Soil Erosion & ContaminationWater Contaminaton & Loss

Has-Beans

The government and the industry promised that they had dealt with aminopyralid poisoning. They haven’t.

by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom. Pictures and captions from John Mason.


This image shows sunflowers that began life at the same time. On the right,
a bed which was free of this particular manure; on the left,
a bed which had the manure added.

Growing food, for reasons I haven’t quite got to the bottom of, is an intensely emotional process. The satisfaction I get from harvesting a good crop bears no relationship to any value that crop possesses. I take more pride in my fruit and vegetables than in any of the work I do. When the slugs mow down my seedlings, or my watering system fails, or blight knackers my tomatoes, it throws me into a depression which sometimes last for days.

It might be because gardening is about hope: you are always thinking months ahead. Even if every other aspect of your life seems to be in ineluctable decline, you have something to look forward to, something that makes you jump out of bed in the morning and run outside to see what’s happening.

So think of those gardeners a few years ago whose plants thrived for a while, then suddenly stopped growing and curled up like arabesque scrollwork. At first, no one knew what was happening. But gradually the syndrome was linked to residues of a new, hormone-mimicking pesticide manufactured by our old friends Dow Chemical, which was first approved in this country in 2005. It’s called aminopyralid.


The herbicide residue affects some groups of vegetables more than others.
Here, Ann shows her tomato plants, their leaves curling.

It is used by farmers to kill broad-leaved weeds growing in fields of grass. It locks onto the cellulose in the plants, passes through the guts of the animals that eat them, and retains its potency in their manure, sometimes for two or three years or more. It is not believed to present a risk to human health.

The poisonings were a cruel cosmic joke. The people hit hardest by careless agri-business were the small producers and amateur gardeners trying to do the right thing, by using manure rather than chemical fertilisers. They had no idea there was trouble until it was too late, and, because of the remarkable persistence of the pesticide, no guarantee that the trouble would be confined to the year in which it was detected.


Here’s a close-up of the tip of one of the affected sunflowers. Note the weird
curling and twisting of young leaves – that’s one distinctive sign….

After a major fuss by gardeners, the government withdrew approval for the chemical in 2008. Farmers were allowed to use it again after “a stringent stewardship programme” was introduced. They would be permitted to spray it only on fields which would be grazed directly by cattle and sheep, rather than on fields where silage or hay is grown. All manure from animals kept in these pastures would have to stay on the farm. Horses could not be grazed on treated fields (because horse manure tends to be collected, rather than left on the grass). Farmers using the herbicide, according to Dow, “are required to confirm in writing that they have been instructed on product use, manure management issues and measures to reduce the risk of damage to flower-rich grassland”. These rules, the company says, “should allay concerns amongst gardeners and allotment-holders over using manure.”

Are your concerns allayed? They shouldn’t be. It’s back.


Young plants are particularly prone and may be killed outright. Their
growing-shoots become malformed and the leaves turn almost fern-like.

My friend and neighbour Ann Owen is a market gardener who, with her husband John, invested most of the money she had into her smallholding. After three years of back-breaking work they expected, in 2011, to make a profit for the first time. Until a few weeks ago, their crops were growing well. Then they started to curl up into fantastic shapes. Before long most of their vegetables either stopped growing or became unsaleable. They’ve had to dig out the beds they had spent so much time and energy layering up, skip the plants, the soil and the manure and refill the garden with expensive compost. If you cost both their expenses and their time, they have lost many thousands.

“It’s unreal,” Ann says, “almost like watching ourselves on a movie in rewind, undoing all our previous work. And even though we are doing as much as we can to both repair and contain the damage, we know that this season might be a total loss.”

They are as angry and upset as I know I would be.


They may still fruit, but the fruits tend to be misshapen, deformed in appearance

So how had it happened? That’s the problem – it seems almost impossible to find out. The manure they used came from a local stables, which had bought its hay from a merchant. Both the manure and the hay were fresh – the hay was cut last year. Someone had failed to follow the “stringent stewardship programme”, but who? Ann’s attempts to trace the hay back to source have been fruitless. Worse still, despite claims by both the company and the regulators to have run an effective awareness-raising campaign, neither the merchant who sold the contaminated hay to the stables nor any of the three farmers he contacted as possible sources had ever heard of aminopyralid, or had any idea what Ann was talking about.

She took the case to the government’s Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD), which is now investigating. Though Dow, which is doubtless making millions from this herbicide, has thrust it into the lives of people who wanted nothing to do with agro-industry, Ann has discovered that she has no hope of compensation. She says, “we have lost faith that there actually is any protection for hardworking people like us and our livelihoods.”


