Glyphosate and trees

[MattyF]

dunno why he did i think he had this vision of a perfect wood!we advised against it telling him he will be lucky with a 50% survival rate if he did ,but he was probably the most ignorant person ive ever come across!

 

I can see what your point is but having sprayed and looked after many different sites and seen planted woods grow well after glyphosate has been used its just my opinion that there were not many reasonable or better alternatives at the time,saying that i do recall some sites we where the trees appearing to be stunted and but i always put that down to bad or unsuitable soils.

sites where trees had been hardly if ever sprayed the surival rate was poor some times nearly all dieing so that is why i think it is better to spray.....of course muching would be the best alternative and i will take it in to consideration if ever i get any more planting,id be interested to see further research.

 

my parents are will be soon spraying millions of spruce sapplings for the forrestry commision with pesticide and it was very clear to see the ones when we visited sites that had not been sprayed and the weavil damage killing them all...but of course this is a different matter ..unfortunietly the application of pesticide and herbicides is an unfortunite necasary evil if there was an alternative im sure the commision would be using it.

[SMc]

....of course muching would be the best alternative and i will take it in to consideration if ever i get any more planting,id be interested to see further research.

 

My feelings exactly for mulch.

 

my parents are will be soon spraying millions of spruce sapplings for the forrestry commision with pesticide

 

...unfortunietly the application of pesticide and herbicides is an unfortunite necasary evil if there was an alternative im sure the commision would be using it.

And Matty, that is my point. This is our mindset today. We are convinced that this is our only way. We want high yields with little effort and unfortunately, that is not nature's way. Nature's way is to put out millions of seeds with a relatively low survival rate. We desire much richer rewards.

 

Not to sound melodramatic, but that is our downfall.

 

Sylvia

[Quickthorn]

 

Matty, did you read any of the links provided? With glyphosate killing off 59% of beneficial soil organisms, allowing pathogenic fungi to gain an upper hand in this delicate balance, how can you say there is no harm done?

 

I could only open the abc link, but on that page, can you point out to me where it says that glyphosate kills off 59% of beneficial soil organisms? I couldn't see where it says this.

[Bundle 2]

Read first para..." Toxicity".....

 

Also find other link defective.......

[SMc]

Quickthorn, They said "inhibiting" not "killing off". However, it does go on to state: "Glyphosate destroys nitrogen-fixing bateria." referenced from a bulletin by Hendricks, C. W. (1992). And here are additional quotes cut and paste from the abc link in post # 8 by Nomad. Which I encourage everyone to go back and read in its entirety.

 

"Toxic to soil microbes including nitrogen-fixing bacteria, mycorrhizae, actinomycete, and yeast isolates:

 

One study found that glyphosate inhibited the growth of 59% of selected naturally occurring soil microbes.

 

Carlisle, S.M. and Trevors, J.T. (1988), "Glyphosate in the environment." Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 39:409-420.

 

Glyphosate, by inhibiting the growth of some microbes allows the overgrowth of others. This includes microbial plant pathogens. Fusarium is a naturally occurring soil fungus that is a plant pathogen. Fusarium invades the roots of plants and either kills the plant outright or prevents normal growth. Subsistence farmers in Colombia have noted that fields accidently sprayed with herbicides in attempts to destroy Coca do not produce at the same level as they did prior to being sprayed, and in some cases, no crops grow at all.

 

Levesque, C.A. (1987), "Effects of glyphosate on Fusarium spp.: its influence on root colonization of weeds, propagule density in the soil, and crop emergence." Can. J Microbiol. Vol 33, pp354-360."

 

This article also points out the damage by inhalation. It points out that its (glyphosate) toxicity level is raised significantly by the active surfactant POEA with which it is used. Other quotes:

 

"The rate of glyphosate degradation in soil correlates with the respiration rate....Of the nine herbicides tested glyphosate was the second most toxic. This infers that with extensive glyphosate use, soil microbes are killed which degrade glyphosate, thus slowing degradation and increasing persistance. Glyphosate is much more persistant in anaerobic soils than aerobic." Carlisle, SM and Trevors, J.T. Glyphosate in the Environment.

 

My whole point here, is that we constantly use, overuse, products that we are led to believe (want to believe) have little detrimental effect on our environment, which in fact is not the case. There is a great deal of desensitization in this process. The more we use, the more comfortable we are with using it; and this should be going the other way. We should be more and more cautious, not less so. Glyphosate is considered one of the "safest" rated herbicides (per consumer perspective). We simply need to use it with extreme discretion not with abandon.

 

Sylvia

[Bundle 2]

Scary stuff...I have used it many times in and around watercourses on behalf of The Wildlife trusts...sometime ago now but all the same...I am not impressed that this was the stipulated method of control in supposedly sensitive areas...( SSSI's )

Touched on this topic of debate recently in the realm of arboricultural education...I wonder we wont see its use banned entirely......?

[Albedo]

Nice one SMc, here comes the cavalry, welcome to the fray. You've got them reading the science, even though it took a while....

 

Whilst the side debate based on peoples experiences are interesting, they are not verifiable, published, referenced, peer reviewable science. They keep missing the points that youv'e now spelled out for them.

 

The original thread poster asked for some science, to back up his worries. And this was provided by nomad. This thread was never about opinion, or what it says on the label, see other link about Monsato, its about evidence that popular opinion, and the following of guidelines/ labels without question may be misguided.

