Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup has created a new category of superweeds that are heavily resistant to the herbicide that Roundup contains known as glyphosate.
These resistant weeds currently cover over 4.5 hectares in the United States alone, though experts estimate the world-wide land coverage to have reached at least 120 million hectares by 2010. The onset of superweeds is being increasingly documented in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa.
Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
November 30, 2011
Meanwhile, Monsanto pushes its genetically modified crops and biopesticides under the guise of helping the environment and reducing pesticide use. In reality, the resistant weeds are now so resistant to Roundup that they require significantly more pesticides. Due to the large-scale use of Roundup, pesticide spraying will have to increase worldwide in order to combat the new superweeds. Of course the company is refusing to accept responsibility for the escalating cost of combating the weeds, stating that “Roundup agricultural warranties will not cover the failure to control glyphosate resistant weed populations.”
Superweeds, Mutant Insects, and a Devastated Environment
Roundup is not the only Monsanto invention tearing up the environment and producing super resistant organisms. The usage of genetically modified Bt, a biopesticide manufactured by Monsanto, has created a number of new mutated insect species. Research has confirmed that at least 8 populations of insects have developed resistance, with 2 populations resistant to Bt sprays and 6 species resistant to Bt crops as a whole. As a result, biotech scientists are now further genetically modifying the Bt to kill the mutated insects. This is despite the fact that tests have indicated that the additional modification will provide ‘little or no advantage’ in fending off the super insects.All of this is being done instead of simply turning to sustainable and organic farming practices that do not yield super resistant, mutated organisms of any kind. Even the researchers conducting the research on Bt concluded that alternative organic farming methods would provide a more environmentally-friendly alternative in which there would be no dependence on bloated corporations like Monsanto:
Alternative organic, sustainable methods of farming provide a realistic alternative, independent of reliance on agrobiotech corporations.
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