The Real Weed

There's a little bit of glyphosate in everyone's body. Glyphosate's weed-killing properties were accidentally discovered 20 years after the chemical was first synthesised. Today, it is omnipresent across the world. The WHO says it causes cancer and studies link it to many diseases. Countries have been struggling to ban or restrict its use due to pressure from the industry and farmer groups. But a new movement to ban this chemical as well as to find alternatives is gaining ground. VIBHA VARSHNEY tracks the toxic trail

- Vibha Varshney

WHETHER IT is India, Canada, France, the US or any part of the world, the use of glyphosate is all-pervading. In the US, over 4,000 lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto, the company which manufactured this herbicide. The first case, being heard in a court in San Francisco at present, is of DeWayne Johnson, a 46-year-old groundskeeper. He says the company failed to warn him of the dangers of using glyphosate, and as a result, he is suffering from a terminal cancer.

But despite the well known health effects of using glyphosate, not all farmers are willing to give up the chemical. “I cannot farm without glyphosate,” says 40-year-old Vasudeo Rathod of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra, a major cotton and soybean growing area. He prefers to use this herbicide over manual weeding, which, he says, is very expensive. Costs can go up by as much as three times.

This fastest growing herbicide was acquired by German pharma Bayer from Monsanto on June 7 this year. The chemical helps farmers to clear weeds growing in their fields. It is also used to clear railway tracks, parks and waterbodies of wild growth of plants. In many countries, glyphosate is used as a pre-harvest desiccant. It is sprayed on a standing crop to ease harvesting.

Little wonder then that glyphosate sales have been rising. As much as 8.6 billion kg of glyphosate have been used globally since it was introduced in 1974, says a paper published in Environmental Sciences Europe in February, 2016. Globally, total use rose from about 51 million kg in 1995 to about 750 million kg in 2014, a nearly 15-fold jump. This increase is linked to introduction of herbicide tolerent genetically modified crops. It is not surprising why farmers love this herbicide. For instance, weeds can reduce tea yields by up to 70 per cent.