Cupping of leaves is a characteristic symptom. The leaves have a brittle, papery
feel to them – like old parchment, if you gently crush one it will develop breaks.
This plant was dug up and its roots rinsed before replanting in an uncontaminated
bed, but Ann has no idea whether it will recover….

I asked the CRD how many cases of aminopyralid poisoning it had investigated since the new rules were brought in, and was amazed to discover that Ann’s was the only one. It told me that it receives “only a handful of enquiries per month.” Of these, it says, the other cases are either less clear-cut than Ann’s, or involve gardens which have bought manure from several sources, making it harder to trace. Ann’s was the only case worth investigating.

I find that hard to believe, and I suspect there’s another explanation. Ann is a well-informed and very determined person. It took her a while to work out what the problem was. None of the gardening books she consulted list aminopyralid poisoning, because it has arisen so recently. She then waded through several layers of ignorant and unconcerned officialdom before she discovered that the Chemical Regulation Directorate was the right body to approach. Then she had to persuade the directorate that the hay and the manure post-dated the new rules, and that the poisoning should be investigated.

She has now discovered that a near-neighbour, who had obtained her manure from a different source, has also been struck by this curse, and has produced almost nothing in the past two years. She had blamed disease and poor weather. It was only when she saw Ann’s plants and heard the explanation that she realised what had happened to her.

How many people have noticed a strange curling disease in their vegetables, but didn’t link it to aminopyralids? How many others either had no idea who to turn to, or were fobbed off by the CRD when they got there?

Let’s find out. If you’ve noticed similar effects to those you can see here, in John Mason’s pictures of Ann’s plants, or if you’ve complained to the CRD and got nowhere, please say so in the Guardian’s comment thread. We’ll keep it open longer than usual in order to gather as wide a sample as we can. I will then take any cases to the directorate and find out what it intends to do.

If suspected cases of aminopyralid poisoning are still widespread, or if it becomes clear that the CRD has failed properly to investigate, I will use this space to call for sales to be suspended again, until the industry and the regulators get their act together. For now, I’m using it to call for compensation for people like Ann. If this chemical is to remain on sale in the UK, a minimum requirement should be that Dow pays for the damage done to people’s livelihoods.

15 Comments

  1. A quick search reveals the answer – YES! HOTSHOT Herbicide was approved for use in Australia in 2006. Oh my God people. When are we ever going to learn? Sometimes I just reckon we should concede defeat as ‘caretakers’ of this beautiful planet. Greed, fear and arrogance … this seems to be where our governments and corporate bodies are coming from. Not enlightened at all. What to do, what to do?

  2. Hmmm. i tried to thank you for this valuable & shareable documentation but the comment box tells me i have already said that! What a memory! Well – it’s fresh again with this article & photos! :-)

  3. Is it worth leaving a comment ..the treasonable government does not care about your problems they are tied in to Monsanto and it’s poisons and the other systems set to destroy Australia’s agriculture for the gains of the WHO,WTO and American multinationals ..want to see the truth about this …

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHMIctm4zzw

    STAY AWAY FROM ALL CHEMICALS AS THEY CAUSE MORE HARM THAN GOOD AND GMOS DESTROY ALL GOOD FOOD AND EARTH FOR THE GOOD OF PROFIT AND ILL HEALTH.

  4. “If suspected cases of aminopyralid poisoning are still widespread, or if it becomes clear that the CRD has failed properly to investigate, I will use this space to call for sales to be suspended again, until the industry and the regulators get their act together. For now, I’m using it to call for compensation for people like Ann.”

    Of course it’s still widespread, it has been widespread since the last time the Gaurdian “used it’s space” to highlight it in 2008.

    https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/28/food.ethicalliving

    Nothing happened then either. This will be another string the bow of Georges credibility, because “using his space” will achieve nothing as usual.

  5. Pete – something did happen then. The government gave the industry some requirements for use. Note the article’s byline:

    The government and the industry promised that they had dealt with aminopyralid poisoning. They haven’t.

