Once Upon a Time in Nebraska

The agronomy professor stood before 300 crop production professionals; it was late fall in the 1990’s, and this audience was able to commit some hours to indoor learning.  What they expected from Dr. Alex Martin was a confirmation of what they witnessed first hand in their customer’s initial Roundup Ready soybean fields. 

Soybean plants in those fields had been able to complete a life without competition from weeds.  Most importantly, this was achieved with far less work by soybean farmers than had been possible in the past.  “My wife loves me more because of Roundup Ready soybean,” confessed one farmer.  Because the farmer could now spray his fields with the weed killer Roundup in May or June, there was less cost and no need for late season manual weeding. Dr. Martin’s field data was sure to confirm the success of this new crop production miracle.  Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was already known to be a great weed killer, but now Roundup could be sprayed over genetically engineered soybeans with no damage to the soybean plants.

Before he shared his data that provided confirmation of success, Dr. Martin made a prediction to his audience.  “Roundup herbicide worked great this year in our trials, and it will NEVER WORK BETTER.  He repeated the prediction. "Roundup herbicide will NEVER LOOK BETTER in your fields than it did this year."

Dr. Martin knew that the ease and effectiveness of this herbicide would increase its popularity, meaning more soybean fields would be planted to Roundup Ready soybeans and weeds would be treated in those fields with a glyphosate application.  The result would be that the weed populations would change, or evolve, in response to this change in their environment.