I hope you weren't referring to me a being an "expert"
. I am fully aware of a lot of the chemicals used in current commercial farming practices and in most instances roundup is a far safer herbicide environmentally than most out there. First off it becomes inert when it contacts the soil and has zero residual activity. The stuff people buy at HD to kill the dandelions (2,4,-D) has a much higher environmental impact as is actually a modified blend of good old agent orange. Pre-emergents such as Atrazine which were used extremely heavily and still are quite common in farm practice are another but roundup has helped alleviate a dependence on it. Second, It has allowed farmers to incorporate no till practices into farming allowing the chemicals/fertilizers to stay where they are applied hence greatly reducing topsoil erosion and runoff into lakes and streams. The southern states didn't always have that trademark red clay soil. It was caused by poor farming practices for centuries deteriorating the top soil.
GMO seeds are really nothing new. Certain "Heirloom" plants are almost all but extinct. Apples today are a completely different species than what the pilgrims found, Modified traits are sweeter tasting and a lot of the trees are resistant to blight. The bananas our grandparents ate is an extinct species from a virus but the species we eat today has a longer shelf life and immune to the virus yet has no seeds and can only procreate by humans transplanting rootstock. A lot of corn these days has safener coatings on these to prevent fungicide and certain pests, insecticide applications are virtually a thing of the past. Ever wonder why those corn seeds you buy in those little packets are pink and not yellow? It is because it has a fungicide safener to promote better germination. So generally speaking unless you go to great extents to research what you are eating sometime somewhere you probably consumed GMO crops without even realizing it.
I am not trying to come off as saying chemicals are great and we can now better engineer them now than when God created them but certain crops to grow without herbicides/fertilizers is very labor intensive and rapidly depreciates the topsoil. Can organic farming with proper crop rotations be sustainable? Absolutely but if every farmer did it with proper crop rotation you'd have to see 2/3 of the fields in production pulled out and put in cover crops likes clovers/alfalfa to get the built back up and get the N back in the soil. You would see prices of poultry and meat go up probably comparable to prices of pure organic. Organic farmers aren't gouging they are just trying to cover their costs of a more expensive way to farm often with smaller yields.
I believe labeling should be available on products that may contain GMO seeds or chemicals but I agree with you on this Rick. Problem is virtually everything has something of it already in it. I kind of see Roundup as a lesser of two evils. No chemical is always the best way but compared to other chemicals heavily used prior to the advent of glyphosate, roundup definitely leaves a smaller ecological footprint.
