As antibiotic has contributed to the rise of drug resistant super germs so with the use of herbicides has led to the existence of herbicide resistant super weeds.
To get rid of super weeds, farmers are adopting the use of more toxic chemicals, by manually pulling the weeds or by returning to the old method of regular plowing which was the farmer common practice 20 years back or to a labor intensive farming which can be very expensive.
Agricultural experts apprised that such old practice could lead to higher food prices, lower coop harvests, increase farming costs and more pollution to our environment.
The superweeds are infesting millions of acres for at least 22 states in the US predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn. It can put off not only to American agriculture’s enthusiasm but to other countries as well.
Soybeans, corn and cotton are engineered to survive spraying with herbicides, had become the standard in American agricultural system.
However, the herbicide they are using no longer kill weeds. That the weeds quickly evolved to resist the herbicide chemical.
The herbicide which the generic name is glyphosate seemed to be ineffective to Palmer amaranth or pigweeds whose resistant form began seriously infesting farms in western Tennessee of last year.
This threatens to reverse one of the agricultural advances bolstered by the herbicide revolution for minimum till farming. “What we’re talking about here is Darwinian evolution in fast forward”, said Mike Owen, a weed scientist at Iowa State University, referring to the proliferation of the superweed.
“The biotech industry is taking us into a more pesticide dependent agriculture when they’ve always promised and we need to be going in, the opposite direction”, said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety in Washington.
