Humankind vs Weeds - The Epic Battle

The Center For Food Safety recently touched off a controversy by using a misleading and manipulative term - “Agent Orange Corn” to describe a biotech (GMO) trait working its way through the regulatory process.  The technology will make corn, and later other crops, tolerant to a herbicide named 2,4-D.  In the early 1960s that was one ingredient in a defoliant mix used by the US military in Vietnam; however, a one minute Wikipedia search shows that the terrible health issues with Agent Orange were caused by an unrecognized dioxin contaminant in the other herbicide in the mix.  Since that time, 2,4-D has passed decades of increasingly strict safety reviews.  It still used in 70 countries and is a common ingredient in the products homeowners use to control weeds in their lawns.  Such facts have not prevented elements of the blogosphere, Organic and environmental community from spreading the disinformation.  The credulous reception of this message suggests that there is a need to explain the importance of chemical weed control to the non-farming public.

Weeds are serious business.  Ever since humans began to farm more than 10,000 years ago, they have battled weeds.  It has been a struggle of literally, “Biblical proportions.” In Moses’ narrative of “The Fall” in the Hebrew scriptures (written ~4000 BCE), Adam and Eve are not only removed from the Garden of Eden, they were each given a specific curse which would continue to effect their respective sexes:  Eve got “pain in childbirth.” Adam got weeds.  “Accursed be the soil because of you!  …It will yield you brambles and thistles… By the sweat of your face will you earn your food ...”  (Genesis 3:16-19).  In developed nations like the US, this “curse” falls mainly on the >1% of the labor force that still farms.  The rest of us need to understand their situation.

For millennia there were two ways to grapple with weeds - pull or hoe them with intense human labor, or tolerate their yield-limiting effects.  Then, in the early 18th century the ancient battle with weeds began to change.  An English agronomist named Jethro Tull (not the epic rock band), began promoting “horse-hoe husbandry.” Farmers could use simple, animal-drawn machinery to plant crops in neat rows and then physically destroy the weeds in between (tillage).  Crop yields increased as did the amount of land that one individual could farm.  Tractors accelerated these trends.  However, there was an environmental downside.

Mechanical tillage greatly increased soil erosion and the water pollution associated with it.  In some areas tillage contributed to the “Dust Bowl.”  As soil is tilled and re-tilled, it declines in its ability to store nutrients and to capture and hold rain water. Beyond these issues, tillage did not fully remove ”Adam’s curse.”   Weeds like Canada thistle and Native Bindweed are quite efficiently spread over fields by tillage equipment.  

Though soil degradation continued, the need for tillage was essentially unquestioned until 1943 when Edward Faulkner wrote his radical book, “The Plowman’s Folly,”  questioning the need for tillage in agriculture.  That idea, and the advent of chemical herbicides, led scientists and farmers to explore ways to farm without major soil disruption.  In 1960 farmers began the first commercial-scale attempts to farm without plows or harrows.  The “No-Till” movement began.

The original drivers for attempting “No-till” were soil erosion and fuel costs. It soon became clear that “no-till farming” had many more advantages: reduced water pollution, rainwater conservation, and restoration of soil quality. As no-till advanced, some farmers were not only dealing with the curse of weeds, but also doing so in a way that was far better for the environment than in the old days of “the plow.”  The introduction of herbicide tolerant biotech crops (GMO) in the late 1990s increased the adoption of no-till farming methods.  There is much more room for adoption of no-till and related, sustainable farming advances, but this is clearly the direction we need to go.

Unfortunately, the curse of weeds remained.  It was widely expected that weeds would eventually be selected which were resistant to the herbicides used on biotech crops.  This had happened with many classes of chemicals before biotech.  The slight surprise was how long it took.  Several important weeds have now become resistant to “Roundup®” starting yet another chapter in the ancient battle with weeds.  What farmers can do is to follow “resistance management practices” by switching herbicide “modes of action” and other methods to stay a step ahead of their old enemy.  The 2,4-D resistance trait in the recent controversy is being developed specifically for that purpose.  That, and other new herbicide resistant crops that are in the pipeline, would be welcomed by farmers still battling “Adam’s curse” of weeds, and they will hopefully help even more farmers maintain, or make the challenging transition to no-till farming. 

