MIT Researcher: Glyphosate Herbicide will Cause Half of All Children to Have Autism by 2025

By Alliance For Natural Health | 

Why? Evidence points to glyphosate toxicity from the overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on our food.

For over three decades, Stephanie Seneff, PhD, has researched biology and technology, over the years publishing over 170 scholarly peer-reviewed articles. In recent years she has concentrated on the relationship between nutrition and health, tackling such topics as Alzheimer’s, autism, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health.

At a [recent] conference, in a special panel discussion about GMOs, she took the audience by surprise when she declared, “At today’s rate, by 2025, one in two children will be autistic.” She noted that the side effects of autism closely mimic those of glyphosate toxicity, and presented data showing a remarkably consistent correlation between the use of Roundup on crops (and the creation of Roundup-ready GMO crop seeds) with rising rates of autism. Children with autism have biomarkers indicative of excessive glyphosate, including zinc and iron deficiency, low serum sulfate, seizures, and mitochondrial disorder.

A fellow panelist reported that after Dr. Seneff’s presentation, “All of the 70 or so people in attendance were squirming, likely because they now had serious misgivings about serving their kids, or themselves, anything with corn or soy, which are nearly all genetically modified and thus tainted with Roundup and its glyphosate.”

Dr. Seneff noted the ubiquity of glyphosate’s use. Because it is used on corn and soy, all soft drinks and candies sweetened with corn syrup and all chips and cereals that contain soy fillers have small amounts of glyphosate in them, as do our beef and poultry since cattle and chicken are fed GMO corn or soy. Wheat is often sprayed with Roundup just prior to being harvested, which means that all non-organic bread and wheat products would also be sources of glyphosate toxicity. The amount of glyphosate in each product may not be large, but the cumulative effect (especially with as much processed food as Americans eat) could be devastating. A recent study shows that pregnant women living near farms where pesticides are applied have a 60% increased risk of children having an autism spectrum disorder.

Other toxic substances may also be autism-inducing. You may recall our story on the CDC whistleblower who revealed the government’s deliberate concealment of the link between the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) and a sharply increased risk of autism, particularly in African American boys. Other studies now show a link between children’s exposure to pesticides and autism. Children who live in homes with vinyl floors, which can emit phthalate chemicals, are more likely to have autism. Children whose mothers smoked were also twice as likely to have autism. Research now acknowledges that environmental contaminants such as PCBs, PBDEs, and mercury can alter brain neuron functioning even before a child is born.

This month, the USDA released a study finding that although there were detectable levels of pesticide residue in more than half of food tested by the agency, 99% of samples taken were found to be within levels the government deems safe, and 40% were found to have no detectable trace of pesticides at all. The USDA added, however, that due to “cost concerns,” it did not test for residues of glyphosate. Let’s repeat that: they never tested for the active ingredient in the most widely used herbicide in the world. “Cost concerns”? How absurd—unless they mean it will cost them too much in terms of the special relationship between the USDA and Monsanto. You may recall the revolving door between Monsanto and the federal government, with agency officials becoming high-paying executives—and vice versa! Money, power, prestige: it’s all there. Monsanto and the USDA love to scratch each others’ backs. Clearly this omission was purposeful.

In addition, as we have previously reported, the number of adverse reactions from vaccines can be correlated as well with autism, though Seneff says it doesn’t correlate quite as closely as with Roundup. The same correlations between applications of glyphosate and autism show up in deaths from senility.

Of course, autism is a complex problem with many potential causes. Dr. Seneff’s data, however, is particularly important considering how close the correlation is—and because it is coming from a scientist with impeccable credentials. Earlier this year, she spoke at the Autism One conference and presented many of the same facts; that presentation is available on YouTube.

Monsanto claims that Roundup is harmless to humans. Bacteria, fungi, algae, parasites, and plants use a seven-step metabolic route known as the shikimate pathway for the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids; glyphosate inhibits this pathway, causing the plant to die, which is why it’s so effective as an herbicide. Monsanto says humans don’t have this shikimate pathway, so it’s perfectly safe.

Dr. Seneff points out, however, that our gut bacteria do have this pathway, and that’s crucial because these bacteria supply our body with crucial amino acids. Roundup thus kills beneficial gut bacteria, allowing pathogens to grow; interferes with the synthesis of amino acids including methionine, which leads to shortages in critical neurotransmitters and folate; chelates (removes) important minerals like iron, cobalt and manganese; and much more.

Even worse, she notes, additional chemicals in Roundup are untested because they’re classified as“inert,” yet according to a 2014 study in BioMed Research International, these chemicals are capable of amplifying the toxic effects of Roundup hundreds of times over.

Glyphosate is present in unusually high quantities in the breast milk of American mothers, at anywhere from 760 to 1,600 times the allowable limits in European drinking water. Urine testing shows Americans have ten times the glyphosate accumulation as Europeans.

“In my view, the situation is almost beyond repair,” Dr. Seneff said after her presentation. “We need to do something drastic.”

Read the Full Article Here.

See Also:

Study: Reducing Herbicide Glyphosate in Diet Reduces Autism Symptoms

The post MIT Researcher: Glyphosate Herbicide will Cause Half of All Children to Have Autism by 2025 appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

MIT Researcher: Glyphosate Herbicide will Cause Half of All Children to Have Autism by 2025

By Alliance For Natural Health | 

Why? Evidence points to glyphosate toxicity from the overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on our food.

For over three decades, Stephanie Seneff, PhD, has researched biology and technology, over the years publishing over 170 scholarly peer-reviewed articles. In recent years she has concentrated on the relationship between nutrition and health, tackling such topics as Alzheimer’s, autism, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health.

At a [recent] conference, in a special panel discussion about GMOs, she took the audience by surprise when she declared, “At today’s rate, by 2025, one in two children will be autistic.” She noted that the side effects of autism closely mimic those of glyphosate toxicity, and presented data showing a remarkably consistent correlation between the use of Roundup on crops (and the creation of Roundup-ready GMO crop seeds) with rising rates of autism. Children with autism have biomarkers indicative of excessive glyphosate, including zinc and iron deficiency, low serum sulfate, seizures, and mitochondrial disorder.

