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Comment by sampo | Hacker News Reader

> I'd rather not have glysophate in my food.

Glyphosate (you spelled it wrong) is widely used in non-GMO agriculture as well. Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate. Glyphosate is also probably the most widely studied and the most harmless of the herbicides. Replacing glyphosate with some other chemicals is not necessarily a win.

Even going organic doesn't free you from all herbicides and pesticides, some of them are allowed to be used in organic farming. And if you really go pesticide free, you start to have more insect damage in crops, which provide entry points for molds to attack the crops. And some of the toxins produced by molds are really potent.

If you want to avoid residues of harmful chemicals, going 100% pesticide free is probably not the optimum.

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>Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate

Uh, being able to tolerate more glyphosate was the entire reason for genetically modifying a lot of the GMOs currently in widespread use.

In other words, glyphosate is used at many times the concentration it used to be used at precisely because of the introduction of GMOs (because that was the whole point of introducing those particular GMOs).

>insect damage in crops, which provide entry points for molds to attack the crops. And some of the toxins produced by molds are really potent.

Insect damage is easy to see (at least on whole produce, not counting processed foods); glyphosate residues on the other hand is hard to detect.

Glyphosate is also used as a "desiccant" to prepare the crop (talking about crops like grains, corn, beans, but also others) for harvest. You spray a desiccant to either kill or at least harm the crop plants, a little before harvest so that in the subsequent days the plants start to wilt and dry in the field. Then you can harvest a drier crop, need to spend less effort to dry it post-harvest, and a drier crop is less susceptible to spoilage.

Your very purpose is to "desiccate", that is to kill or harm, the plants before harvest. So you don't need to care about concentrations (expect from the point of view of regulations, how much glyphosate residue is allowed in the food products).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation#Glyphosate

Using glyphosate like this is banned in some countries (Switzerland, Nordic Countries come to mind), but it is widely used in most of the world. It has nothing to do with GMOs, it is widely used to desiccate wheat, for example, and there is no GMO wheat anywhere in commercial production.

I am no expert, but I'd guess this is the main source of glyphosate residues in food.

"We found that honeybees that had been fed with solution containing 10 mg l−1 GLY spent more time performing homeward flights than control bees or bees treated with lower concentrations. They also performed more indirect homing flights. Moreover, the proportion of direct homeward flights performed after a second release from the same site increased in control bees but not in treated bees. These results suggest that, in honeybees, exposure to levels of GLY commonly found in agricultural settings impairs the cognitive capacities needed to retrieve and integrate spatial information for a successful return to the hive. "

Glyphosate is also not allowed in organic produce. Because of allegedly inappropriate involvement of pesticide manufacturers in scientific reviews, glyphosate has also only been approved for five years in the EU (2017).

> And if you really go pesticide free, you start to have more insect damage in crops

There is an organic solution to insect damage and that is predators. I know some green houses that is run here uses sterile large insects that targets crop damaging insects, after which they are just washed off the plants. 100% toxin free and naturally you could balance that to get rid of molds as well. Costly but very effective.

> Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate.

Here's some facts.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean seeds are designed to be sprayed with glyphosate.

> Monsanto projects that acreage will double this year, accounting for about 44 percent of all planted acres. (1)

If you're not buying organic, it seems incredibly likely you're getting glyphosate in your soybeans, and by extension, many numerous products that the beans are processed into.

Of course, if you are buying organic, it doesn't mean your food wasn't treated with a natural chemical. As I said before, it would nice to know which ones/

1: https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1FD0G2-OC...

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