Tag Archives: Glyphosate

If ‘Children Of The Vine’ Sounds Like a Horror Flick, That’s Because It Is, Filmaker Says, by Julie Comber, Ph.D.

Do the wine drinkers who cherish Napa Valley wines know that the grapes are sprayed with Roundup? From Julie Comber, Ph.D, at childrenshealthdefense.org:

When Brian Lilla moved from Oakland, California, to Napa Valley he made an unfortunate discovery: Napa Valley was beautiful, but it also was highly toxic.

Why? Because of the widespread use of Roundup weedkiller on the region’s vineyards.

Lilla’s discovery led him to make “Children Of The Vine,” an investigative documentary on Roundup and the pesticide’s impact on public health.

The film weaves together facts about Roundup, and its key active ingredient — glyphosate — with stories about people who developed cancer after using Roundup, scientists, lawyers and journalists working to end the use of Roundup, and farmers who do and those who don’t use the weedkiller.

Lilla is the documentary’s director, producer, publicist, writer and researcher.

The film’s title, “Children Of The Vine,” is a nod to the ’70s horror film, “Children of the Corn,” based on a short story by Stephen King.

“My wife says that ‘Children Of The Vine’ sounds like a horror film,” Lilla said. “I always tell her it is.”

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Herbicide Is What’s for Dinner, by Miranda Hart

If you haven’t heard of desiccation, you will. It’s making our food supply more toxic. From Miranda Hart at nautil.us:

riving down a grid road in central Saskatchewan, a machine that looks like a giant insect approaches me in a cloud of dust. The cab, hanging 8 feet above the road, is suspended by tires at least 6 feet tall, with wing-like appendages folded along each side. Should I drive around it or under it?

It is harvest season, and the high-clearance sprayer is on its way to desiccate a field. Desiccation may be the most widespread farming practice you’ve never heard of. Farmers desiccate by applying herbicide to their crops; this kills all the plants at the same time, making them uniformly dry and easier to cut. In essence, desiccation speeds up plant aging. Before desiccation, crops would have to dry out naturally at the end of the season. Today, there are examples of desiccation being applied to every type of conventional crop in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.1 Chances are that most of what you ate today was harvested using a desiccant, but you’d never know.

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THE FUTURE: A fleet of combines harvests a field of desiccated peas on the Shewchuk farm near Saskatoon. The uniform senescence of the crop has made it dry, causing the combines to kick up chaff and dust as they work.Miranda Hart

Mike Shewchuk jumps down from his swather as I pull into his farmyard. He is a young farmer whose blond brush cut and a robust stride would have not been out of place 50 years ago. Along with his dad, uncles, and brother, he farms 15,000 acres an hour outside of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They recently received a century farm award, for having continuously farmed the land since the early 1900s.

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