In the mid-1980s when I was the Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), I had the privilege of working with some of the nation’s top weed scientists who had already become concerned over excessive use of herbicides. They wrote the weed management …
By Tom Green, HHRA Board Chair and Charles Benbrook, Executive Director In the late 1990s Wisconsin soybean farmers eagerly adopted the Roundup Ready (RR) system of weed management. About 40% of the State’s soybean crop was planted to RR soybeans. On 70% of these fields a single application of Roundup achieved season-long control, …
Scientific uncertainty and controversy go hand-in-hand in our nation’s efforts to prevent adverse public health and environmental impacts from the pesticides applied by farmers, ranchers, foresters, landscapers, and groundskeepers. Significant progress has been made in the sciences supporting pesticide risk assessment and regulation. But serious gaps persist between real-world adverse …
The organophosphate (OP) insecticide chlorpyrifos (Lorsban) has been one of the most heavily used soil insecticides in the Heartland for decades. Farmers use it to prevent worm larvae from attacking roots, and it remains a common residue in many fruits and vegetables, and especially in imported produce. Scientists and the …
HHRA research partners at King’s College in London and the Ramazzini Institute have published a new study that suggests that regulatory risk assessments may be missing the mark on pesticide health impacts. The study uses the latest multi-omics analytical methods – meaning that it looks at the impact from pesticide …
Reporter Emily Unglesbee with DTN/Progressive Farmer has done solid reporting for years now on the trials and tribulations of dicamba herbicide and the XtendiMax GMO soybean and cotton seeds it has been applied on since 2016. Dicamba is one of the herbicides of intense interest to The Heartland Study science …
