The other major effect is wide-range poisoning of insects that just happen to be passing through the garden.
Farmers (and gardeners and homeowners) use a whole lot of other pesticides to kill insects, which will affect non-targeted species. Slug baits sometimes are mixed with other broad-spectrum insectisides, and Raid is persistent (part of it's design is to kill the wasps that return to the nest later!)
Also Roundup doesn’t particularly work that well anymore. Ask anyone who uses Roundup in a commercial setting about it.
This could not be further from the truth. Farmers do everything to increase their margins. If they could just stop spraying their crops they would.
>Farmers know their craft and would do well without it
Unfortunately knowledge of a problem doesn't make that problem disappear. They know their craft which is why they spray their crops.
Search pubmed for glyphosate for a small taste. Then realize that most of those studies were done ONLY on glyphosate, the solvents and surfactants that glyphosate is mixed with to make Roundup are excluded. Post some studies if you find any juicy ones!
>Search pubmed for glyphosate for a small taste. Then realize that most of those studies were done ONLY on glyphosate, the solvents and surfactants that glyphosate is mixed with to make Roundup are excluded. Post some studies if you find any juicy ones!
But you haven't provided any sources to support your dissent. You are right in that there have been many studies on glyphosate and products which include it but nothing so far to conclusively characterize it as a carcinogen or otherwise harmful to human life outside of exposure in large quantities.
Does that mean it's not harmful? No. Might we find it harmful in the future? Maybe. But we've nothing conclusive yet.
I was once emotionally involved in glyphosate discussion and I understand people will have a visceral response to someone questioning the anti-glyphosate hype - I used to be part of that hype. (Monsanto was involved in Agent Orange production for f's sake, so this is anything but a defense of the company or its practices in general, or a defense of Bayer or its acquisition.)
So I've tried to approach the topic purely without an emotional run to a particular viewpoint without considering the current state of evidence, I'm just hoping more can do the same.
That, and I am taking into consideration other posts here which are going more into detail about other things to think about concerning glyphosate exposure that may not have occurred to me- I appreciate that level of conversation, not your unnecessary condescension.
I am no Monsanto/Bayer fan or defender, necessarily, and as much as I've found it easy to jump on the anti-glyphosate bandwagon in the past - glyphosate doesn't seem to have any strong evidence for risk for low-exposure uses like home gardening? Doesn't the (weak, but present) evidence so far mostly point to the risk really only being when exposed to large amounts of glyphosate?
Or does the personal risk come from it being present in agricultural products it is sprayed on, that we then consume?
The key thing (even in the lymphoma studies) seems to be "high cumulative exposure"
I lean towards "this seems like it's potentially hazardous for all uses" but does the evidence really bear that out? I want to block out the noise of opinion on this issue and purely look at evidence- something that seems to be coming increasingly rare- but something we need to be willing to do, even if it's painful to our ego and bias to do so