From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Toxic Agriculture Is the Problem Not the Solution

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/05/from-the-green-revolution-to-gmos-toxic-agriculture-is-the-problem-not-the-solution/
Date Written:  2019-07-05
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23730

The pesticide industry lobbies governments to allow chemicals that have long been known to be harmful.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Why did the European Food Safety Authority claim that glyphosate was not ecotoxic? This is the question environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason poses in her new 23-page report which can be accessed in full here. In places, the report reads like a compilation of peer-reviewed studies and official reports that have documented the adverse impacts of chemicals used in modern agriculture....

These chemicals have become integral to an increasingly globalised process of agro-industrialisation. Mason discusses the nature of modern farming by referring to the endless corn fields of Iowa. One hundred years ago, these fields were home to 300 species of plants, 60 mammals, 300 birds and thousands of insects. Now, there is almost literally nothing – except corn – in what amounts to a biological desert. The birds, bees and insects have gone....

Indeed, since the late 1990s, Mason notes that various scientists have written in increasingly desperate tones about biodiversity loss and the impact on humanity as well as the emerging fungal threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health.