Glyphosate herbicide addiction is like an ice habit, with dealers running their own agendas and prices and law enforcers hard to find. Farmers and shoppers are meat in the chemical sandwich.
Stephen Powles warns farmers hooked on Roundup that so-called, "conservation farming will not survive without the knockdown herbicide glyphosate." (Soils to suffer if glypho lost: expert, Farm Weekly, July 9, 2020).
Many farmers are in denial that the days of spraying synthetic agrichemicals are numbered and they must begin weaning themselves off the heavy stuff.
Resistance will be futile in the long run.
Powles sees the threats to glyphosate's continued use as weed resistance and regulatory change, resulting from the herbicide's environmental and human health impacts.
Indeed, our key trading partners and export markets - China, USA, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Europe - and many others, are reality checking the impacts of the chemical era and are canceling many registrations.
Roundup is the hottest target now and will not survive the next five years, so farmers had better start adapting now.
Those buying our products want to know and control what can and can't be sprayed on export grains, oilseeds and other food crops and the buyers call the shots.
A Re-Approval and Re-Registration Scheme, with a 15 year cycle of review for all agricultural and veterinary chemicals is urgently needed in Australia.
The program that Barnaby Joyce and Joel Fitzgibbon jointly cancelled in 2014 would align us with the farm chemical regulators in the EU (cycle of 10 years) and the US (cycle of 15 years).
The regular review of all registered chemicals would use up to date, independent data, generated using modern testing, analytical, ecological and epidemiological methods.
The APVMA's regulatory science strategy should also be replaced with genuine science.
Regulatory science is not credible or precautionary as it does not generate new lines of enquiry when data gaps are identified, instead relying on best guesses to fill those gaps.
Independent, peer-reviewed and published scientific data should have priority when the APVMA makes decisions to register chemicals, or not.
Reliance on the applicants' unpublished and un-reviewed claims on safety no longer wash, in the face of ample evidence the the truth about product toxic is often hidden or fudged.
High input, intensive, industrial agriculture has failed to deliver food security and everyone's right to have access to sufficient, affordable, and nutritious food.
One and a half million Australians are food insecure so the food production system does not serve these citizens well.
A transition to lower input, regenerative, agriculture systems is needed to support and enhance human and animal health, and the fragile environments and bioregions that are irreplaceably losing scarce nutrients, soil and water.
A revamped, focused and effective agrichemicals regulatory scheme must include constant monitoring, enforcement and accountability. Chemical addictions can be treated but there will be withdrawal pangs.
- What are your thoughts?: Email to darren.odea@farmweekly.com.au