    And the following passage, further down:

    After a major fuss by gardeners, the government withdrew approval for the chemical in 2008. Farmers were allowed to use it again after “a stringent stewardship programme” was introduced. They would be permitted to spray it only on fields which would be grazed directly by cattle and sheep, rather than on fields where silage or hay is grown. All manure from animals kept in these pastures would have to stay on the farm. Horses could not be grazed on treated fields (because horse manure tends to be collected, rather than left on the grass). Farmers using the herbicide, according to Dow, “are required to confirm in writing that they have been instructed on product use, manure management issues and measures to reduce the risk of damage to flower-rich grassland”. These rules, the company says, “should allay concerns amongst gardeners and allotment-holders over using manure.”

    Are your concerns allayed? They shouldn’t be. It’s back.

    Something happened Pete – it just wasn’t enough.

  6. Really, the problem is that since man is endowed with a big brain, he has to deal with the problem of making up his mind about what to believe. And the business of mass belief engineering can be extremely profitable. Rather than actually doing something about a situation, can you address it by just engineering the way people think about it? Much cheaper that way.

    But I wonder what has to happen until society wakes up and learns that it is dangerous to uncritically adopt engineered beliefs?

  7. Please excuse the long post but this is very important for those of us making composts and/or using manures as soil fertilizers. You might want to print this comment out and put it on your fridge.

    The problem goes beyond aminopyralid and just manures.

    First, people should know that Monbiot got his aminopyralid definition incorrect. Aminopyralid is not a pesticide; its a hormone-based persistent herbicide used to control broadleaf “weeds” on range, pastures and turf.

    A persistent herbicide is chemically designed to have a very slow soil degradation process, lasting several growing seasons depending on the type of soil and climate where its used. Only having to apply the persistent herbicide every few years is its selling feature. Most herbicides are microbiologically broken down or degraded within a few days or weeks (like 2,4-D) in the soil and leave no lasting herbicidal impacts.

    A broadleaf herbicide does not kill or affect monocot grasses. It severely stunts (leaf tip curl and whithering) and/or kills broadleaf “weeds” and every other broadleaf plant like a tomato plant and all the other annuals in our gardens. Aminopyralid often results in very deformed fruits, like small pear shaped tomates.

    A couple of years ago (I think 2007-08) aminopyralid caused big problems first in the northwest US (Washington state) when grasses sprayed with it were eaten by dairy cows. The dairies couldn’t use all of the inhouse produced manures for field applications. Dow instructions for aminopyralid use are to apply the aminopyralid manures back on the same aminopyralid sprayed grasses. The excess manures HOWEVER, were shipped off site and used to make compost. One Washington farmer who used the aminopyralid contaminated compost lost over $200,000 USD in crop losses.

    *******THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE TO TAKE NOTICE******

    Persistent herbicides like aminopyralid do not break down in a composting process.

    Though many of us talk about the amazing detoxifying capabilities of a humus and microbiologically rich compost (microbe rich compost IS an amazing soil bioremediator), some human made chemicals are persistent tough molecules and degrade slowly. Its important to know what you put into your composts and whether you have a persistent chemical.

    And, aminopyralid does not move or leach through the soil either, staying in place for the multi-year degradation. That means you either wait and plant nothing or remove the soil and bring in new uncontaminated soil.

    **************************************************************

    It can still take 2 or 3 years for the persistent herbicide to degrade even after going through a composting process, THERMOPHILIC OR NOT. There are some human made chemicals designed to be persistent that do not degrade through composting. Whatever these persistent chemicals are designed to do will then be an effect of using the compost. As a result an aminopyralid contaminated compost becomes a broadleaf herbicide. So, when you use your freshly made microbe rich compost, you and your plants will literally get burned.

    And, aminopyralid is only the one of a few persistent herbicides (and pesticides) we have to worry about and its not the latest. Here’s the list of persistent stuff you need to watch out for starting with the latest one, Aminocyclopyrachlor, just coming onto the market in the US this year (2011):

    ********
    Aminocyclopyrachlor
    maker: DuPont
    brand name: Imprelis, Perspective, Plainview, Streamline, Viewpoint

    use: Hormone-based herbicide used to control broadleaf “weeds” on turf grass, bare soil, for road side weed and brush control. CURRENTLY, up for USEPA review for use on range and pasture.

    status: US Composting Council sent a letter to the USEPA about the Dow label restrictions prohibiting composting Aminocyclopyrachlor sprayed turf grass. DuPont has partnered with Scotts to make and market for residential use (Imprelis is the common name).
    **********

    ********
    Aminopyralid
    maker: Dow
    brand name: Chaparral, CleanWave, ForeFront, GrazonNext, Opensight, Milestone

    use: Hormone-based herbicide used to control broadleaf “weeds” on turf grass, pastures and rangeland.

