Glyphosate: Seeing Is Believing

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

Dr. John Fagan, CEO & Chief Scientist, Health Research Insitute

In the 1930s, people began the migration from the farm into the city. Those farmers who were left on the farm began growing food with money, which they used to buy equipment and chemicals to do the work that people once did.

Thus it became cheaper to grow food with money, than with people.

This industrialization of the food chain has proceeded without pause ever since, and now the world is literally drenched in the agricultural chemicals used to grow food.

Broadly speaking, two kinds of chemicals are used to grow food: fertilizers and pesticides.

Fertilizers provide the nutrient elements plants require to grow and develop, and include the macronutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Pesticides provide farmers with the ability to fight off natural competitors for the growth and development of their crops, and include herbicides that kill weeds, fungicides that fight off diseases, insecticides that kill insects, and desiccants that manage growth.

The herbicide glyphosate, which travels under the trade name Roundup, is one of the most used chemicals in agriculture.

· Since 1974, 18.9 billion pounds of glyphosate has been sprayed upon the World.

· Use of glyphosate has increased 15-fold since the introduction of crops genetically modified to withstand glyphosate.

That our world is literally drenched in a chemical that the World Health Organization claims is a “probable cause of cancer,” leads us to ask:

What happens to the chemicals after they have made food cheap?