By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

NEW YORK, N.Y. — A Michigan State University (MSU) agricultural economist was among those who participated in a discussion of what to do about weeds that have developed resistance to the herbicide glyphosate.

Scott Swinton, a professor of agricultural, food and resource economics at MSU, offered his views in a May 6 discussion on The New York Times online blog site. Others that participated were the writer and food guru Michael Pollan, professor of plant biology at the University of Western Australia Stephen Powles, Missouri farmer Blake Hurst, author and founder of the Small Planet Institute Anna Lappe’ and Michael D.K. Owen, a professor of agronomy and an extension weed scientist at Iowa State University.

Swinton, along with most of the other participants, takes the view that “the baby shouldn’t be thrown out with the bath water”; however, Pollan and Lappe’ expressed their views that the development of glyphosate resistant weeds is evidence that the ways of modern production agriculture, with its use of biotechnology and pesticides, is the wrong approach to growing food.
Swinton uses a warrior analogy to explain what is going on with herbicide resistant weeds and what to do about it.

“To overcome these new ‘superweeds,’ farmers need to take a leaf from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: study the opponent and find its weaknesses,” he writes.

Swinton goes on to advise that farmers need to “study” the weeds in the crops, since some weeds are more easy to control than others. If there are only a few weeds they may not cause enough damage to make it worth the cost of using weed control.

He also recommends a computer program called WeedSoft, which was developed by a consortium of land grant university researchers. WeedSoft, which is now available online, “can help farmers find the weapon to exploit their enemies’ weaknesses.”

He also recommends changing herbicides, as well as rotating crops to break up weed cycles. Swinton then takes up the analogy of antibiotic-resistant germs.

“Just as antibiotic-resistant germs have forced physicians to spend more time on diagnosis, so glyphosate-resistant weeds will force farmers to spend more time on weed diagnosis,” he writes. “This will raise their weed control costs. Unfortunately, many herbicide substitutes for glyphosate are more toxic, so the public may have to choose between higher environmental costs and higher food costs for nonchemical weed control.”

Michael Pollan, a frequent critic of modern production agriculture, writes in his article that all of this was predictable and that Monsanto misled people into thinking that glyphosate resistant weeds might not develop.

“Monocultures are inherently precarious,” he writes. “The very success of Roundup Ready crops have been their undoing, since so many acres were planted with the same seed, and doused with the same chemical, resistance came quickly. Resilience, and long-term sustainability, comes from diversifying fields, not planting them all to the same kind of seed.”

Lappe’, too believes that glyphosate resistant weeds are “a dangerous and underreported consequence of genetically-engineered crops. We need to manage weeds and pests through natural processes, not toxic chemicals.”

Hurst, the farmer from Missouri, writes that he hasn’t seen a big problem with Roundup-resistant weeds on his farm. He believes it’s because he only uses Roundup every other year, and alternates the kinds of chemicals he uses on his crops; however, he concedes he will probably see an increase in resistant weeds.

“None of this is surprising,” he writes. “Of course weeds evolve, and certainly some farmers have overused a wonderful tool, just as doctors have over prescribed antibiotics.”

Powles, the professor of plant biology from the University of Western Australia, also uses antibiotics and resistant germs as an analogy.

“The herbicide is as important for global food production as penicillin is for human health,” he writes.

Owen, the weed scientist from Iowa State, writes that it’s hard to tell what the superweeds problem portends for production agriculture.
“However, based on my experience, the risk of herbicide-resistant weeds can be addressed effectively by observing some basic principles of ecology and adjusting management tactics,” he writes.