November 11, 2011

Is the Corn Lobby Poisoning Its Own Well?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/artotemsco/3974879287/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Artotem</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The National Corn Growers Association claims to represent 35,000 dues-paying corn farmers, but it openly aligns itself with the companies that sell them chemicals and buy their crops. The sponsors for its annual Commodity Classic event read like the league table of the handful of companies that dominate the global agribusiness trade: Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Bayer Cropscience, Dupont, and Archer Daniels Midland.  

So why am I surprised that it’s rallying its farmers to protect atrazine—the widely used, highly lucrative herbicide marketed by Syngenta—from EPA regulation? Here’s the pitch:

The National Corn Growers Association reminds farmers and their allies to submit comments opposing a petition filed with the Environmental Protection Agency that would ban atrazine use and production before the public comment period closes on November 14.

The particular petition that drew NCGA’s ire involves atrazine effects on frogs. According to  a damning weight of evidence, the herbicide causes all manner of sexual and immune-system trouble in frogs, including “chemical castration” of males.

But it doesn’t shock me that a big of large-scale corn growers would step on frogs to defend a beloved herbicide. What gets me is their willingness to ignore mounting evidence that atrazine causes cancer in people—people who live in the very areas where people grow corn and apply atrazine.

According to a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) analysis, atrazine turns up in 80 percent of samples drawn from drinking-water systems in the Midwest. While levels are typically below the EPA’s limit of 3 parts per billion, atrazine concentrations routinely spike to many times that level during peak summer application times.

And as I reported Monday, an independent scientific panel convened by the EPA noted “strong” epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to certain cancers.

Here’s the USDA’s map of the US corn crop.

And here’s a detail of NRDC’s map of atrazine concentrations in water.( The larger the diamond shape, the higher the maximum concentration of atrazine in the water—more info here.)

NRDCNRDC

The National Corn Growers are rallying farmers to foul their own water supply—and that of people in the Mississippi Delta, where atrazine accumulates after running off from farm fields.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate