Overuse of Monsanto's Roundup Is Creating Herbicide Resistant Weeds

He doesn't look happy. Well, living in 1901. Fuck. Yeah, average life expectancy. He's 40 years old. Average life expectancy is like 44, 45. Really? At that time. I mean, but if you make it past childbirth, of course, you have a much better chance of surviving. But anyway, he does name his company after his wife. What's interesting is you wonder whether that was like, whether she'd be happy about that. And he comes to this hated name in so many ways years later. But he's scrapping by. He actually had tried to start a chemical industry in the late 19th century. It had burned down. And he didn't have any money. He's got these kids. He's got his family. So like, to your point, I'm kind of, when I'm reading this, I'm trying to understand how is this company starting? What's the human story here? How do we get into this mess? You know? Money. And then, you know, we do when you get, as you said, to the 50s and 60s, these agricultural chemicals become a huge part of their business. But kind of back to Roundup, 70. Okay? 245T, now the lid's off. You know, the government's starting to find out about it. People are raising alarms. Scientists are talking about how toxic this stuff is. And, you know, they're looking for an alternative, something that's not as toxic as this stuff. And that's when John Frans finds glyphosate. Interestingly, you know all, like the detergent all? Yes. That was a Monsanto product. Of course it was. But it had a phosphate-based ingredient in it that helped it clean clothes. But in the 60s, phosphate-based detergents were ending up in waterways and contributing to like algae blooms and fish death. And so they had to get rid of that phosphate detergent. And they had all this phosphate. And they're like, what do we do with all this phosphate? Boom. All detergent, you know, and all that phosphate ends up becoming the building blocks of Roundup. Roundup is ultimately coming from elemental phosphorus. Wow. It's crazy. But it was all designed to be healthy. I know a guy who lived in a community that was connected to a golf course. And he grew up drinking water from a well. And him and a large number of people in the community got cancer. And they firmly believed that it was because of whatever pesticides that they were using, or herbicides that they were using on the golf course that leaked into the wells. Can I show you what Roundup looks like nowadays? Sure, yeah. Jamie, there's a map in there that's like a map of the country. And it's kind of brown. And it shows you kind of Roundup. It's probably mostly. It says glyphosate because that's the active ingredient. But I just want to show you the chains that's happened over the last several years with glyphosate. So like, that's glyphosate. This comes from the USGS Pesticide National Synthesis Program. This is what happened with Roundup Ready technology. Like we were, this is 92. So remember I said Roundup is created in the 70s. But it's not really used that much throughout the growing season. It's interesting how it's used so much in California. It's a primary application of it. Look at that. The weird farm land on the way up to San Francisco, if you're driving from LA and you see like fuck Joe Biden signs, that's where they are. Exactly. Yep. Also, the land of like 90% of our almonds. Like salad, everything comes from there. And so much pesticide use in that valley. But look at the Midwest. I mean it goes from like, you know. Almost none. Almost none. Very little to swarms. To swarms. By 2017. And that's because you've made crops that are now resistant to glyphosate. So you can spray it all, you know, as much as you need to kill your weeds. But, and tell me there's a, you had that weed resistance graph going out. But a fifth grader can tell you, well. Wow. When you spray that much Roundup on something or glyphosate on something, you're going to start seeing resistance. Adaptation. Exactly. Like it's nature fighting back. Like what's happening with antibiotics. Where you're seeing these like MRSA, like these medication resistant staph infections that are insanely difficult to treat. Just like it. Just like it. You know, in fact, some of the weed scientists I talked to, I'll be honest, when I first was going to a talk at Ohio State that they said the weed scientists were talking, I thought, oh. I thought weed marijuana. Shut up. I was like, oh, this is cool too, you know. Yeah, I want to find out how to make the shit stronger. But these weed scientists at Ohio State who are great and helped out with the book, Fantastic Folks, you know, some of those, you know, they're like glyphosate was like penicillin, man. It was so powerful, so effective at killing weeds that like, and we burned through it. Because these weeds became resistant to it. And so, and that's where we're at now, kind of going back to your point about chemicals and exposures. Like Roundup was introduced because it was seen as an environmentally more friendly herbicide at the time in the 70s. Than Agent R. Yeah, you're comparing it against some pretty bad. It's like, would you like to get punched or shoot you? And you know, it had to do with, you know, the way it worked and the mechanisms there. But what's happening now because of that resistance, and Jamie, I hate to bring it up again because it's actually kind of cool, you get to see this, this first time we put it together. But when that weed resistance takes off, I think it's the next graph after that, what happens is, check this out, okay, this is what's happening. I put this together with a friend of mine who's a data scientist. Try to remember that a lot of people are just listening. They're just listening. Probably a huge percentage. Fair enough. So I'll try and describe it. So what we're looking at is pounds of herbicide per acre of soybeans. So this is just looking at soybeans as a case study. And we're looking at the amount of herbicides that's being used on farms per acre in the US in specific states just because they had data for this, for us to compare. And what we're seeing is this like explosion and round up, glyphosate, that big dark line going up like that. And notice, look, we started seeing the decline in all these other herbicides, that are really toxic stuff like chlorinated compounds and things like that. They're going down and down and down, but check out weed resistance, 2004, 2005, 2006. Boom, all those herbicides that were really toxic, including by the way the other half of Agent Orange, 24D is now being used to try and beat back, round up resistant weeds. Wow. And so, that's fucking crazy. What a fucking mess.