A fellow panelist reported that after Dr. Seneff’s presentation, “All of the 70 or so people in attendance were squirming, likely because they now had serious misgivings about serving their kids, or themselves, anything with corn or soy, which are nearly all genetically modified and thus tainted with Roundup and its glyphosate.”

Dr. Seneff noted the ubiquity of glyphosate’s use. Because it is used on corn and soy, all soft drinks and candies sweetened with corn syrup and all chips and cereals that contain soy fillers have small amounts of glyphosate in them, as do our beef and poultry since cattle and chicken are fed GMO corn or soy. Wheat is often sprayed with Roundup just prior to being harvested, which means that all non-organic bread and wheat products would also be sources of glyphosate toxicity. The amount of glyphosate in each product may not be large, but the cumulative effect (especially with as much processed food as Americans eat) could be devastating. A recent study shows that pregnant women living near farms where pesticides are applied have a 60% increased risk of children having an autism spectrum disorder.

Other toxic substances may also be autism-inducing. You may recall our story on the CDC whistleblower who revealed the government’s deliberate concealment of the link between the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella) and a sharply increased risk of autism, particularly in African American boys. Other studies now show a link between children’s exposure to pesticides and autism. Children who live in homes with vinyl floors, which can emit phthalate chemicals, are more likely to have autism. Children whose mothers smoked were also twice as likely to have autism. Research now acknowledges that environmental contaminants such as PCBs, PBDEs, and mercury can alter brain neuron functioning even before a child is born.

This month, the USDA released a study finding that although there were detectable levels of pesticide residue in more than half of food tested by the agency, 99% of samples taken were found to be within levels the government deems safe, and 40% were found to have no detectable trace of pesticides at all. The USDA added, however, that due to “cost concerns,” it did not test for residues of glyphosate. Let’s repeat that: they never tested for the active ingredient in the most widely used herbicide in the world. “Cost concerns”? How absurd—unless they mean it will cost them too much in terms of the special relationship between the USDA and Monsanto. You may recall the revolving door between Monsanto and the federal government, with agency officials becoming high-paying executives—and vice versa! Money, power, prestige: it’s all there. Monsanto and the USDA love to scratch each others’ backs. Clearly this omission was purposeful.

In addition, as we have previously reported, the number of adverse reactions from vaccines can be correlated as well with autism, though Seneff says it doesn’t correlate quite as closely as with Roundup. The same correlations between applications of glyphosate and autism show up in deaths from senility.

Of course, autism is a complex problem with many potential causes. Dr. Seneff’s data, however, is particularly important considering how close the correlation is—and because it is coming from a scientist with impeccable credentials. Earlier this year, she spoke at the Autism One conference and presented many of the same facts; that presentation is available on YouTube.

Monsanto claims that Roundup is harmless to humans. Bacteria, fungi, algae, parasites, and plants use a seven-step metabolic route known as the shikimate pathway for the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids; glyphosate inhibits this pathway, causing the plant to die, which is why it’s so effective as an herbicide. Monsanto says humans don’t have this shikimate pathway, so it’s perfectly safe.

Dr. Seneff points out, however, that our gut bacteria do have this pathway, and that’s crucial because these bacteria supply our body with crucial amino acids. Roundup thus kills beneficial gut bacteria, allowing pathogens to grow; interferes with the synthesis of amino acids including methionine, which leads to shortages in critical neurotransmitters and folate; chelates (removes) important minerals like iron, cobalt and manganese; and much more.

Even worse, she notes, additional chemicals in Roundup are untested because they’re classified as“inert,” yet according to a 2014 study in BioMed Research International, these chemicals are capable of amplifying the toxic effects of Roundup hundreds of times over.

Glyphosate is present in unusually high quantities in the breast milk of American mothers, at anywhere from 760 to 1,600 times the allowable limits in European drinking water. Urine testing shows Americans have ten times the glyphosate accumulation as Europeans.

“In my view, the situation is almost beyond repair,” Dr. Seneff said after her presentation. “We need to do something drastic.”

Read the Full Article Here.

See Also:

Study: Reducing Herbicide Glyphosate in Diet Reduces Autism Symptoms

The post MIT Researcher: Glyphosate Herbicide will Cause Half of All Children to Have Autism by 2025 appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

‘Expensive’ Food

Two new studies call attention—yet again—to the link between pesticides and health problems—and how widespread those health issues are.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and The Global Alliance for the Future of Food published a 120-page report that says, among other things, that the industrial food system is mostly to blame for our “staggering” healthcare costs.

And a new study in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found that women who consume fruits and vegetables with high amounts of pesticide residue are less likely to conceive—and if they do, more likely to miscarry.

The Rodale Institute pulled these numbers, representing the healthcare-related costs of our industrial food system, from the IPES-Food report:

• $760 billion yearly cost of obesity (global estimate for 2025)


• $673 billion yearly cost of diabetes (global number for 2012)


• $3.5 trillion global cost of malnutrition


• $557 billion cost of endocrine disruptor exposure (the U.S. and the EU)

Not on the list? The cost—financial, physical and emotional—of infertility treatments.

More from the IPES-Food report:

. . . many of the most severe health impacts trace back to some of the core industrial food and farming practices, e.g., chemical-intensive agriculture; intensive livestock production; and the mass production and mass marketing of ultra-processed foods.

The next time someone tells you organic food is “too expensive,” um . . .

Read ‘Expert Panel Identifies Unacceptable Toll of Food and Farming Systems on Human Health’

Read ‘Unraveling the Food-Health Nexus’

Read ‘Study ties pesticides in food to reduced fertility in women

h/t: Organic Consumers Organization

The post ‘Expensive’ Food appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Over 3 Million Acres Damaged by ‘Chemical Arson’ as Plants Wither and Die From Chemical Burns (VIDEO)

 

The lawsuits against chemical technology giant Monsanto are multiplying fast these days. Not only is there a class-action lawsuit¹claiming the company’s best-selling herbicide Roundup caused Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in hundreds of plaintiffs^2,3 — the outcome of which might influence Bayer’s decision to acquire Monsanto or back out of the deal — farmers are also ganging together to sue Monsanto over crop damage caused by its latest dicamba-containing herbicide.