    status: despite Dow label warnings about not exporting Aminopyralid off farms in contaminated hay or manure, aminopyralid, as Monbiot outlines above, continues to be a problem for veggie growers big and small.
    ********

    ********
    Bifenthrin
    FMC Corporation
    brand names: Talstar, Maxxthor, Capture, Brigade, Bifenthrine, Ortho, Home Defense Max, Bifen IT, Bifen L/P, Scotts LawnPro Step 3

    use: Sythetic pyrethroid insecticide used to control fire ants, termites and stink bugs

    status: seen as everywhere in compost made from yard trimmings with fire ant prevalence, USDA Nat. Organic Program considers bifenthrin an Unavoidable Residual Organic Contaminant.
    ********

    ********
    Clopyralid
    maker: Dow
    brand name: Cloypry AG, Confront, Lontrel, Mellenium Ultra, Reclaim, Stinger Transline

    use: Hormone-based herbicide used to control broadleaf “weeds” on turf grass (home use where legal), pastures and rangeland.

    status: Crop failures in Washington state in 1999 traced back to compost containing Clopyralid. Also, found in California, New Jersey, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Major composts inputs were grass clippings and hay. Some US states have banned Clopyralid for home use.
    ********

    I understand that the Canada Composting Council has sent a letter to Health Canada about Dow’s Aminocyclopyrachlor. Aminocyclopyrachlor or Imprelis is currently not for sale in Canada but I think Dow has applied for some type of selling approval. Don’t know if Dow has applied for approval to sell In other countries. If you have a national composting council or organization you should contact them to ask about Aminocyclopyrachlor and Let them know if they don’t already about what’s happening in the US and Canada.

    On that note, what I covered here is US and Canada stuff including the common brand names. You may need to do some checking in other parts of the world especially for what the common brand name is.

    So, when you’re putting together a compost pile you really need to trace back your hay (grass) and ruminant (cow, sheep, goat, bison, etc.) and cecal digester (horse, donkeys, rabbits) manures to see if a persistent herbicide has been sprayed on the grass feed. You’ll need to make your own judgement about how far you trace back. Just remember that many farmers have been burned by contaminated hays and manures that were said to be clean. So do the checking you need to be comfortable. As more of thee products come out we’ll all have to be more vigilant.

    Buena suerte.

  8. I’m at the point where I pray for a collapse of civilization just to end this kind of madness. It is just so sickening.

  9. “Something happened Pete – it just wasn’t enough.”

    That would be what Thomas calls an “engineered belief” mate. This crap has been going on for years.

    Encouraging people to report contamination in the comments section of the Guardian, a financially defunct newspaper with c. 300k readership, will do what exactly?

    We were hit with this toxic crap 2yrs ago, I thought we were over it, the soil passed germination tests this spring, but we’re still suffering, crops developed signs of contamination later in the season, probably due to the severe drought. The Equestrian centre which was the source, was reported by two separate allotment associations, the year before we got hit, they still have a sign on the gate saying “free manure” to this day.

    As I said, this is a credibility test for George, I’m not holding my breath for anything positive.

  10. As I said, this is a credibility test for George, I’m not holding my breath for anything positive.

    Comment by Pete — July 20, 2011 @ 6:22 pm

    HAHAHA Credibility HAHAHA Pro-Nuclear Monbiot HAHAHA What Credibility is that?

  11. The photo’s shown are exactly the same as my garden problem – on Fava beans, peas, mulberry, kiwi fruit, grape, hydrange,’angle’s trumpet’, plane trees and more. I’ve just spent 6 months building a new garden using compost with horse poo (from the local riding school)! Ive been gardening 50 years and never seen anything like this before. I found your site by tracing photo’s of ‘cupped leaf’ on google. No other ‘disease’ matched my problem. I can send photos

  12. I am now in a wonder on what to do. There is a large infestation of a woody weed (scotch broom) which covers more than a hundred acres and I have named the “march of the orc soldiers”. There is, in Australia, a statutory obligation to suppress and destroy this plant. It is a farmer’s bane and can take over a very large field in about three years. I was doing research and I found this site and I now know that the herbicide I am using contained Aminopyralid. There is nothing which can substitute for the effectiveness of this poison on that plant and I don’t know how to overcome it. I suppose if I had a thousand motivated people, some damage could be done but it would assault the seed base in the soil. Any suggestions?

  13. I used cow manure from a local barn and i am seeing the leaf curl all over my garden. How can we fix it? I am helpless.

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