Stand up for UK agriculture and save Glyphosate from being banned by false knowledge and ignorance

Without Glyphosate to control otherwise uncontrollable weeds BEFORE the crop is even put into the ground, whole areas of the east of England will become over run by weeds we have no other way of controlling - weeds like Blackgrass, a resistant and hugely competitive weed species that is unaffected by pests, diseases and almost all other herbicides, which chokes and suppresses any crop it grows in. Blackgrass is just one of several weed species which have the capacity to shut down arable production in the UK if left uncontrolled. Glyphosate is vital to agriculture because it DOES control them.

Glyphosate is keeping Britain farming - its as simple as that - and despite what those misinformed activists who are demonizing it are saying, 80% or more of the Glyphosate that's applied in the UK never actually touches or comes into contact with the growing crop at all because it is used PRE DRILLING/PRE PLANTING to ensure the subsequent emerging crop starts weed free - this is done in order to reduce further herbicide use. Add to that the fact that Glyphosate is NOT residual and breaks down into benign compounds such as C02 and water and its impact on the soil is also clearly minimal.

THIS PRE CROP ESTABLISHMENT AREA OF USE MUST NOT BE LOST.

Glyphosate has been overwhelmingly scientifically proven to be totally and unequivocally SAFE to us as consumers and indeed the local environment - for us over a lifetime. These are detailed, long term, unbiased and totally independent studies carried out by the worlds most respected scientific bodies.

To put some perspective into this, we hear that several bodies want Glyphosate banned because it - along with naturally occurring toxins which occur in the soil such as Al, Cu, As, Pb, Cd, Zn, Fe, to name but a few - is showing up in the bread we eat. In reality, they are not wrong, but once you know how much Glyphosate is applied to a crop in the real world, then you understand how that translates into how much there may be attached to the grains in a Kg of wheat, and then how much could conceivably end up in the bread we eat (bearing in mind most stays in the field on the glumes as its applied to a dead crop - the envelopes that surround the grain itself and which go out of the back of the combine), an individual would physically have to eat at least 1250 wholemeal family sized loaves of bread every day for a lifetime to get just 1% of the level considered to be remotely dangerous to us by EU bodies, or eating about twice your body weight in bread a day for life for no measurable effect & that's assuming it had been treated with Glyphosate at harvest - which chances are it won't have been!

WE MUST NOT LOSE IT AS A DESICCANT EITHER

Environmentally benign, Glyphosate is vital to agriculture to enable us to control these resistant weeds and to allow crops to be grown sustainably. Without Glyphosate it will cost far more to produce the crop than can be recouped from sales and, because of a total lack of "in crop" herbicide alternatives for these weeds due to resistance and weed mutation problems, the resulting crop yields and quality will become so poor as to render their cultivation and production totally unsustainable - so production will cease - especially in most of the eastern and central regions of the UK which are our core food production areas and which have a huge burden of blackgrass.

Add to this the impact the removal of Glyphosate would have on our soils and their ecosystems you see how catastrophic to our wildlife it would be.

Glyphosate used in seedbed creation to control weeds means that far fewer mechanical cultivations have to be made, so far less fuel is used and far less disruption to delicate soil ecosystems occurs - things which glyphosate use directly reduces. This helps micro organisms and macro organisms such as worms as well as ground nesting birds & small mammals to thrive.

Cultivations alone cannot control these weeds despite claims by anti farming lobbyists & without Glyphosate, it is inevitable that more mechanical weeding, consequently more fuel will be used, that more cultivations & a whole raft of other methods will have to be employed to do barely 25% of the job that Glyphosate does so safely and so well - all of which alternative methods will sadly and unavoidably decimate soil ecosytems and ground nesting/inhabiting wildlife, worm populations and the rest of the awesome environment that Glyphosate plays such a huge role in protecting today.

Don't be misled by cynical false knowledge and pseudoscience.

Glyphosate is hundreds of times safer than till receipts, shampoo, toothpaste, non stick pans, bleach, aspirin, paracetamol, nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, sunlight, toothpaste, coffee, exhaust fumes, kidney beans, mushrooms, peanuts, burnt toast, obesity, salmonella, botulism, e-coli, table salt and natural poisons like patulins in mouldy apples, lectins in kidney beans, glycoalkaloids in green potatoes, mycotoxins in untreated grain, ergot, as well as the dozens of poisonous native plants and wildflowers, berries, mildews and moulds that fill our homes and our everyday lives . . . . the list is almost endless.

Everything is hazardous to us - EVERYTHING - but its not the thing itself that's the toxin, it's the exposure to the thing, Paracelsius, the father of toxicology said "its the dose that makes the toxin".

Hazard and risk are totally different things.

A roller skate on the stairs is hazardous - the risk is whether you stand on it. Therefore you manage the risk and try not to step on it - what you don't do is ban roller skates.
Paracetamol 2 tablets 4 times a day is safe - 500 tablets 4 times a day will kill you - you don't just ban paracetamol.

Glyphosate is safe to us as consumers, safe to the environment and safe to wildlife.

Without it we cannot farm because without it we cannot produce sustainable and affordable food.

Don't let ignorance destroy our industry.