As feared by many critics, any crop that is not genetically engineered (GE) to be resistant to dicamba is severely damaged by even small amounts of the herbicide — be it food crops, gardens or trees; even other GE crops resistant to herbicides other than dicamba will shrivel and die in its presence. Monsanto promised the XtendiMax with VaporGrip formula is engineered to be less volatile and prone to drift, but real-life effects suggest otherwise.

Dicamba Is an Indiscriminate Plant Killer

In July, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture reported investigating two dozen complaints involving dicamba damage caused by drift.⁴ As of late September, 368 complaints had been filed in Illinois,⁵ and Iowa had received 258 reports — a “record number” — by early September.⁶

Farmers in Arkansas are reporting the same problem. In October 2016, a soybean farmer named Mike Wallace was shot to death in a dispute over dicamba damage caused by drift from a neighboring farm growing dicamba-resistant soy. The damage is so extensive, a number of states, including Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi, imposed temporary bans on the use of dicamba-containing pesticides this past summer.⁷ As reported by Star Tribune:⁸

“Losses blamed on accidental chemical damage could climb into the tens of millions of dollars, if not higher, and may have a ripple effect on other products that rely on soybeans, including chicken. The number of complaints ‘far exceeds anything we’ve ever seen,’ Arkansas Plant Board Director Terry Walker recently told lawmakers.”

More Than 3 Million Acres Damaged by Next-Gen Herbicide

According to The New York Times, 25 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton were planted this year, and Monsanto has its sights set on expanding that to 40 million acres in 2018. Hailed as “the answer” to growing glyphosate resistance⁹ (thanks to its excessive use on Roundup Ready, i.e., glyphosate-resistant crops), dicamba-resistant plants have quickly turned into a nightmare for those who plant them, and their neighbors:¹⁰

“’I’m a fan of Monsanto. I’ve bought a lot of their products,’ said Brad Williams, a Missouri farmer. ‘I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that there would be some kind of evil nefarious plot to put a defective product out there intentionally.’

Yet he has been dismayed both by damage to his soybean crops, which were within a wide area of farmland harmed by dicamba, and by the impact even to trees on his property. Leaves, he said, were ‘so deformed you couldn’t even really identify the differences between them.’”

So far, more than 3 million acres have been damaged by dicamba.¹¹ Speaking with Ohio Valley Resource,¹² Kentucky soybean farmer Jacob Goodman compares dicamba drift to “chemical arson” — a reference to the fact that affected plants will curl and shrivel from the chemical burns. He also notes that drift from neighboring farms growing dicamba-resistant crops is making it exceptionally difficult for non-dicamba farms to plan their production.

“Not only can we not tell the amount of crop that we can get at the end of the year, but we can’t price the market ahead in advance and make contracts because we don’t want to over-book and not be able to deliver this fall, because we have to pay the difference.”

Arkansas farmer Kenneth Qualls told The New York Times, “’It’s really divided the farming community … Some of these people who got victimized by this product are probably going to go out of business because of it. They’ll have to put up their equipment for auction, and the people bidding on it will be the ones who put them out of business.”

Dicamba Makers May Face Largest Chemical Liability Lawsuit Ever

On September 10, 2017, Morgan & Morgan filed a class-action lawsuit¹³ against Monsanto, BASF and DuPont, the three largest manufacturers of dicamba-based herbicide formulations in the U.S.

The complaint alleges dicamba “is highly volatile and can travel considerable distances and cause injuries to plants several miles away,” and that dicamba makers “deceptively marketed their latest dicamba formulations as ‘low-volatility’ herbicides that would not be as prone to off-target movement.” In a statement, Morgan & Morgan attorney Rene Rocha said:

“This has been a major issue for American agriculture. Farmers across the country relied upon the defendants’ assurances that these new formulations of dicamba could be used safely and without harm to others. That simply isn’t true, and as a result thousands of farmers are staring down lean harvests and uncertain futures.”

The fact that dicamba is extremely potent and volatile (referring to its ability to turn into a gas) does not come as a surprise. The chemical has not been permitted to be used during growing season for this very reason. Older dicamba herbicides were only allowed to be used to kill weeds prior to planting — it could not be used on growing crops because it will kill everything.

Chemical Maker Forbid Independent Volatility Testing

Monsanto’s weed killer, XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology^14,15 — which goes along with its Roundup Ready Xtend cotton and soybeans — is made with “chemical technology” said to make the dicamba less prone to vaporization and drift. However, the real-world effects clearly indicate there are serious flaws.

What’s more, Monsanto appears to have willfully prevented key testing of the herbicide. Normally, when a new pesticide is developed, the company will commission tests that are then shared with regulators. Samples of the chemical are also shared with universities for analysis and testing. Together, regulators and researchers then assess the product’s safety and effectiveness.

In this case, Monsanto actually forbid university researchers to test XtendiMax with VaporGrip for its vaporization and drift potential (volatility testing),^16,17 despite that being a crucial feature of the new herbicide. Monsanto has defended its decision to prevent testing calling it “unnecessary” because the company believes it to be “less volatile than a previous dicamba formula that researchers found could be used safely.”¹⁸

However, summary notes from an Arkansas legislature’s joint budget committee meeting suggest there might have been a different incentive to prevent testing. Notes from the meeting state that Monsanto employee Boyd Carey “is on record on August 8 stating that the University of Arkansas nor any other university was given the opportunity to test VaporGrip in fear that the results may jeopardize the federal label.”

Dicamba Formulation Is Nearly Impossible to Apply Safely

According to Monsanto’s chief technology officer Robert Fraley, XtendiMax with VaporGrip “will not move off target and damage anyone” as long as it’s applied according to label instructions. Mind you, those instructions are nine pages long, and include strict limitations on when and how you can apply it. For example, proper application requires the farmer to spray while wind speeds are between 3 and 10 miles per hour.

