Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
Here we go again. Spring.
And while I appreciate the good weather, the green shoots that announce the coming of flowers and the budding trees, I don’t appreciate the chemical sprays that are as much harbingers as the first flocks of robins. Besides signaling that spring is here, the tank trucks on the road are also announcing that our farmers have willingly harnessed themselves to a losing game. While once they felt powerful as they pulled their chemical tanks over the fields, they now feel duped.
It’s sad to see so many of my neighbors ashamed of their yearly ritual. Most of these farmers started out believing they were doing the right thing. University educated, they felt that when they adopted chemical-resistant crops they were modern. I went to those early meetings where the extension agents sat in a mute row and watched the seed salespeople brag that they could plant the new GMO seed, spray it with a chemical that killed all the weeds, make a great harvest and, the next year, do it all over again. Forever.
“What are you going to do about herbicide resistance?” asked one old codger in the front row. “We’re working on that,” replied the university guy.
How I wish that old codger was still around to see how things are today, just 30 years later. Every ecosystem has its resistant weeds and the prescription is to spray with more and more deadly chemicals. The spray tanks are getting bigger and the weeds are more resistant. It takes more trips around the field to keep weeds at bay, more chemicals, more money in Wall Street pockets.
Every time I hear an expert say “we’re working on that” I remember the before-GMO times.
The guys used to be able to save their best seeds and plant next year but today the seeds are patented. Not only that, but non-GMO seeds are increasingly difficult to find. And if the guys want to grow new crops, they’re stuck with big equipment, big loans, hidden markets and bankers that don’t understand the desperation. Two years ago, I started hearing that neighbors told their families to stay inside while they spray. With every new cancer or Parkinson’s case, the guys have to ask a question—was it my spray that hit that family’s home? Will my family be next?
And for me, and others who remain chemical-free, the problems add up. I reported a chemical drift incident on my place last year. The Missouri Department of Agriculture that documents these incidents said the investigator was overwhelmed with calls. A few days later, I had a new incident in a different place and it wasn’t long before there was a third. Only the first incident created a financial loss, so the other two went un-reported. And because we did not see the incident and record it, the perpetrator will go free and, in fact, may not know what they did!
As spring has sprung, I’ve heard more stories. Recently, I heard of an organic farmer who has to abandon their farm for health reasons. This is the second time I’ve heard this and in both cases, I know the families well and have been on their places. They were both meticulous farmers—one with commodity crops and one providing vegetables, eggs and meats to folks in town. Neither of them has been compensated for their losses, even though one hit was well-documented by folks in their field when their place was hit by a crop-dusting airplane.
Purposeful or not? As the problems pile up, it’s clear that some of the drift incidents could be retaliation when organic farmers speak out. There could be retaliation from the chemically dependent farmers because of the move by consumers to better foods and to asking where their food comes from and how it is raised. Hooray for those consumers. Maybe they’ve read the reports that all of us on every continent, from babies in the womb to elderly enjoying their last years, are carrying loads of glyphosate (Roundup) and 2,4D (Agent Ocrange) in every part of our bodies.
And those loads of chemical are un-traceable. They may come from your food but if you live in town near any kind of public land that’s managed with chemicals, or if you have neighbors that hire a company to create a weed-free lawn, you’re at more risk. Folks on town-sized lots have less boundary than folks on a rural spread with acres around us.
I wanted to find a cheerful way to end this column—something more than my usual “ask your farmer how they produced what you eat,” so I Googled “memes that joke about chemicals on food.” Turns out there’s nothing funny about poisons in your salad. But here’s one for the farmers: “The only people who benefit from spraying chemicals on the earth … are the chemicals that produce the poisons.”
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. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.”
Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.