 

By the way I said 'infantile' rather than 'ignorant' as I meant to suggest child like trust in authority, but I admit it sounded a bit rude and will have annoyed some folk. Don't mind sticking my neck out on this one though. Feel free to misquote me again, its all in a good cause !!!

[Quickthorn]

Quickthorn, They said "inhibiting" not "killing off".

 

Yes, that's how I read it. They also said: "glyphosate inhibited the growth of 59% of selected naturally occurring soil microbes", not "59% of beneficial soil organisms", which puts a subtly different slant on it again.

 

One study found that glyphosate inhibited the growth of 59% of selected naturally occurring soil microbes.

 

Carlisle, S.M. and Trevors, J.T. (1988), "Glyphosate in the environment." Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 39:409-420.

 

Have you read this paper? It's available here as a pdf. It's actually a literature review rather than original research, and the papers they refer to mainly test pure cultures of microorganisms in laboratory conditions. They write:

"Cooper et al. (1978) found that 50 ppm inhibited growth of 59% of randomly selected soil bacterial, fungal, actinomycete, and yeast isolates";

earlier, they state:

"Recommended field application rates from 0.34 to 1.12 kg active ingredient (AI) ha- 1 for control of annual weeds, and 1.12 to 4.48 kg AI ha- 1 for perennials, applied in 187 to 561 L water ha- 1 (WSSA, 1983). According to Brown (1978), 1 kg ha 1 of a pesticide will give a concentration in the top 13 cm of a field of roughly 0.45 ppm.

Thus, the highest application rate should give rise to a soil concentration of roughly 2 microg g- 1.[ie 2 ppm]"

In other words, they're telling us that growth of 59% of these organisms were inhibited in laboratory conditions when exposed to glyphosate in a concentration 25 times stronger than that expected under normal field application rates.

 

In section 7. Effect on Soil Microbial Activity and Populations, Carlisle and Trevors cover other literature on the effects of glyphosate on microbial activity in the soil. With high applications of glyphosate, some studies showed inhibition of microbial activity; others found no such inhibition. In another work, the authors themselves found that anaerobic nitrogen

fixation was inhibited by high (ie. 630 ppm) concentrations of glyphosate. The final sentence of this section reads:

"However, no toxicity to any of these microbial processes should be observed at recommended field application rates of the herbicide." Curiously, this is interpreted in the abc link as "Toxic to soil microbes including nitrogen-fixing bacteria, mycorrhizae, actinomycete, and yeast isolates". In fact, in my reading of that paper, Carlisle and Trevors seem quite favourable towards glyphosate.

 

 

Glyphosate, by inhibiting the growth of some microbes allows the overgrowth of others. This includes microbial plant pathogens. Fusarium is a naturally occurring soil fungus that is a plant pathogen. Fusarium invades the roots of plants and either kills the plant outright or prevents normal growth. Subsistence farmers in Colombia have noted that fields accidently sprayed with herbicides in attempts to destroy Coca do not produce at the same level as they did prior to being sprayed, and in some cases, no crops grow at all.

 

Levesque, C.A. (1987), "Effects of glyphosate on Fusarium spp.: its influence on root colonization of weeds, propagule density in the soil, and crop emergence." Can. J Microbiol. Vol 33, pp354-360."

 

 

I can't find the entire paper, only the abstract, but Levesque et al, in trial plots infested with various weeds, did find increases in the size of Fusarium spp colonies in some species of weeds, but not in others. The final sentences of the abstract read:"At both sites, the number of colony-forming units of Fusarium spp. per gram of dried soil was increased by the application of glyphosate. Nevertheless, crops subsequently sown in the field containing the annual weeds were not detrimentally affected by glyphosate treatment of these weeds." Nowhere in the abstract are Columbian subsistence farmers mentioned.

 

I could go on, but a lot of the other papers cited are only available by subscription.

 

I agree with those who think we should be sceptical of official guidelines etc, rather than blindly following them - scepticism, to a point, is healthy - but I believe that major parts of this "evidence" published on the abc website lack credibility, because whoever wrote it seems to have mis-interpreted and selectively quoted some of the literature to try and support their opinion ( isn't that the sort of think that these big agri-businesses are always being accused of?). Why be sceptical of official guidelines, recommendations, etc, yet then accept without question summaries of research we have never read, written by people we don't know and published on a website we had never heard of until a few days ago?

 

To put it into context, which do you think is more toxic: glyphosate or salt?

[David oakman]

Food for thought there quickthorn,

[ScottF]

The film, "The world according to Monsanto" is available to view here: http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105 or here: http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/the-world-according-to-monsanto-a-documentary-that-americans-wont-ever-see-full-video/ . The film discusses the work of a number of independent researchers and environmental NGOs who have independently investigated the effects of Roundup and Monsanto's GM seeds. The film is no longer available on Google video due to legal threats from Monsanto. It's not a short film, but is well worth a look.

 

I appreciate the sentiment that we should look to peer-reviewed research published in respected journals for guidance on these products, and perhaps I'm just an old cynic, but we have to remember that all research needs funding. I wouldn't imagine that funding for research into the long-term effects of the patented products of hugely powerful biotech companies would be very easy to come by. Besides, where was the funded research into the effects of DDT, Paraquat, dioxins etc etc? Rather too late, it could be argued.

 

If anyone wants to post further about biotechnology, agri-chemicals or GM organisms, perhaps we could fire up a new thread somewhere?