I’m a biochemist, and it drives me nuts how much the public worries about glyphosate but not really any other herbicides. Glyphosate may not be perfect but I’d worry more about almost any other type of herbicide, most of which are absolutely nasty.
Show me someone who can come up with a better herbicide, and I will show you a wealthy person.
I admit that there very well could be better options that I don't know about (especially if there are new ones that emerged in the last 10-20 years), but I think it's no exaggeration to say that almost anything else is worse.
Just pick a couple that look interesting from the larger one.
This whole discussion seems extremely hyperbolic…
Other commenters have provided good short lists. Do you want me to repeat them?
* 2,4-D
* Dicamba
* Trifluralin
* Pendimethylin
Go find a herbicide that doesn’t have a list of health concerns and environmental effects… which anybody uses.
Glyphosate at most could maybe increase by 30% the risks of a quite rare cancer for farmers who use it in high dosage (so glyphosate in conservation agriculture is likely to be harmless).
[edit] TFA talk about paraquat anyway :P
If one herbicide is not completely replaced by another (some may try going completely herbicide-free, which has its own very different set of risks), it will certainly be partially replaced by another.
I don't support the "ban glyphosate" movement (for imo it is one of the lesser evils), but I would more easily support a "ban all herbicides" movement... Though I would be somewhat skeptical of the feasibility of going completely herbicide-free.
This is my view as well.
If your skepticism of a herbicide free system stems from the meme that we need industrialized agriculture to feed the world, you can rest assured that small agriculture and local permaculture is more than capable of feeding the world: https://grain.org/article/entries/4929-hungry-for-land-small...
>small agriculture and local permaculture … feeding the world
Requires a major restructuring of civilization and economic upheavals involving an enormous number of people returning to food production. It might be a yuppie ideal to go start up a hobby farm but a few rich people having fun is a lot different than changing world economies.
It’s not so hard to do for the Whole Foods and farmers market crowds willing to pay high prices. It’s quite hard to feed the poor by throwing out industrialization and replacing it with lots of labor. This makes food much more expensive.
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23...
> It’s quite hard to feed the poor by throwing out industrialization and replacing it with lots of labor. This makes food much more expensive.
This is untrue. Small farms produce the majority of the world's food, despite increasing industrialization. More importantly, small farms are more efficient than big agro.
> In the European Union, 20 countries register a higher rate of production per hectare on small farms than on large farms. In nine EU countries, productivity of small farms is at least twice that of big farms.55 In the seven countries where large farms have higher productivity, it is only slightly higher than that of small farms.56 This tendency is confirmed by numerous studies in other countries and regions, all of them showing higher productivity on small farms.
> Our data indicate, for example, that if all farms in Kenya had the current productivity of the country's small farms, Kenya's agricultural production would double. In Central America and Ukraine, it would almost triple. In Hungary and Tajikistan it would increase by 30%. In Russia, it would be increased by a factor of six.57
> Although big farms generally consume more resources, control the best lands, receive most of the irrigation water and infrastructure, get most of the financial credit and technical assistance, and are the ones for whom most modern inputs are designed, they have lower technical efficiency and therefore lower overall productivity. Much of this has to do with low levels of employment used on big farms in order to maximise return on investment.58
https://grain.org/article/entries/4929-hungry-for-land-small...
We don't need economic upheaval, just stop regulatory capture and stop giving handouts to big agro.
And we cannot farm successfully on scale we need without them.
The following study states that organic farming on average is 25% less productive than conventional farming. The major difference being the use of plant protection products (herbicides, pesticides, etc.).
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/6344...
That additional land use could be satisfied if the consumption of meat would be drastically reduced. Currently 33% of cropland are used for feed production. (https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf)
So yes, we could farm successfully without them. But not at the current prices for produce and not with the current meat consumption.
https://www.agdaily.com/technology/the-list-of-pesticides-ap...
> They are literally stuff meant to kill other stuff, with varying degrees of specificity and effectiveness.
The effectiveness bit is obvious, but I think the public thinks much less about specificity, especially in cases where there is a component of fear.
Glyphosate gets a bad rap in large part due to similarity to organophosphates (P-O-C), which are usually quite toxic, but it is in fact a phosphonate, with a direct P-C bond. I forget the exact mechanism, but it makes a difference.
Also glyphosate readily hydrolyzes, while paraquat is a "brick" that resists breakdown and is prone to bioaccumulation.
The mechanism of action is identical: methylpyridinium promotes the production of reactive oxygen species which wreak havoc on cellular machinery. In fact MPP is a "quat" and was briefly used as an herbicide. The chloride of MPP+ was sold under the trade name Cyperquat.
> As an herbicide, paraquat acts by inhibiting photosynthesis. In light-exposed plants, it accepts electrons from photosystem I (more specifically ferredoxin, which is presented with electrons from PS I) and transfers them to molecular oxygen. In this manner, destructive reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced.
> MPP+ exhibits its toxicity mainly by promoting the formation of reactive free radicals in the mitochondria of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra.[9][10] MPP+ can siphon electrons from the mitochondrial electron transport chain at complex I and be reduced, in the process forming radical reactive oxygen species which go on to cause further, generalized cellular damage.
You can buy glyphosate from different manufacturers, under different brand names. Roundup is just one of many.
With the concerned person perfectly happy with that explanation.
"Nah, we don't use 1080. This is sodium fluoroacetate." "Oh."
Edit: NZ also permits use of glyphosate. It is starting to be discouraged because of the effects of long-term use on soil ecology, rather than health.
There are no good (non-labor-intensive) alternatives, though. To grow grass we have to use it, pretty much. At least until all-weather autonomous solar-powered weed-grubbing robots arrive.
2. I do believe there are serious environmental concerns (which unfortunately is not really my expertise-- I rely on my colleagues and on what I see in journals for this judgment).
Given so much suspicion about this substance, homeowners are probably not equipped to handle it safely in a spray bottle with a mile of fine print on it. Professional farmers might be if well informed.
However the risk to human health is (in my honest opinion and according to my best professional judgment) very minimal, and the greater risk is environmental. In part for this reason, I would think industrial application to be orders of magnitude more concerning than some old lady applying it in her patch of tomatoes.
I have limited knowledge about glyphosate, and don’t know much about herbicides in general. Help me (us) understand what makes them nasty.
I'm not specifically a specialist of herbicides (I know much more about biomedical stuff), but my experience during the pandemic has completely put me off trying to educate others. I've become extremely cynical and de-energized: the people who need help don't want it.