lentils, soybeans and dry beans.)