We want food that is cheap, plentiful, perfect-looking and produced with fewer pesticides. But can we always have all of those things? Perhaps changing how our food is grown also means questioning what we are prepared to buy, what we consider good value, and what we have come to expect from farmers and supermarkets.
An apple can be perfectly good to eat and still not be good enough to sell. We investigate how appearance, blemishes, pest damage, export rules and market requirements can influence the pesticides farmers use — and ask what might change if we were more willing to eat imperfect food.
Glyphosate can genuinely make some crops cheaper to produce by reducing cultivation, fuel, machinery and labour costs. But what happens to those savings after the farm gate? We look at who benefits, what consumers actually pay, and whether some costs simply move elsewhere.
Do farmers grow food differently when they are going to eat it themselves? Research from several countries suggests they sometimes do. But what began as a question about farmers and pesticides leads to a much bigger question about commercial food production, market demands and the choices farmers are required to make.
Can you safely compost plants that have been sprayed with glyphosate? Research shows glyphosate can break down substantially during controlled composting — but that isn't quite the same as putting whole sprayed plants into a backyard compost heap. We look at what the evidence tells us, what remains unknown, and why NMGNZ recommends a precautionary approach.
As resistant weeds spread across modern agriculture, farming systems are increasingly relying on combinations of herbicides rather than single-chemical approaches. A new study examining glyphosate alongside dicamba and 2,4-D raises broader questions about mixture toxicology, gut health, chronic low-dose exposure, and whether current safety testing models fully reflect real-world agricultural exposure patterns.
Herbicide resistance may be more than a weed-control problem. This series explores monocultures, biological adaptation, technological escalation, and the growing tension between efficiency and resilience in modern farming systems.
Herbicide resistance is often framed as an agricultural problem. But what if it reflects a much larger pattern? From antibiotics to fungicides and pesticides, modern systems repeatedly face the same challenge: biology adapts. This article explores the growing tension between human control systems, chemical dependence, and long-term resilience.
Modern agriculture increasingly rewards simplification, efficiency, and scale. But could highly simplified farming systems also become more vulnerable over time? This article explores crop rotation, monocultures, herbicide resistance, and the growing tension between efficiency and long-term resilience in modern farming.
Herbicide resistance is usually discussed inside crop paddocks. But what if some of the strongest resistance pressures are developing outside them — along fence lines, roadsides, drains, rail corridors, and other repeatedly sprayed non-crop areas?
