Renewable Farming

Facts about glyphosate and GMOs that we wish weren’t true

About 80% of our farmer neighbors here in the heart of the corn-soybean country really don’t want to hear the detailed, health-related research on glyphosate and genetically engineered crops.

The emerging facts threaten a simple farming formula they’ve enjoyed for more than 15 years: Plant corn and soybeans. Maybe spray with a premerge herbicide. Then spray glyphosate once or twice. Come back in the fall, and harvest.

Often, the co-op or custom operator does the dry fertilizing and spraying. 

Until the last six or seven years, those corn and soybean fields remained almost 100% weed-free. Glyphosate was an astoundingly effective herbicide, unequaled in history.  Safer than table salt. Not active outside of plants. And the traits in those crops are the only way to feed the world. So we were told, over and over. 

It’s not surprising that this paradigm has become firmly rooted.  Now, as evidence mounts exposing the pervasive health threats of the glyphosate/GMO syndrome, we can understand how reluctant the general farmer audience is to listen.

In the late 1980s, when Dave Larson founded AgriEnergy Resources at Princeton, IL, he often opened educational seminars with farmers by showing a movie describing the power of a “paradigm” (pronounced pare-a-dime). A paradigm is a worldview, an established framework for doing business or living a life. In the largest sense, a set of habits. A personal operating safety zone.

But in the past six or seven years, uncomfortable facts began mounting up regarding human and animal health, linked to transgenic crops, and particularly to glyphosate. Dozens of nations curbed both technologies, against massive forces of corporate pressure. 

And a few very courageous scientists began doing the research on long-term health response which was never done with either genetic engineering or glyphosate.

Here, you can read three interviews or scientific summaries based on the work of three of those professionals. The PDF reports are linked below. We suggest that you download each PDF, print out the entire document, and read each one thoughtfully in its paper version.  These are keepers. And they are just overviews of a large and growing body of knowledge which encourages us to encourage you: Prepare now to modify your paradigm if you need to. Prepare to shift away from dependence on transgenic crops and their linked chemistries. 

Dr. Don Huber

The first summary is an interview with Dr. Don Huber, emeritus professor of plant pathology at Purdue University. We respect and admire Dr. Huber more than we can say, and have done so for years. We’ve interviewed him, listened to several of his presentations before farmers and professional groups, and have yet to hear an unfounded fact. 

A few years ago we volunteered to assemble Dr. Huber’s professional biography, not realizing what a massive body of research and publishing he accomplished over his career. And this was just his published work. He had an almost parallel career with the U.S. Defense Department, helping military experts learn what they need to know for America’s protection against biological weaponry. 

One of the easiest to read summations of his studies is a transcribed interview by Dr. Joseph Mercola, a widely followed medical doctor who has recently developed a strong interest in the toxins throughout the U.S. food supply.  Here are the links:

If you want to watch an online video of the original interview made 2013, visit this link.

If you’d like to read the transcript of the Huber interview with Dr. Mercola, you can download the PDF from our site by clicking on this link.

Dr. Arden Andersen

Another interview which we consider basic to cracking a frozen paradigm is with Dr. Arden Andersen. This was also done in cooperation with Dr. Mercola. We’ve known Dr. Andersen for a couple of decades, and we’ve written many production-related articles based on his seminar presentations. He’s the only medical doctor we know who has post-doctorate credentials in public health, an active medical practice, and an extensive background in agricultural production technology.

His medical practice in Overland Park, KS focuses on remediating health with non-GMO nutrition and other drug-free therapies.

Elsewhere on this site we’ve posted a “primer” to his book published by ACRES magazine. 

Here’s where you can download the PDF of Dr. Andersen’s interview with Dr. Mercola.

Several farmers have shrugged off our face-to-face comments about the health aspects of glyphosate. The typical response is, “Show me evidence. Until then it’s just activist propaganda.” 

One of the more revealing patterns of evidence is the nearly parabolic upswing in rates of chronic disease in the United States — and the remarkably close correlation with the tonnage and acreage of glyphosate applied in the United States.

Researcher Nancy Swanson and others have published a research paper on this relationship. Of course, correlation does not assure a cause. But the data raises the question: What is the cause of such virulent, rising rates of chronic disease in our country? Should not the Centers for Disease Control be at least doing epidemiological  studies to track down cause and effect? Such studies have linked glyphosate with disease in Argentina and Sri Lanka. But we’ve not seen any research on this subject in the United States.

Here’s the link to the paper by Dr. Nancy Swanson, et al.

That’s a lot of reading, we know. But you and your family have a lot of life left to live, too. A change in paradigm could well extend it, and make living it a lot more enjoyable — as well as more profitable!