The reason for the bottom wind speed is that when air is very still, it can signal a temperature inversion,¹⁹ which acts much like a lid. Pollutants are easily trapped below the inversion, where they can build up. But since wind speeds vary from one hour to the next on any given day, proper application becomes nearly impossible. Some university scientists have also noted that even if you manage to comply with these stringent application rules, the volatility of dicamba may still be an issue.

According to Aaron Hager, associate professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois,²⁰ soy is so sensitive to dicamba, all you need to destroy 1 acre of soybeans is an amount equal to the spray when you open a can of Coke! In light of that, it’s hard to see how farmers growing dicamba-resistant crops could possibly avoid damaging other farms, not to mention other plant life and nearby trees.

Indeed, according to extension weed specialist Larry Steckel, many farmers complain they “can’t keep dicamba in the field” no matter how hard they try to follow the application rules.²¹ He also notes that temperature inversions “occur most days in Tennessee during June and July,” which makes it next to impossible to avoid off-target damage.

According to Ohio Valley Resource, there also appears to be a correlation between dicamba damage and areas located by rivers and in floodplains. Ohio farmer Jacob Goodman suspects “It’s something about the chemistry and the temperature inversions that happen in river bottoms that is causing this chemical to freely roam.”

Dicamba Maker Blames Farmer Ineptitude

Not surprisingly, Monsanto blames damage resulting from XtendiMax on farmer misapplication. Monsanto’s vice president for global strategy told The New York Times,²² “New technologies take some time to learn. Thus far, what we’ve seen in the field, the vast majority, more than three-quarters of them, has been due to not following the label.”

The question is, can the instructions actually be followed in real life? According to Bob Hartzler, an agronomy professor and weed specialist at Iowa State University, “The restriction on these labels is unlike anything that’s ever been seen before.”²³ The class-action lawsuit filed by Morgan & Morgan claims the label instructions are “unrealistic,” and that the restrictions on wind speed disallow timely application of the weed killer.

As noted by a Missouri farmer, “You have to be a meteorologist to get it exactly right.”²⁴ While some farmers admit to having difficulty following the label instructions, due to their complexity,²⁵ other farmers rebuke Monsanto’s attempts to shift blame. As Arkansas farmer Qualls said, “We may be rural hicks, but we’re not stupid. We know how to apply chemicals. They are going to blame it on the farmer to reduce their liability.”

What’s more, because dicamba-resistant GE crops allow the chemical to be applied much later in the growing season, when temperatures and humidity levels are higher, it’s far more susceptible to volatility, meaning it turns into a gas. As a gas, it can no longer be controlled and spreads wherever the wind blows.

While Monsanto claims XtendiMax is 90 percent less volatile than old versions,²⁶ without rigorous volatility testing, one has to question the accuracy of such claims. As noted by The New York Times, “While Monsanto and BASF modified the new versions of the herbicide they are selling, they have not entirely solved the problem. So much dicamba is being used that even a small percentage of drift can cause widespread damage.”

Bizarre Conflict of Interest Claims Emerge

A task force is now recommending the Arkansas State Plant Board ban use of all dicamba formulations on crops after April 15 in the 2018 growing season. Monsanto challenged the ban in September, claiming the decision was “tainted by the involvement” of University of Arkansas weed scientists Ford Baldwin and Jason Norsworthy.

According to Monsanto, the scientists’ ties to Bayer and its competing weed technology makes them less than objective in their critique of dicamba.²⁷ The irony of the accusation has not gone unnoticed. As noted by The New York Times,²⁸ “Considering that Bayer is acquiring Monsanto, it was an awkward step,” adding that “Bayer called the men ‘pre-eminent weed scientists.’” It remains to be seen if Monsanto’s accusations will backfire, rendering their position even more tenuous.

September 9, Mark Cochran, vice president of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, issued a statement defending the university’s scientists.²⁹ According to Cochran, Monsanto’s petition to the Arkansas Plant Board is “an attack on the whole profession, scientists whose careful work is meant to be of benefit to everyone.” As a result of the allegations, Cochran vowed “to publish all data relevant to our dicamba work over the last few years.”

Farmers Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The problem many farmers now face is whether to hop on the bandwagon and start growing dicamba-resistant crops just to avoid having their harvest destroyed by other growers — thus rewarding Monsanto for its ill-conceived product and poor conduct. According to previous estimates, the approval of dicamba-resistant cotton and soy is expected to increase dicamba sales from less than 1 million pounds to more than 25 million pounds annually.³⁰

If growers start switching to dicamba-resistant seed just to protect themselves from drift damage, that number might go even higher. As noted by Missouri farmer Michael Kemp,³¹ “If you don’t buy Xtend [seeds], you’re going to be hurt. You’re going to have to buy their product because their chemical is drifting around.”

This, truly, would be a worst-case scenario, possibly endangering our environment as a whole. It would also pose extreme financial risks to farmers. If dicamba-resistant soybeans start monopolizing the market, makers will be able to charge whatever price they see fit for the seeds and chemicals.

Naturally, such a monopoly would also pose serious health risks to consumers, whose food choices would become more limited. Dicamba has been linked to a number of health risks, including Non-Hodgkin lymphoma,³² developmental and reproductive problems.

How to Reduce Your Exposure to Toxic Pesticides

There’s no doubt the dicamba problem needs to be addressed, and fast. Farmers will not be able to survive several seasons’ worth of crop destruction. I also worry about its impact on our environment at large. What if it starts to destroy forests and protected lands? There’s also no doubt in my mind that dicamba-resistant GE crops might cause serious health problems when consumed, and since the U.S. does not label GE foods, this really raises the stakes for those who are unaware of these issues.

What we need is more regenerative agriculture, and the most effective way for you to support that is by buying locally grown organic or biodynamic foods. If you live in the U.S., the following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods:

American Grassfed Association The goal of the American Grassfed Association is to promote the grass fed industry through government relations, research, concept marketing and public education. Their website also allows you to search for AGA approved producers certified according to strict standards that include being raised on a diet of 100 percent forage; raised on pasture and never confined to a feedlot; never treated with antibiotics or hormones; born and raised on American family farms.

