Superweeds: This Time, It’s Serious

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theatrebhs/4497978559/">ISD 191</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Blogging has been light this week because I’ve been on vacation. But I can’t resist commenting on something that made me choke on my coffee this morning. While reading a news report on superweeds—weeds that have developed resistance to Roundup herbicide, from widespread use of Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready seeds—I came across this passage:

McNeill says that in the Midwest and other areas of the country, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, weeds like water hemp, giant ragweed, lamb’s quarter and velvet weed have become Roundup resistant through natural selection, due to a particular genetic mutation that survived the poison and therefore reproduced successfully and wildly.

Wait, ragweed, the scourge of Maverick Farms, the western North Carolina farm where I work? And lamb’s quarters, the “wild green” (ok, weed) that we harvest and really enjoy eating all summer? I avoid buying genetically modified foods at the supermarket. Are we unwittingly inviting them into our kitchen through the backdoor?

I’ve been writing about “superweeds” for years now. It turns out—as any agricultural expert could have predicted—that when you douse millions of acres of farmland with the same weed-killing chemical several times a year for a decade, some of those weeds develop resistance to the chemical (and eventually, to the other poisons farmers deploy in their desperate zeal to control them).

But I’ve always written about the problem with a certain amount of detachment—I assumed that the Monsantoization of weeds was something that happened somewhere else, to some other kinds of weeds (like Roundup-resistant Palmer amaranth, a “nightmare” haunting cotton country in the South), not to the ones we grapple with in the field or (gulp) eat. It’s true that not much industrial agriculture takes place in our mountainous area; but plenty takes place to the south and east of us. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that our own stock of weeds could have become infected with Monsanto’s gene, spread by pollen carried by birds and/or wind.

So, is our despised ragweed now genetically modified? Are our beloved lamb’s quarters now Roundup Ready? I’ll try to figure it out when I get back from vacation.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate