Industrial No-Till Agriculture Increases Pesticide Use and Harms Soil – New Report

A new report from Friends of the Earth refutes that industrial no-till agriculture is “regenerative.” Based on a first-of-its-kind analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, the report finds that most no-till systems are so heavily dependent on toxic herbicides to manage weeds that a staggering one-third of the U.S.’s total annual pesticide use (a term that includes herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides) can be attributed to no- and minimum-till GMO corn and soy production alone.

Chemical-intensive agriculture predominates in the U.S. not through the fault of farmers, but because that is what public policies and markets support. Farmers have widely adopted no-till to minimize soil erosion and now must be supported to also reduce agrochemical inputs.

The report finds that the vast majority (93%) of acreage of the top two no- and minimum-till crops, corn and soy, use high levels of toxic herbicides that have devastating consequences for soil life and human health. These chemicals, being broadcast across nearly 100 million acres nationwide, predominantly in the Heartland and Great Plains, have been linked to cancer, birth defects, infertility, neurotoxicity, disruption of the gut microbiome, endocrine disruption, and more. The majority (61%) of use is chemicals that are classified as highly hazardous. Glyphosate, the cancer-linked main ingredient in the widely criticized weedkiller Roundup, is the most widely used herbicide in no-till corn and soy.