ROUNDUP ROUND 2
Corteva and Bayer are duking it out over market share of their darlings: Enlist versus Roundup. They're offering farmer discounts and sales meetings going head to head like two Titans in the ring.
Corteva (one of the Dupont offspring) claims its Enlist is better than Roundup. I guess you can drink two cups of it a day without problems while Roundup limits you to one cup a day. Lethal dose is hard to figure, after all.
Roundup has already created super weeds and other plants have already developed tolerance: marestail, waterhemp and palmer amaranth. In fact, the number of weeds resistant to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) has gone from zero in 1996 to 47 in 2019. If this doesn't show the foolishness of the thinking behind these products, I don't know what does.
Corteva says Enlist is much safer because it doesn't waft over and kill neighbors' plants as easily. Imagine. I go out and spray a field and it's so toxic that just the wafting of the scent kills the neighbor's stuff. The active ingredient in Enlist is 2,4,D, which is supposedly one step less carcinogenic than glyphosate. I'll trade you two tumors for 1.8. Feel better?
The whole debate is ridiculous. But when you're killing things and fighting over billions of dollars in sales, I guess even smart people resort to foolishness. Does anyone think weeds won't develop resistance to Enlist just like they've done to Roundup?
Or that given time, we won't see the same carcinogenic characteristics develop from using Enlist as Roundup? Who are these yoyos fooling? Not me. But apparently farmers and yardskeepers and homeowners are lining up for the relevant sales pitches, agonizing over the different claims, to arrive at the right decision on which to buy.
It's madness, I tell you. Can't you just see a bottle of Roundup and a bottle of Enlist on the table with the buying community going through angst and turmoil to figure out which poison is the better approach. When I think of the decisions I make every day, I'm grateful that genuflecting in front of these two icons isn't on my "must do" list. Think about the awful mental, ethical, and emotional gymnastics people go through in making this choice.
So while all this is going on over here, I can't even choose to buy a glass of raw milk. I can't choose to buy a pepperoni from a neighbor's kitchen craft. I can't choose to buy a meat pie from Aunt Matilda. When you think of the choices our society gives people and the ones it doesn't it's pretty ridiculous.'
As far as I'm concerned, choosing Roundup or Enlist indicates "choosing poorly." Shades of Indiana Jones there. One other point. This whole wrestling match shows how much money is in the world that could be used for good. I've said forever we have no solutions that lack for money. Our world has so much money floating around it's crazy. But we invest in stupidity, in Roundup or Enlist, instead of investing in pond building and living food.
No wonder we can't make good decisions when our scientific community and mental capacity are completely occupied with laying out the benefits and disadvantages of Roundup versus Enlist. It sucks real solution investment out of the room. It ties up head scratching better spent on real issues, and that's unfortunate.
Have you ever chopped weeds with a mattock?