Over the past couple of months, I had forgotten how grounding it is to grow food. On a sunny day, or sometimes even better on a wet and windy day, walking through the crops or sampling the fresh harvest, you feel connected to the land and alive.
These days it’s very difficult to know how the food we eat is produced. How could we be expected to know? Life is so busy and supermarkets show us a shiny, happy “reality” that is disconnected from the food production process and can often hide some not-so-pleasant facts behind the glossy wrappers.
Have you ever noticed as you drive down the motorway that some fields are a bright iridescent yellow? That’s because the dead tillage crops have been sprayed just before harvest with a weedkiller called Roundup.
The active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is the most widely used herbicide in history. It is a probable human carcinogen, and it now contaminates most non-organic foodstuffs. It is also a systemic herbicide, meaning that it is absorbed into the plant before it dies.
It is applied to grain crops to help reduce moisture content by killing the plant. It desiccates the crop, which helps with the milling. This act of spraying a systemic herbicide onto food that is just about to be harvested and milled into flour to make our bread is inexplicable.
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Nowhere on the food label will you see “contains glyphosate” and yet it seems every time we bite into a lovely crusty baguette we are indeed getting a free helping of glyphosate. The term we use in Ireland to describe such a chemical is a PPP or plant protection product. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?
Using chemicals to fight nature will never work and it is unnecessary. In the short term it may give a temporary reprieve from a certain disease or pest, but that pest will come back stronger and more resistant next time. It is in a way a self-perpetuating and lucrative industry with new chemicals constantly coming on the market to “help” the farmer.
Let’s be clear here: it is all about the money and large agribusinesses make a lot of cash from selling their wares. There is little money to be made in protecting biodiversity.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, though, as some MEPs have called for glyphosate to be banned across the European Union in 2023. It seems the well-funded lobbying groups may not get their way in this instance. Isn’t it nice to think that some day all our bread may be that bit safer to eat and there may be a little reprieve for Mother Nature?
Funny that generally what is good for our health tends to be good for nature too.
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Kenneth Keavey is a farmer and owner of Green Earth Organics, an organic farm and distributor in Galway