EatWild.com EatWild.com provides lists of farmers known to produce raw dairy products as well as grass fed beef and other farm-fresh produce (although not all are certified organic). Here you can also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass fed products.

Weston A. Price Foundation Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.

Grassfed Exchange The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S.

Local Harvest This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass fed meats and many other goodies.

Farmers Markets A national listing of farmers markets.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, hotels and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

FoodRoutes The FoodRoutes “Find Good Food” map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs and markets near you.

The Cornucopia Institute The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO “organic” production from authentic organic practices.

RealMilk.com If you’re still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund33 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.34 California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at www.OrganicPastures.com.

5 All-Natural Weed Killers, Straight From Your Kitchen (No. 2 Will Kill ANYTHING)

Image source: Pixabay.com

Weeds — they creep up in your garden, sneak through the cracks in the sidewalk, and make it a point to grow everywhere that’s inconvenient to reach.

The easy-out, of course, is to reach for a bottle of store-bought herbicide. Readily available and modestly priced, it’s no wonder that many home gardeners choose it.

Unfortunately, many of these herbicides can be detrimental not only to weeds, but to humans as well. Studies suggest that the chemicals in these products can have a wide range of impacts. Some are relatively minor, such as the potential to cause skin irritations or allergic reactions, while others are more serious, such as nervous system problems and even cancer. In all cases, children and pets are especially vulnerable. Many of these products also have a long-term negative impact on the environment.

Seamazing: The Low-Cost Way To Re-mineralize Your Soil

Homemade weed killers offer the best possible alternative to manufactured herbicides. Inexpensive and made from common household materials, these natural weed killers can help keep unwanted plants at bay without unnecessary exposure to harmful chemicals.

Let’s look at several:

1. Boiling water

One of the simplest solution to weeds involves nothing more than water. To use this technique, boil water in a kettle, then, before it has a chance to cool, pour the water on the crown and roots of the offending plant. The hot temperature will scald virtually any plant it comes in contact with, generally dealing a mortal blow. Although plants with long taproots may require more than one treatment, this is an easy and completely natural way to combat pesky plants.

2. Salt

There’s a reason armies used to salt the fields of their enemies — salt has a powerful ability to render soil barren. Because it affects the ability of roots to take up water from the soil, salt effectively dries out existing plants and makes it difficult for new ones to take hold. While not an ideal solution for gardens and lawns since it can cause permanent damage to the soil, salt can be useful for treating pathways, sidewalks and other areas that are meant to be plant-free. For easy application, dissolve one part salt in eight parts water and apply to the desired locations.

3. Vinegar and lemon juice

Image source: Pixabay.com

Plants are picky when it comes to soil pH, and lowering the pH immediately around a weed will almost always cause it to wither. For this reason, it’s not unusual to find acidic ingredients in many commercial herbicides. Before resorting to an unknown chemical concoction, though, it’s worth trying a version made from common pantry items.

Need Non-GMO Seeds For Your Organic Garden? The Best Deals Are Right Here!

Vinegar and lemon juice both contain strong acids and can be combined for a pH-targeting weed treatment. Simply combine four ounces of lemon juice with one quart of vinegar and apply directly on the offending plants. This solution will kill most plants, but without causing residual damage to the surrounding soil.

4. Pickle juice

Finish off a jar of pickles recently? Don’t throw away the bottle without putting the leftover liquid to good use first! Pickle brine is full of vinegar and salt, making it a natural combination of these two weed-tackling substances. Apply directly to problem plants and pat yourself on the back for finding such a creative way to handle uninvited garden guests.

5. Soap

One of the most popular homemade herbicides involves combining two of the treatments mentioned above (vinegar and salt) with a third household product — dish soap. While not necessarily damaging to weeds in and of itself, soap contains surfactants which help the other ingredients “stick” to the plant, enhancing the weed-killing properties of the solution. To create this triple-whammy weed control, combine one gallon of vinegar (to lower the pH) with one cup of salt (to dry out the roots) and one tablespoon of dish soap (to help it adhere to the plants).

Controlling weeds doesn’t necessarily need to involve harsh chemicals and impossible-to-pronounce ingredients. Take advantage of these homemade alternatives to safely keep unwanted plants in check.

What all-natural methods would you add to this list? Share your ideas in the section below:

Bust Inflation With A Low-Cost, High-Production Garden. Read More Here.

One More Reason to get Rid of Glyphosate

Date: August 13, 2017

(image: Getty)

We can probably all agree that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller and its key ingredient, glyphosate, in our food and in our drinking water, poses a risk to our health—especially in light of the latest revelations about how Monsanto has conspired to deceive us on just how toxic Roundup is.

But a topic that gets less attention, is how damaging widespread use of Roundup is to soil. And lest we need a reminder civilizations “rise and fall” depending on the quality of their soil.

Last month, Beyond Pesticides reported on a review of studies what Roundup and glyphosate do to the quality of soil.

The review, by Robert J. Kremer, PhD, of the University of Missouri School of Natural Resources, cites concerns that include: reduction of nutrient availability for plants and organisms; disruption to organism diversity, especially in the areas around plant roots; reductions of beneficial soil bacteria; increases in plant root pathogens; disturbed earthworm activity; reduced nitrogen fixing at plant roots; and compromised growth and reproduction in some soil and aquatic organisms.

Just one more reason, as if we needed it, to rid the world of Roundup.

Read the full study: ‘Soil and Environmental Health after Twenty Years of Intensive Use of Glyphosate’

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Guess Who Edited the “Independent” Reviews That Say Monsanto’s Round-Up Is NOT Carcinogenic?

New reviews have shown that Monsanto’s Round-Up is not carcinogenic. The weed killer is perfectly safe, despite the World Health Organizations proclamation in 2015 that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Round-Up, was “probably” carcinogenic.

This proclamation was met with outrage from Monsanto and a series of “independent” reviews that all agreed that the World Health Organization was wrong.

Of course, Monsanto secretly edited the studies.

