\nIndustrial ag is admitting that it needs to trash its neighbors and the\nsurrounding landscape to thrive. And it wants us to believe that there\nare no alternatives.\n<\/blockquote>\nHis first example is Farm Bureau’s reaction to new EPA restraints\non chicken farm factories around Chesapeake Bay, then he gets to Monsanto:\n\n\n\nThe “get out of our way, world” message is also being sounded loud and\nclear by the genetically modified (GM) seed industry, particularly in\nthe case of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa. The industry is demanding\nthat the USDA allow unrestricted planting of the alfalfa, which mainly\nserves as feed for cows. Alfalfa represents a lucrative opportunity for\nMonsanto, because it’s a massive crop, covering about 20 million acres,\nabout 7 percent of U.S. cropland.\n\nYet there are a couple of glaring problems. Alfalfa is a prolific\npollinator, meaning that GM alfalfa can easily cross-breed with non-GM\nalfalfa. If organic producers find their crop contaminated with GM\nmaterial, they risk losing their organic certification and, likely,\ntheir livelihoods. The organic dairy industry, which relies on a steady\nsupply of organic alfalfa, would also be imperiled.\n
\nThe second problem is so-called “superweeds” — weeds that develop\nresistance to Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. Such weeds are\nalready rampant in the South, where Monsanto’s Roundup Ready cotton\nholds sway, and are moving into the Corn Belt, which is blanketed by\nthe tens of millions of acres with the agrichemical giant’s corn and soy\nseeds. The rise of superweeds is unleashing a virtual monsoon of dodgy\npoison cocktails onto affected farmland.\n<\/blockquote>\nMonsanto: still pushing a doomed pesticide cocktail.<\/a>\nMaybe someday we’ll catch up with west Africa and stop poisoning ourselves.<\/a>\n
\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Philpott writes in Grist that Industrial Ag Once Again Demanding a Free Pass to Crap in Your Backyard: Industrial ag is admitting that it needs to trash its neighbors and the surrounding landscape to thrive. And it wants us to believe that there are no alternatives. His first example is Farm Bureau’s reaction to […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[385,874,242,15,377,620,376,1068,179,569,167],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-agrochemicals","tag-epa","tag-farm-bureau","tag-gm","tag-monsanto","tag-mutant","tag-pesticides","tag-pigweed","tag-poisons","tag-roundup","tag-superweeds","tag-usda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-5F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}