The International Agency for Research on Cancer recently re-classified glyphosate as a carcinogen. The National Corn Grower’s Association is disappointed with that decision. NCGA Board member and South Dakota Corn Grower’s President Keith Alverson says IARC ignored the findings of more than four decades of credible scientific research and needs to reconsider studies that back the products safety. Alverson says glyphosate has been an important tool for producers who’ve been trying to do the right thing with their control of weeds, especially those corn and soybean growers who use no till or limited tillage in their operations. [WNAX]Virtually every ag producer in South Dakota uses glyphosate, now the compound inculcates every point in the water cycle including in falling rainwater.
Roundup, or the same glyphosate herbicide now available from a host of other brands other than Monsanto, is used on most acres farmed in South Dakota every year, Sharon Clay, a professor of weed science at South Dakota State University in Brookings, told the Capital Journal on Friday. In the past two years or so in South Dakota, farmers are seeing kochia and ragweed and other weeds that can't be killed by glyphosates, she said. [Pierre Capital Journal]In 2010, after another GOP governor gutted environmental protection in South Dakota, the Big Sioux River was named the thirteenth most polluted river in the US and nearly every waterway in the state suffers impairment.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is the author of Ecofeminism and Stolen Harvest. The internationally known advocate for sustainable agriculture and opponent of genetically engineered crops brought her message to South Dakota State University's Harding Lecture Series.
The university's chair sits on the board of Monsanto.
South Dakota deserves a US Representative who would stand up to a chief executive who cares more about the state's residents than about his out of state campaign donors like his party's congressional comrades are.
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