Dozens of internal emails that the company probably wished had vanished into the cyber-ether have recently been released in a court hearing by plaintiffs suing Monsanto:

Dozens of internal Monsanto emails, released on Aug. 1 by plaintiffs’ lawyers who are suing the company, reveal how Monsanto worked with an outside consulting firm to induce the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology to publish a purported “independent” review of Roundup’s health effects that appears to be anything but. The review, published along with four subpapers in a September 2016 special supplement, was aimed at rebutting the 2015 assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. That finding by the cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization led California last month to list glyphosate as a known human carcinogen. It has also spurred more than 1,000 lawsuits in state and federal courts by plaintiffs who claim they contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from Roundup exposure. (source)

In the emails, we discover that Monsanto funded a review by Intertek Group Plc’s consulting unit, entitled “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate.” One must wonder how independent a review so-funded could be and how much we can trust the claims that Monsanto’s Round-Up is not carcinogenic.

According to Monsanto, very independent. Their Declaration of Interest statement said:

The Expert Panelists were engaged by, and acted as consultants to, Intertek, and were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company. Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.” (source)

But just like in the Clinton campaign, those darned emails came back to haunt them like the Ghost of Cancer Victims Past. Bloomberg reports:

The correspondence shows the company’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts. At one point, Heydens even vetoed explicit requests by some of the panelists to tone down what one of them wrote was the review’s “inflammatory” criticisms of IARC.

“An extensive revision of the summary article is necessary,” wrote that panelist, John Acquavella, an epidemiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, in a February 2016 email attached to his suggested edits of the draft. Alarmed, Ashley Roberts, the coordinator of the glyphosate papers for Intertek, forwarded Acquavella’s note and edits to Heydens at Monsanto, with the warning: “Please take a look at the latest from the epi(demiology) group!!!!”

Heydens reedited Acquavella’s edits, arguing in six different notes in the draft’s margin that statements Acquavella had found inflammatory were not and should not be changed, despite the author’s requests. In the published article, Heydens’s edits prevailed. (source)

Ouch.

Monsanto has a history of skewing the science.

How can we believe anything from such a biased source? And it isn’t like this is the first time Monsanto has been busted for toying with the science.

Of course, Monsanto has a long history of rewriting science when it gets in the way of profits. Who can forget the Seralini study, in which rats fed nothing but Round-Up Ready corn developed massive and horrific tumors?  Then, once the study became common knowledge, Dr. Seralini was publicly shamed and vilified. His work was pulled from the journal in which it was published, Food and Chemical Toxicology. But the fact of which many people were unaware was that the new editor of the journal who pulled the review, Richard Goodman, was hired straight from the hallowed halls of Monsanto.

As well, Monsanto recently sullied scientific research with a contract barring certain testing from being performed. A new poison product that they’d like to introduce to the market is called XtendiMax. While they supplied samples of the product to research departments of the University of Arkansas, University of Missouri and the University of Illinois, the researchers were bound contractually NOT to test the volatility of the product. (“Volatility measures the product’s tendency to vaporize and drift across fields.” source)

I don’t believe for one second that Monsanto’s Round-Up is not carcinogenic.

The repeated infractions mean that you certainly can’t trust any pro-Monsanto studies, and in fact, does more to undermine any potential trust a person might have in any product birthed from that company. Any sensible person would likewise have to mistrust claims that Monsanto’s round up is not carcinogenic. They’ve even been caught hiring internet trolls to combat their negative image, unleashing them on blogs and websites that post the truth about their deadly products.

In fact, you have to wonder whether Monsanto is single-handedly responsible for the giant American Cancer Cluster that means every other person in the country will one day suffer from cancer, earning the cancer industry well over 124 billion dollars per year.

Oh – and you certainly can’t expect the EPA to stop them. After irrefutable evidence of toxicity and death from Round-Up, those guardians of the environment actually raised the allowable level of glyphosate on food crops.

Between their genetically modified crops that are designed to survive every-higher inundations of toxic weed killers and the widespread use of Round-up, they just may be the death of us all as they pretend to benevolently feed the world.

Guess Who Edited the “Independent” Reviews That Say Monsanto’s Round-Up Is NOT Carcinogenic?

New reviews have shown that Monsanto’s Round-Up is not carcinogenic. The weed killer is perfectly safe, despite the World Health Organizations proclamation in 2015 that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Round-Up, was “probably” carcinogenic.

This proclamation was met with outrage from Monsanto and a series of “independent” reviews that all agreed that the World Health Organization was wrong.

Of course, Monsanto secretly edited the studies.

Dozens of internal emails that the company probably wished had vanished into the cyber-ether have recently been released in a court hearing by plaintiffs suing Monsanto:

Dozens of internal Monsanto emails, released on Aug. 1 by plaintiffs’ lawyers who are suing the company, reveal how Monsanto worked with an outside consulting firm to induce the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology to publish a purported “independent” review of Roundup’s health effects that appears to be anything but. The review, published along with four subpapers in a September 2016 special supplement, was aimed at rebutting the 2015 assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. That finding by the cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization led California last month to list glyphosate as a known human carcinogen. It has also spurred more than 1,000 lawsuits in state and federal courts by plaintiffs who claim they contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from Roundup exposure. (source)

In the emails, we discover that Monsanto funded a review by Intertek Group Plc’s consulting unit, entitled “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate.” One must wonder how independent a review so-funded could be and how much we can trust the claims that Monsanto’s Round-Up is not carcinogenic.

According to Monsanto, very independent. Their Declaration of Interest statement said:

The Expert Panelists were engaged by, and acted as consultants to, Intertek, and were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company. Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.” (source)

But just like in the Clinton campaign, those darned emails came back to haunt them like the Ghost of Cancer Victims Past. Bloomberg reports:

The correspondence shows the company’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts. At one point, Heydens even vetoed explicit requests by some of the panelists to tone down what one of them wrote was the review’s “inflammatory” criticisms of IARC.

“An extensive revision of the summary article is necessary,” wrote that panelist, John Acquavella, an epidemiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, in a February 2016 email attached to his suggested edits of the draft. Alarmed, Ashley Roberts, the coordinator of the glyphosate papers for Intertek, forwarded Acquavella’s note and edits to Heydens at Monsanto, with the warning: “Please take a look at the latest from the epi(demiology) group!!!!”

