RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

Trouble from Frankenfoods

As the year comes to a close, and the penultimate year of the Obama administration begins, we’re once again drawn to pondering the meaning of it all. “All” being (of course) politics, society, humanity. The stuff that makes life interesting. Unless you are a robot.

So what are the top stories of 2014? What are those stories that will end up changing us forever?

They are rarely the ones reported on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, those short-term winners and losers create a mere blip on humanity’s screen. The real long-term movers and shakers are way back in the late pages of the paper, if reported at all.

My top pick for 2014 is the announcement by Dow and Monsanto of the development of GMO crops engineered to resist the chemicals 2,4D and dicamba. Unless you are a major stockholder in Monsanto or Dow Chemical, or unless you are a robot, this announcement should worry you.

Let’s review. Back in the mid-1990s, Monsanto announced the breakthrough development of GMO crops that would resist glyphosate, or Roundup, a chemical that killed almost everything green.

Today, Roundup has lost its power. Quite a few weeds are now resistant to Roundup, surviving the repeated rounds of spray and causing problems for farm machinery. That part about “problems for farm machinery” is why I put “unless you are a robot” in the earlier paragraphs. Truth is, the entire agribusiness system is designed to help machines at the expense of people.

For farm machinery, the old chemicals aren’t working as planned. As planned, the continuous spraying of glyphosate would have the weeds subdued by now so that the machines could power over fields on their caterpillar tracks without stopping except for fuel. Instead, it turns out that continuous spraying with glyphosate (Roundup) has made stronger weeds. The weeds develop stems as big as baseball bats in just one season, seriously messing up the mechanical systems.

So, in typical human style, scientists have developed seeds that resist stronger chemicals. This way, see, the machines can spray those nuisance weeds with stronger stuff, killing them back.

Trouble is, though, these chemicals — 2,4-D and dicamba — are really dangerous to humans. In 2003, and again in 2009, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that children around the country aged 6-11 years had significantly higher levels of 2,4-D in their bodies than adults (20–59 years) and youth (12–19 years). 2,4-D is listed in California as a reproductive and developmental toxicant that interferes with development. It has been linked to birth defects of the heart and circulatory systems and linked to cancer.

The US military has had extensive experience with 2,4-D, which was 50% of the makeup of Agent Orange. According to Dow-Watch, “In what has been called the ‘largest chemical warfare operation in history,’ the US military dumped 11 million gallons of Agent Orange over Vietnam from 1962-1971, destroying rice fields and rainforests to deny the Vietnamese food and cover. Vietnam veterans and Vietnamese suffered horribly from “Operation Ranch Hand,” as it was called. The Veterans Administration (VA) regards Agent Orange exposure as associated with Parkinson’s disease, as well as numerous other conditions. These include diabetes, neuropathy, heart disease, liver dysfunction, chloracne, numerous cancers (e.g. leukemia, lung, prostate, and multiple myeloma), as well as birth defects (e.g. spina bifida) in the children of exposed soldiers.”

And, of course, humans know more now than we did in the 1970s. In recent years, data have linked 2,4-D with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and other cancers. A 2000 study in the Midwest wheat region, where 2,4-D use is high, showed increased mortality for brain cancer and leukemia in children, as well as increased rates of many different cancers linked with increasing wheat acreage. A study of California farm workers showed increase in stomach cancer associated with use of 2,4-D.

With all this knowledge, wouldn’t you think we’d be cautious in approving the use of even more 2,4-D? Absolutely! If, that is, humans are in charge. Instead, we’re siding with the machinery. With the approval, Washington State University scientist Charles Benbrook estimates a 25-fold increase, from approximately 4,000 pounds used on corn alone in 2013 to over 100,000 pounds by 2019, if USDA approves 2,4-D corn and if EPA approves Dow’s proposed new uses.

If 2014 has shown us anything, it’s been about the power of fear. In Ferguson, Missouri, the fear of one white officer confronted by one slightly taller black man drove the officer to draw his weapon and shoot. Internationally, ISIL, or ISIS, has built a wall of fear around itself merely by declaring itself Muslim.

We, dear humans, should be afraid of the farm machinery.

Let me conclude by quoting part of one of my favorite songs. By the Flight of the Conchords, it goes by “Robot Song,” or “The Humans Are Dead.”

“It is the distant future, the year 2000/We are robots/The world is quite different ever since/The robotic uprising of the late nineties/There is no more unhappiness, affirmative/We no longer say yes, instead we say affirmative/Yes, affir-affirmative/Unless we know the other robot really well/There is no more unethical treatment of the elephants/Well, there’s no more elephants, so ah, but still its good... But there are no more humans/Finally robotic beings rule the world...We used poisonous gases/And we poisoned their asses ...”

Margot Ford McMillen farms and teaches English at a college in Fulton, Mo. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2015

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