Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Use in Modern Agriculture
Innovation in modern agriculture is helping farmers grow healthy crops using fewer natural resources. We believe that innovation is crucial to addressing the challenges facing the environment and global food system, and we provide farmers with tailored solutions to address these challenges.
When it comes to crop protection, there is no single approach in the fight to protect crops. Farmers today use many tools - from digital technologies like sensors and satellite imagery that provide essential data analytics, to hybrid and genetically modified seeds, to precision equipment and crop protection products like herbicides.
Digital tools and technologies help farmers identify early exactly which plants in the field are being impacted by problematic weeds, insects and disease. This enables them to quickly and precisely take action to protect their harvests. In the face of weeds, this can mean applying herbicides, using just the right amount, in the right place, at the right time.
Glyphosate-based herbicides, as a tool in an Integrated Weed Management system, have provided efficient, safe and cost-effective weed control for more than 40 years.
Learn more about glyphosate and its role in modern agriculture in the sections below.
What Is Glyphosate and why Is it Used?
Why Are Glyphosate-Based Herbicides so Important to Farming?
What Is Glyphosate and why Is it Used?
Since the beginning of agriculture, controlling weeds has been one of the biggest challenges faced by farmers. Weeds compete with crops for sunlight, water and nutrients – and, if left uncontrolled, can significantly impact a farmer’s harvest.
Early weed control involved practices such as hand weeding, which required a great deal of human labor and difficult working conditions. Farmers also adopted practices like tilling the soil to help eliminate weeds from season to season. While effective, researchers later determined that these practices impacted soil health and released greenhouse gases contributing to climate change.
When the first chemical herbicides were introduced in the 1940s, they gave farmers new tools that helped increase efficiency and more effectively protect crops from damaging weeds.
Introduced as the active ingredient in the original Roundup® in the 1970s, glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, which means that it can eliminate almost any type of plant to which it is applied – even desirable plants. It grew in prominence in modern agriculture as an important too after the introduction of genetically modified crops, which allowed farmers to use the herbicide in a way that eliminated weeds without harming desirable plants. Today, glyphosate serves as an active ingredient in hundreds of crop protection products currently registered and approved for use in agriculture, vegetation management, lawn care, gardening and more.
The ability to effectively control weeds while preserving the environment is essential to productivity in modern farming.
As global populations continue to grow and the demand for food increases, farmers will continue to rely more and more on effective and innovative solutions that help them ensure productive harvests while also conserving land and resources.
From data gathered by drones, sensors and other digital technologies to trusted herbicides like glyphosate, there are a host of tools in the crop protection toolbox that are essential for farmers to shape a healthy and sustainable future for agriculture.
Why Are Glyphosate-Based Herbicides so Important to Farming?
There are roughly 30,000 different types of weeds2 that compete with different crops for space, nutrients, water and light.
How Is Glyphosate Used?
There is no single approach in the fight to protect crops. Farmers today use many tools - from digital technologies like sensors and satellite imagery that provide essential data analytics, to hybrid and genetically modified seeds, to precision equipment and crop protection products like herbicides. Used together, these solutions can be highly effective and help farmers apply just the right amount of the herbicides.
Many farmers also follow principles of Integrated Weed Management or participate in training and certification programs to help ensure they are up-to-date on best practices for using crop protection products effectively and sustainably.
So how does it work? Products containing glyphosate are typically sprayed over the field, directly on weeds and grasses prior to planting or prior to the emergence of crops, or over herbicide-tolerant crops. When it comes in contact with a non-tolerant plant, glyphosate moves to the growing points of shoots and roots, where it interferes with the enzymatic production of certain amino acids that are essential for plant growth.
Although the main global market for glyphosate is agriculture, glyphosate is also used to control invasive plants, eliminate noxious weeds from recreational areas, and improve visibility on non-cultivated areas such as industrial complexes and railway tracks.
When Is Glyphosate Used?
The time, amount and method of application of glyphosate-based herbicides is specific to the crop and target weed species. Farmers often undergo training to use herbicides and they work to adhere to label instructions. They also monitor crops closely and use data analytics to help apply in the right amount, at the right time, and in the right places.
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Glyphosate by the Numbers
- Every year, up to 40 percent of the world’s potential harvests are lost to damaging pests, including weeds.1
- 30,000 different types of weeds2 compete with crops for space, water and light.
- Farmers who apply glyphosate have greater success in the fight against weeds, while those who do not use glyphosate can experience harvest losses of up to 22 percent.5
- Glyphosate-tolerant crops and glyphosate-based herbicides are a major enabler of no-till and reduced tillage farming practices. In 2014 alone, no-till and reduced tillage farming practices led to a reduction in carbon emissions equivalent to removing nearly 2 million cars from the road.6