Heydens reedited Acquavella’s edits, arguing in six different notes in the draft’s margin that statements Acquavella had found inflammatory were not and should not be changed, despite the author’s requests. In the published article, Heydens’s edits prevailed. (source)

Ouch.

Monsanto has a history of skewing the science.

How can we believe anything from such a biased source? And it isn’t like this is the first time Monsanto has been busted for toying with the science.

Of course, Monsanto has a long history of rewriting science when it gets in the way of profits. Who can forget the Seralini study, in which rats fed nothing but Round-Up Ready corn developed massive and horrific tumors?  Then, once the study became common knowledge, Dr. Seralini was publicly shamed and vilified. His work was pulled from the journal in which it was published, Food and Chemical Toxicology. But the fact of which many people were unaware was that the new editor of the journal who pulled the review, Richard Goodman, was hired straight from the hallowed halls of Monsanto.

As well, Monsanto recently sullied scientific research with a contract barring certain testing from being performed. A new poison product that they’d like to introduce to the market is called XtendiMax. While they supplied samples of the product to research departments of the University of Arkansas, University of Missouri and the University of Illinois, the researchers were bound contractually NOT to test the volatility of the product. (“Volatility measures the product’s tendency to vaporize and drift across fields.” source)

I don’t believe for one second that Monsanto’s Round-Up is not carcinogenic.

The repeated infractions mean that you certainly can’t trust any pro-Monsanto studies, and in fact, does more to undermine any potential trust a person might have in any product birthed from that company. Any sensible person would likewise have to mistrust claims that Monsanto’s round up is not carcinogenic. They’ve even been caught hiring internet trolls to combat their negative image, unleashing them on blogs and websites that post the truth about their deadly products.

In fact, you have to wonder whether Monsanto is single-handedly responsible for the giant American Cancer Cluster that means every other person in the country will one day suffer from cancer, earning the cancer industry well over 124 billion dollars per year.

Oh – and you certainly can’t expect the EPA to stop them. After irrefutable evidence of toxicity and death from Round-Up, those guardians of the environment actually raised the allowable level of glyphosate on food crops.

Between their genetically modified crops that are designed to survive every-higher inundations of toxic weed killers and the widespread use of Round-up, they just may be the death of us all as they pretend to benevolently feed the world.

Something to Celebrate

On July 7 (2017), California will add glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, to the state’s list of chemicals and substances known to cause cancer.

Before we dive into the weeds in terms of what the listing does and doesn’t mean, and may or may not lead to, let’s take a moment to recognize that this is a landmark decision in the ongoing battle against Monsanto’s flagship weedkiller.

Every activist who has engaged in this fight deserves to take a moment to bask in this victory.

It’s not everything we need, or everything we want—but California’s decision, upheld by the courts, represents a major step forward in a decades-long fight to expose the truth about Roundup and protect the public from its cancer-causing effects.

The full impact of the decision remains to be seen. How much glyphosate will need to be present before a product is required to carry a warning? How many foods will exceed the glyphosate residue limits set by California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA)?

Will Monsanto find a way to keep those warnings off all labels? Including foods and weedkillers?

Time will tell. And activists will need to remain vigilant.

But today, it’s celebration time.

Read OCA’s blog post: ‘California to Warn Consumers About Monsanto’s Glyphosate—But How Much and How Soon?’

6 Facts About Pesticides That Will Make You Angry

Many Americans recognize pesticides in produce as a problem, but should you really be worried? Well, it definitely pays to be aware, if nothing else. Pesticides are linked to all sorts of health problems, after all. Let me share 6 facts about pesticides that are sure to make you angry.

1. Pesticides Have Completely Ruined Strawberries

Toxic pesticides like fumigants are all over our strawberries—even organic ones! These poisons are released into the soil to kill off diseases, weeds, and pests before they become a problem, but now you’re left with a toxic gas in the environment—and on the berries. Fumigants are also linked to cancer. ^[1] Is that really something you want in your body? And while the USDA is researching alternatives, no projects are looking at strawberries. ^[2]

2. Pesticides Are Destroying Male Fertility

So if strawberries are treated with fumigants, it stands to reason other fruits and vegetables use pesticides as well. When it comes to pesticides, though, there’s no such thing as safe conventional produce, but avocado, sweet corn, and pineapple seem to have the lowest residue levels. ^[3] But residues could even be harming male fertility. A study suggested men who eat lots of produce could have sperm counts 50% lower than men who consume smaller amounts of vegetables and fruits, and that the men who at the most fruits containing pesticides experienced 32% more abnormally shaped sperm. ^[4]

     3. Pesticides Are Polluting the Water Supply

In the Midwest, where farming can be big business, fertilizer runoff is polluting the water supply. Iowa’s largest water utility is even “threatening to sue three rural counties” under the Federal Clean Water Act because of drinking water contamination. ^[5] The main concern here is nitrates in the water, which could poison—even kill—infants. Pesticides are such a widespread problem that they’re even making their way into our oceans. Whale meat from Norway was imported to Japan; tests confirmed that it had twice the legal limit of the toxins. ^[6]

4. Pesticides Are Ruining Good Wine

In some places, toxic pesticides have even made drinking to escape your problems impractical. Take some wines in France, for instance. A report found that some “300 French wines from the 2007 and 2008 vintages of the Rhône and the wider Aquitaine region,” 90 percent of those had pesticide contamination. ^[7]

5. Pesticides Lead to Antibiotic Resistance

A recent study suggested glyphosate—the main ingredient in the weed killer Roundup—and two other common herbicides (2,4-D and dicamba) could be connected to antibiotic resistance. ^[8] After exposure to the toxins, bacteria reacted differently to common antibiotics like ampicillin, ciprofloxacin, and tetracycline. And with glyphosate also recently ruled “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization (WHO), this latest study is just one more reason to stay away from herbicides. ^[9]

6. Pesticides Linked to Autism

Clearly, glyphosate is bad news, but Monsanto Company—its creator—doesn’t think so: it even wants a retraction of that WHO report! But it’s not just cancer that could be a concern; one study suggested that because of glyphosate toxicity in our food supply, 1 in 2 children will have autism by the year 2025. ^[10] That’s a radical claim, yes, but also a potentially devastating one that can’t be ignored.

