Renewable Farming

Wheat and oats desiccated with glyphosate could become unsaleable for food use

Malting barley was the first small grain rejected because of glyphosate residues. Growers were spraying glyphosate as barley reached maturity, for uniform drying and burning down green weeds. However, one Roundup patent covers its use as an antimicrobial.

February 22, 2022 By Jerry Carlson Beer brewers found that glyphosate residues in glyphosate-dessicated barley impairs fermentation. As our friend Howard Vlieger puts it, “When someone of German extraction — like me — finds a toxin interfering with brewing beer, that’s serious.”

So serious that brewers began rejecting glyphosate-sprayed barley.

Read article in The Western Producer, the source of this photo

New rejections of other small grains like oats and wheat could spread through the milling industry. Reason: More  evidence is surfacing that major food brands and big grocery chains are retailing foods with alarming rates of glyphosate. Health-food media have reported this problem for years, but now the news is going mainstream — and naming big brands. Food retailers like Walmart, Whole Foods, Hy-Vee and even Quaker Oats are being reported as purveyors of glyphosate-laced foods. Retailers’ demands for glyphosate testing could quickly ripple back through the food chain toward growers. The good news: Glyphosate-free wheat and oats could earn a premium.

The latest headline-getter is a 24-page report from the Detox Project titled The poison in our daily breadHere’s an excerpt from a news release describing the report’s content:

The results of the most comprehensive glyphosate testing of food products ever conducted in the U.S. were released by The Detox Project on Tuesday, in a detailed report that shows the true levels of weedkiller contamination in essential foods sold by some of the top grocery stores in the country.

The world’s most used weedkiller, glyphosate, was discovered in a wide range of essential food products including bread, pulses and grains from top grocery stores such as Hy-Vee, Whole Foods Market, Amazon, Walmart and Target.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen according to WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and has led to the manufacturers of Roundup, Bayer/Monsanto, being forced to pay over $10 Billion in damages to gardeners, groundskeepers and farmers who are suffering with blood cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma).

Of the products that were tested, a range of whole wheat breads contained the highest levels, alongside chickpeas and Quaker Oats. The worst offending products were found in Hy-Vee, Whole Foods Market and Walmart, with the products with the lowest levels being found in Natural Grocers.