January, for news people, is the month to review stories they over-covered during the year: the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6; our deeply divided nation; COVID variations; disruptions in the supply chain. While we can’t discount any of those history-changers, we need to point to some moments deeply noted by rural folks that didn’t make the urban front page.
City folks, take note: Your country cousins knew the bad news in the food system before you digested breakfast. Dependence on cheap foreign supplies for pricey beef wearing the Made in USA label? We’ve known for decades that we need honest country-of-origin labeling. Consolidation leading to a handful of corporations producing all the brands of pork, chicken, beef? We’ve known for decades about that, too, and we’ve asked for enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act (passed 100 years ago but not enforced) that would prevent monopolies, price fixing and other collusion.
Another thing we’ve known is that diseases like Parkinson’s and cancer are raging through our communities, triggered by the overuse of chemicals on the fields that we call green deserts, chemically engineered to grow one crop or another — corn or soybeans in much of the midwest, with a side of wheat or sorghum, sugar beets, barley, oats depending on location.
Why do farmers use so many poisons? University extension agents love to see “clean beans,” meaning fields where the machines can work without the nuisance of unwanted vegetation. And the agents have passed that horror on to farmers, so fields are basically blasted with killing chemicals before planting. The agents usually don’t farm, and most field trials are managed by grad students who become extension agents or researchers and not farmers. So they usually don’t experience the end result of using all the chemicals.
Farmers do experience the pain as years of chemical use builds up in their bodies. And here’s a story for 2021: Farmers are finally fighting back in court. Juries from coast to coast have agreed that Monsanto failed to adequately warn about the cancer risks of using weedkiller Roundup. More than 100,000 Roundup users, including landscapers and suburban homeowners, have sued Monsanto. Bayer, owner of Monsanto, has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and it looks like the Supremes have agreed to look into it.
But, as the bumper sticker says, “Nature Bats Last.” Years ago, Roundup lost its effectiveness because so many weeds have become immune. As it became obvious that weeds are winning that battle, universities found a more potent killer to harness to crops—2,4-D. Best known as a component of Agent Orange defoliant used in Vietnam to kill jungles for better US reconnaissance, 2,4-D is now used to clear US farm fields. By planting a 2,4-D-resistant seed, farmers can repeatedly treat their fields, exposing themselves to continuous doses of the lethal chemical.
Study after study have shown increases in cancers, including non-Hodgkins lymphoma and breast cancer, in areas where 2,4-D is used … and it also is more prone to drifting to fields where it isn’t wanted. Add to that the fact that 2,4-D doesn’t kill all the weeds, so the machinery problem is still with us.
So farmers have looked for something else. Paraquat. Although this weed-killer is banned in more than 30 countries, including China, it’s still manufactured by Syngenta and Chevron. A story that made it to page one of The Hawk Eye, a Burlington, Iowa, newspaper, brings us the news that a suit against Paraquat is moving through the courts, brought by a farmer now a victim of Parkinson’s disease. The Centers for Disease Control classify Paraquat as “high poisonous.” Suits against Paraquat manufacturers have been filed from coast-to-coast, and are now being heard.
These stories don’t usually make it into city papers, even though rural readers get a full dose of urban crime reports. Maybe city editors don’t want to create a run of Wall Street investors against the giant corporates. Or maybe they don’t want to know that cheap food for urban masses spreads misery in rural areas.
As I write this, the snow is just beginning to fall in mid-Missouri, which might derail the story of the year for 2022. If the weather kept up its balmy December pattern, 2022 could have been when all Americans realize climate change is real. It might still be a year without American peaches or apples, as the pattern disrupts pollination across the nation.
But the snows, late as they are, have come, and weathermen are pretending that a late winter is almost-normal, just as drought and long seasons of hurricanes and tornadoes are almost-normal, a blip in the pattern of centuries. Like the stories about human disease and the link to overuse of chemicals on farm fields, climate change is just too rural for city folks to pay attention.
Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.” Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2022
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