Reply #56: My dad grows Round Up Ready corn and soybeans

[NickB79]

They do not REQUIRE Round Up to grow. They will germinate and grow just fine without it.

"Purchasers are required to use Roundup on these crops - the whole plant is drenched with it as opposed to spraying around the plants."

First, the fields are SPRAYED, not drenched, because 1) only a low concentration of Round Up is required to kill weed species, and 2) herbicides are expensive. Secondly, in the past you could never even spray around conventional corn or soybeans with Round Up; the drift of the spray would get on them and kill them.

Instead, my dad and my grandfather used atrazine as a herbicide. If you've never encountered the stuff, count yourself lucky. It was far, far more toxic than Round Up and took much longer to break down in the soil. It was one of the chemicals all farmers would have their drinking wells tested for on an annual basis, because it would contaminate groundwater fairly regularly. It is a potent carcinogen, and one of the chemicals proposed to be responsible for the high rates of deformed frogs in the Midwest.

Is Round Up perfectly safe? No, it can still be dangerous in large doses, as we've now seen from the Columbian people getting sprayed regularly with the crap. However, it's a huge step forward from what farmers used to use.