Up until very recently I worked in forestry restoration; wilderness weedkilling, basically. Herbicides are essential for that job, and glyphosate is the main herbicide used.
Herbicide use is minimised; our typical work carry was a 100ml bottle of glyphosate. Snip weed with secateurs, dab a drop of glypho on the cut stem. However, there are situations where herbicide spraying is the least environmentally damaging option. Erosion control is a significant factor, as are resource limitations (i.e. too much hand weeding tears up the soil, and we don’t have infinite staff hours available).
With any of these issues, the key question is not “is there any evidence of negative impact?”, it’s “is there any evidence of negative impact that is worse than the alternatives?”.
Glyphosate is one of the most heavily researched chemicals of the modern era. Overall, its safety record in both human and environmental terms is astonishingly good, especially when compared to the alternatives.
Yes, it is likely that excessive use of glyphosate can create harmful effects, and that is worth paying attention to. But there is also a need for a holistic view which considers the environmental costs involved in restricting its use.
Which seems a false dichotomy as it is predicated on the assumption that chemical weed control is desirable in the first place. Simply put, all chemical weed control can bee seen as having a negative greater impact than not using them would.
Of course, reduced crop size could be seen as a negative impact just not a negative environmental impact. So, it then follows that restricting the use of all chemical weed control and not just glyphosate will result in the lowest possible environmental cost.
And here I thought we were discussing chemical weed control systems on tractors. But I suppose we can discuss controlling invasive species. Of course, first we would need to establish that invasive weed species destroying native flora is not part of the natural order of things whereby stronger candidates for survival should displace less suitable flora with a lower chance for survivability a la natural selection. Myself, I’m not convinced anyone should be controlling weeds with chemicals; invasive species or not. I mean, are we going to try to say maintaining your native bushland is so important that we should risk the collapse of the world bee population so you can say “Look here, this is a bit of native ugly useless plant. Isn’t that keen?” or “Without this plant, the over specialized and genetic dead end of a beetle species will not survive”
According to Carey Gillam, Monsanto has systematically suppressed information related to the true environmental impact of their herbicide products. Documents now coming to light in the many court cases against them are said to corroborate this. Monsanto has been known to employ shills to post disinformation to widely read blogs in favor of glyphosate.
Myself, I have seen the consequences of Roundup® use near my property - fish kills caused by state employees spraying the stuff around storm sewers, for example. The actual visible effects are not congruent with the claims made by Monsanto, so I will not use the stuff for any purpose. Monsanto are proven liars who do not have the best interests of my species at heart, so I choose not to give them my dollars, and support any action to prevent them from receiving any benefit of tax monies or government policy.
This is really a funding issue; sufficient funding isn’t being made available to do the work without glyphosate using public money, and private individuals who would like to work for the good of the interdependent web of life that makes human life possible are mostly too busy working to keep bread on their tables.
People doing their best to control environmental degradation by human introduction of invasive species can’t be faulted for this problem. They have a limited number of tools available to them and have to do the best they can.
I consider this responsible use. If it wasn’t for the fact that Monsanto is an anti-human force that I don’t want to financially support, I’d be totally OK with that. I completely understand why your former employers used it.
But personally I spend many hours pulling stuff up by the roots, and when weather conditions are suitable, I use a flamethrower.
It’s a large and difficult problem and Australia is something of a special case. But generally, you want to maximize species diversity on a planetary scale if you want humans to have an optimal living environment.
I completely agree. So, how is killing weeds in a monoculture crop zone increasing diversity?
Weeds add to the total biodiversity but we wipe them out because we decided to call them weeds.
Speaking as someone who has peas coming up in the garden: I have to pull weeds and fence out deer and encourage mantids and crush other insects if I want to have any crop at all.
If I do not aggressively manage my property, I will lose a great deal of species diversity, because the uneven introduction of non-native species without the complex predator/prey/disease/etc. relationships that normally allow them to exist in a stable equilibrium means species like lesser celandine, Japanese stilt-grass, Japanese honeysuckle, Australian mile-a-minute vine, Japanese hops, Chinese bittersweet, and European loosestrife will explode due to absence of predators and diseases, completely wiping out the native ecosystem. I have seen what happens when devil’s tear-thumb goes unchecked! Species diversity plummets.
But I’ve never found it necessary to use herbicide, fertilizer, or imported soils in my garden or property. Normal composting with food waste, leaves and grass clippings (I mow to keep down stiltgrass and ticks carrying Lyne’s disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever) generates enough good fertile soil for me.
Also I have my own definition of weeds which is pretty idiosyncratic. The highly aggressive native trailing bindweed I treat like kudzu, and for good reason, and I pull about 80% of the native wingstem, but I let naturalized non-invasive foreign species alone for the most part.