One Final Thought

We can’t even rely on the government to protect us. The EPA just says to not worry about pesticide exposure; the agency has even set “tolerance levels” for the consumer—how reassuring. And, in many cases, the laws about pesticides aren’t even being enforced. In Europe, however, they’re trying to further regulate toxic pesticides, and the U.S. is having a fit. After all, if Europe were to strictly regulate the toxins, the U.S. could stand to lose out on a multi-billion dollar import business. Unfortunately, even when our health is on the line, our government can only see dollar signs.

What do you think about pesticides? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

References:

1. Weisenburger, D. Human health effects of agrichemical use. Human Pathology. 24 (6).


2. United States Department of Agriculture. National Program 308: Methyl Bromide Alternatives. United States Department of Agriculture.


3. Environmental Working Group. EWG’s 2015 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™. Environmental Working Group.


4. Chiu, Y. H. et al. Fruit and vegetable intake and their pesticide residues in relation to semen quality among men from a fertility clinic. Human Reproduction.


5. Rao, M. A closely watched fight brewing over nitrates in Iowa water. Star Tribune.


6. The Japan Times. Norway whale meat dumped in Japan after pesticide finding. The Japan Times.


7. Sciolino, E. In France, Pesticides Get in Way of Natural Wines. New York Times.


8. Kurenbach, B. et al. Sublethal Exposure to Commercial Formulations of the Herbicides Dicamba, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid, and Glyphosate Cause Changes in Antibiotic Susceptibility in Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. mBio. 6 (2).


9. International Agency for Research on Cancer. IARC Monographs Volume 112: evaluation of five organophosphate insecticides and herbicides. World Health Organization.


10. Alliance for Natural Health. Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT. Alliance for Natural Health.

How To Make a FREE DIY Weed Killer from Someone’s Bad Habit

As happily organic as we all try to be, sometimes we have to deal with noxious weeds. While strong white vinegar will get rid of many of these weeds, occasionally we have to pull out the big guns. Instead of turning to Monsanto’s Round-Up, you can use someone’s bad habit to make your own DIY weed killer – and it’s free.

A quick word on vinegar weed killers: a lot of people try them and say that they don’t work. For a vinegar to be effective as a weed killer, it has to be highly concentrated – 10% or more. This is a 30% vinegar that can be used when serious vinegar is needed but it ends up being a lot more pricey than the DIY I’m about to show you.

A noxious weed is one that has been designated by an agricultural authority as harmful to crops, ecosystems, humans, or livestock. These plants tend to grow aggressively and multiply quickly, often invading and area and spreading through it rapidly, leaving ecological destruction in their wake. As well, some noxious weeds are either harmful or poisonous to people and animals.

Here’s how to make a frugal DIY weed-killer.

Cigarette smoking is a nasty habit but many people still do it. If you happen to have visiting smokers, they can help keep your pathways and patios pristine and weed free. If, like me, you banish smokers to your back yard but still get left with the problem of disposing of all those butts tossed into a sand-filled pot or an ashtray, you can make a slight change and put those nasty butts to a good use.

Swap out the ash tray for a lidded bucket with a few inches of water in the bottom and get them to throw their butts into the bucket. Make sure you keep this out of the reach of children and animals because the liquid contents are deadly if ingested.

The water will turn a nasty-looking orange-brown colour very quickly. This is the nicotine leaching out of the butts. The longer they are in there the more nicotine will leach out into the water.

As time goes on add more water to your bucket until it is about half full. You’re basically making the nastiest tea imaginable. After a week or so of steeping you’re ready to go. (You can leave it steeping as long as you like if smoking visitors are rare.)

Here’s how to make the weed killer. Make sure you wear rubber gloves.

• Cover the top of the bucket with something to catch the butts, a pair of pantyhose works well stretched and secured over the top of the bucket.


• Drain the liquid into another bucket and discard the fabric containing the butts directly into the trash.


• Take your bucket of liquid and a small container – Dana, the reader sharing this tip, uses a turkey baster specific to this purpose.


• Chop the head off the weed and individually target those that dare to invade your drive or patio.

Nicotine weed killer is very potent. It will lay waste to even thick weeds and brambles on land that needs to be cleared before it can be improved and put to good use. For thick stemmed weeds and brambles cut the stems as near to the ground as you can without getting ripped to pieces and put the solution directly into the stem.

That’s it. Easy and it won’t cost you a penny.

Now, some caveats.

Please use this responsibly and protect pets, children, other plants, and wildlife.

• Nicotine is deadly to plant material.  This is why I suggest it for use on patios and drives. You’ll want to keep it well away from your lawn and vegetable garden.


• Use it on a dry, sunny day. You don’t want a rainfall washing it into the soil.


• Nicotine is deadly to bees and birds. This is why I suggest targeting individual weeds rather than broadcast spraying. Always, always cut the tops off the weeds. Cut them down as low to the ground as possible before treating, so that the birds and bees are less likely to be attracted to the plant. The plant matter you cut down can be burned unless it is poison ivy or oak – never burn poison ivy or poison oak.


• Nicotine is deadly to animals and children. Keep them away from the area where you’ve used it.

You can go a step further and cover the weeds that you’ve poisoned. This is what I do.

When I was in California, we got these occasional horrible Scotch thistles that can grow to over 8 feet and are covered in little spines that are excruciatingly painful when touched. Cutting them down and digging them up was not enough to get rid of them – they’d come right back and bring their friends. After chopping them down, adding the weed killer right into the center of the stem, I tied a plastic grocery bag tightly around the plant to keep livestock, pets, birds, and bees away.

For other thrifty self-reliance ideas:

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Do you have any other super-frugal solutions for killing noxious weeds?

Please share your tips in the comments section below.

Thanks to OP reader Dana G. for sharing her frugal weedkiller tip.