There is more at stake than progress with no-till.  Since 2007, we have entered a period of volatile global food prices and supply problems that are unprecedented in modern history.  We are trying to feed more people, feed many of them better than in the past, and to do so in a time of climate change that will only make farming riskier.  This is no time for non-farmers to begrudge the farmers any tools which pass muster in our regulatory framework.  The weeds have shown that they will always be there, as will be the need to deploy new technologies in a prudent manner. 

The Marketing Of Non-Existence

As American consumers, we frequently purchase food and beverage products based on what is not in them.  Whether it is the level of an ingredient (low fat, low carb…) or the complete absence of an ingredient (fat free, no cholesterol, no HFCS…), products are now defined by what they do not contain, rather than what they do contain.  This is such a common element of our experience that it does not even strike us as odd.  If you step back and think about food from a historical or global perspective this is absurd; having enough food to survive has been a common issue for human survival.  Instead, we have become numb to “The Marketing of Non-Existence.” 

What does this say about our society?

I believe this phenomenon says five, inter-related things about us.

• 1.     We are wealthy
• 2.     We are not well versed in basic nutritional principles
• 3.     We have a tendency towards “magical thinking” when it comes to health
• 4.     We are thus susceptible to manipulative marketing strategies, and
• 5.     We are largely unprotected from the “fear industry” associated with food

We are Wealthy

Although few of us think of ourselves this way, most Americans are quite wealthy, spending 10% or less of our income on food, which includes costs for convenience in addition to actual nutrients.   Our choices are about the details of what and how we will get our food and almost never about whether we can eat well or even eat at all.  Indeed, as our obesity epidemic demonstrates, our food issue is one of over-availability.  We are accustomed to buying foods based on non-existence features, possibly because the existence of plentiful food is never a question.

We Are Not Well-Versed in Basic Nutritional Principles

In 1990 Congress passed the “Nutrition Labeling and Education Act” (NLEA).  That law established the requirement for the official nutritional content labeling, which has been on the “back of the package” for foods for the intervening twenty-two years.  The law also called for developing and implementing a comprehensive program to educate the public on basics of nutrition and on how to properly interpret the new labels.  Unfortunately, Congress never authorized the funds for the education part, and so we have nutrition labels that few people know how to interpret.  The difference between the official FDA labeling and the largely unregulated marketing labels is obscured.

We Have A Tendency Towards Magical Thinking When It Comes To Health

Lacking basic background, and being confronted with less-than-balanced sources of “information,” we tend to grasp at simplistic ideas about how to stay healthy.  If we avoid cholesterol maybe we won’t have a heart attack.  If we just avoid fat, we can become thin.  The reality of our need for a moderate and diverse diet with reasonable exercise is lost amid the marketing messages.

We Are Susceptible To Manipulative Marketing Messages

During a period where “saturated fat” topped the non-existence agenda there was a major marketing campaign using the “front of the package” label that said, “No Tropical Oils.”  Palm and coconut oils are indeed saturated fats, but the drive to get consumers to avoid them was less about health and more about being able to sell more soybean oil.  Soybeans are mainly grown for their protein content to be used in animal feeds, but they also contain 20% oil.  The soybean processing industry wanted to expand their sales into food categories by pushing out tropical and animal based fats.  The problem is that soybean oil has properties that make it unsuitable for making a butter substitute (margarine), for many baked goods, or for use as frying oil in the quick-serve restaurant industry.  To fit those uses, soybean oil had to be “partially hydrogenated,” a process by which its excessive “unsaturation” was reduced.  This process generated “trans-fats” which are forms of fat that do not occur naturally in plants and are rare in animals. These are not healthy oils at all.  So, this example of non-existence, faux health marketing ended up shifting the American diet towards something far worse for their health - something actually worth avoiding.

We Are Largely Unprotected From A Fear Industry Associated With Food

Having been exposed to such a string of messages saying “this is what makes food dangerous,” one might think that consumers would become skeptical about yet another scare.  Instead, it seems that we are a society that has become ever more credulous about each new, sensationalized, food-bogeyman.  RBST, HFCS, arsenic, pesticides, gluten, GMOs… all become subject to over-simplified, distorted, messages that help someone sell something, raise funds, or attract an audience.  

So, this is our sad situation.  We are a nation that has a food supply that is perhaps the safest, most diverse, abundant, and affordable in history.  Yet, rather than enjoying that privilege, too many of us either worry excessively about food choices, feel guilty, or make poor choices. 

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