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Riverford

While studying agriculture and forestry at Oxford in 1979, we were told that the broad spectrum, systemic herbicide, glyphosate, had zero mammalian toxicity, became immediately inactive on contact with the soil, and was safe enough to drink – according to then manufacturer, Monsanto. Forty-five years later and Bayer (which bought Monsanto in 2018 for $66bn) has paid out more than $10bn to over 100,000 people who claimed they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after glyphosate exposure; over 60,000 outstanding claims remain.

Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) are classified as toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects (Aquatic Chronic 2; H411) and have been shown to disrupt bees’ gut microbiomes; they also negatively impact a bee’s ability to reproduce, navigate, learn, and remember. If our waterways and wildlife had access to a legal team, the liability would be incalculable, yet UK usage has skyrocketed in recent years – partly because of its application as a pre-harvest desiccant (to rapidly dry crops for earlier, more efficient, and uniform harvesting) but also because of its widespread adoption by what is termed “regenerative” agriculture, which promotes use of glyphosate over tilling or ploughing.

It’s not only used by non-organic farmers. 354 tonnes of pesticides were sprayed by local councils across UK towns and cities in 2024. The latest study by the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) found residues of glyphosate-based herbicides in 8 out of 13 English playgrounds (pan-uk.org/playgrounds). A 2023 study from UC Berkeley School of Public Health found that childhood exposure to glyphosate and other pesticides threatens to increase the risk of developing serious disease in later life, such as liver cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

In the intervening 45 years almost every herbicide, fungicide, and insecticide that I used as a teenager has been banned – despite being declared safe at the time by both manufacturers and regulators. Aldrin, Dieldrin, Simazine, Atrazine, Paraquat, Chlorpyrifos… the list would fill this page. Should we be surprised? The clue is in the suffix “cide” – these chemicals are designed to kill by disrupting biological processes even when used at infinitesimally low doses.
Perhaps the bigger surprise is that the regulatory process has retained any credibility, especially when it was revealed last year that a key scientific paper – repeatedly cited by Monsanto when defending the safety of glyphosate – was largely written by Monsanto’s employees before being “peer-reviewed” and published under the names of the supposedly impartial scientists in their pocket.

The cornerstone of glyphosate’s claim to mammalian safety was that it blocked a specific biochemical pathway found in plants but not in animals. Increasingly, we are finding that life on earth does not exist in silos that can be studied in isolation; it turns out that – as with bees and other wildlife – one of the ways GBHs damage human health is by interfering with our gut microbiome which makes us more susceptible to disease.

A debate on glyphosate at the annual Oxford Real Farming Conference last week was introduced by Soil Association Chief Executive, Helen Browning. There was a time when she thought “organic farming would be that much easier with the odd squirt of glyphosate.” We shared the sentiment for many years and have generally favoured pragmatism over dogmatism… now both Helen and I think we got it wrong on pesticides – glyphosate, in particular.

Leading the debate was Professor Michael Antoniou, a specialist in Molecular Genetics and Toxicology at King’s College London who’s worked in the field for 25 years. He left me convinced that we have been all too willing to value commercial imperative over human and environmental safety, too negligent of long-term impacts, and collectively clueless about the co-formulants added to GBHs to enhance lethality (commercial formulations can be up to 1,000 times more toxic than glyphosate alone).

It is time for a ban on glyphosate. Necessity is the mother of invention; we will find other, and ultimately better, ways to control docks, couch, and blackgrass.

The UK government is set to launch a major public consultation on whether to reapprove glyphosate in early 2026, with a final decision due by mid-December. Stay abreast of the issue at pan-uk.org.