By Frank Giles
Last month’s cover story featured the potential benefits the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement could have for specialty crop growers. The recommendation to eat “real food,” which includes fruits and vegetables, could improve sales for farmers while benefiting Americans’ health.
There’s a lot that is good about MAHA, because it has focused the conversation on how diet impacts health. But we can’t forget that the MAHA founder — Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. — has not always been friendly to modern farming practices.
So far, at least on the administrative policy level, there seems to be balance between the fringes of the MAHA movement and those who appreciate the realities of farming and feeding a nation.
But where the tensions between these forces is most evident is the case of glyphosate. When I opened my X (formerly Twitter) account on the morning after President Trump signed (in February) an executive order promoting domestic production of glyphosate, it was clear much of the MAHA universe had gone into full-on meltdown mode.
The Food Babe pronounced: “This is the mass poisoning of America and it continues.” And that was one of the milder comments.
The anti-genetically modified organisms/anti-glyphosate movement dates back to the mid-90s. The movement grew up with the Internet, which also was beginning to take off around the same time. The Internet was a perfect vehicle to fuel the debate, and when social media came along later, the movement was supercharged. Anyone with any claim about the herbicide (good or bad) suddenly had a platform to spread their information or misinformation.
I’ve written several times over the years in defense of the herbicide because of its role in weed management and often pointed out the scientific scrutiny it has gone through to evaluate its safety.
But to be honest, there has been so much noise and so many wild claims made about glyphosate over the years, I even question myself. And I know respected farmers who have moved away from it — not so much for human health reasons, but for various agronomic considerations.
It is a good thing to pause and study an issue to question or confirm our beliefs. This is so important in the age of social media because there are people who are more than happy to impose their beliefs and lifestyles on your choices and rights. If you don’t believe me, have a conversation with an angry vegan about how we should farm and eat.
The U.S. House of Representatives dropped its version of the new farm bill in mid-February. Its language confirms the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) continues to be the law of the land when it comes to pesticide registration and regulation. But there’s a long way to go yet in getting the farm bill signed into law.
We know the refrain that FIFRA lays out: The label is the law. That label is meant to protect the environment and humans through proper applications of products after they’ve gone through the gauntlet to prove their safety.
Some on the MAHA fringes might argue FIFRA is meant to protect “Big Ag,” but I’d argue it is meant to protect farmers who need well scrutinized crop protection tools to produce the food that feeds this nation.