Takeaways
- Water quality is one of the most overlooked factors in herbicide performance, particularly with glyphosate
- Pre-harvest glyphosate applications help some cereal and oilseed crops dry and ripen more evenly, reduce disease risks and allow earlier harvesting.
- The authors say the article was not ghostwritten and they had sole responsibility for the writing and content
How to unlock phosphate and improve herbicide efficacy
By Emma Gillbard
Published June 10, 2026 on Farmers Weekly
Up to 80% of applied phosphate can become locked up within days of application, significantly reducing the effectiveness of the fertiliser.
“Research shows less than 10% of applied phosphate may be crop-available in the first year, while up to 60% never reaches the plant,” says De Sangosse technical manager Rob Suckling.
The primary cause of phosphate lock-up is its interaction with positively charged ions.
In alkaline soils, phosphate binds with calcium, while in acidic soils it reacts with iron and aluminium.
Other factors such as soil texture, moisture, temperature, organic matter and biological activity can impact this.
Limited phosphate availability restricts root development, reducing access to water and nutrients. This ultimately limits yield potential.
De Sangosse Soil Nutrient Solutions provide a smarter approach by helping crops access both existing soil phosphate reserves and newly applied fertiliser.
At the heart of the system is the proprietary blend of chemistry that targets calcium, iron and aluminium cations responsible for phosphate fixation.
Up to 30% loss in glyphosate efficacy can be lost by using hard water...
“This activator technology unlocks phosphate already in soil and protects new fertiliser applications.
“This includes our microgranular protected phosphate solutions placed directly in the seed zone at drilling, for OSR, cereals and other key crops,” says Rob.
The problematic cations preferentially bind to the De Sangosse chemistry over other soil components, including phosphate, helping to keep phosphate in a soluble, plant-available form.
Interestingly, trials have shown this mechanism also enhances the uptake of important micronutrients such as zinc, manganese and copper, supporting stronger crop health and resilience.
Research suggests 15-25% more phosphate availability over four to six weeks, up to 25% greater root growth and up to 60% stronger early vigour.
Yield improvements have also been recorded across wheat, barley, oilseed rape, potatoes and maize and sugar beet, explains Rob.
Water conditioners
Water quality is one of the most overlooked factors in herbicide performance – particularly applications of glyphosate – yet it can have a major impact on herbicide efficacy.
More than 70% of UK farms use moderate to very hard water, meaning a significant proportion of spray applications may be compromised before they even reach the field.
Hard water contains dissolved calcium, magnesium and other cations which bind with glyphosate and other weak acid herbicides, reducing their efficacy and reducing weed control.
De Sangosse water conditioners such as X Change are designed to act sacrificially, neutralising cations in the spray water before the herbicide is added, thus ensuring full potential of the herbicide remains before it is applied
“By conditioning the water first, the herbicide remains present in a bioactive form, ensuring more consistent uptake by target weeds,” says Rob.
According to the Weed Resistance Action Group, up to 30% loss in glyphosate efficacy can be lost using hard water.
Rob explains: “With glyphosate resistance in Italian ryegrass confirmed on UK farms, it’s essential to ensure optimal herbicide performance.
“Losses in hard water can lead to inadvertent under-dosing.”
Water hardness is measured in total dissolved solids in parts per million (ppm) and varies widely across the UK.
Hard water (200-300ppm) and very hard water (>300ppm) create a high-risk environment where conditioning is strongly recommended for reliable weed control.
Correct conditioner dosing is essential and should be based on measured water hardness.
For example, lower hardness levels may require around 0.10-0.20% conditioner, while higher hardness levels can require up to 0.35-0.45%.
This tailored approach ensures optimal conditioning without over- or under-treating the spray solution.
Read the original article on Farmers Weekly »
Publisher investigating two more papers on glyphosate safety over ghostwriting claims
By Alicia Gallegos
Published June 15, 2026 on Retraction Watch
Tayor & Francis is investigating two papers about the weed killer Roundup following claims the articles were ghostwritten by the company that developed the herbicide.
The review comes after an Elsevier journal last year retracted a paper about Roundup linked to court documents that revealed company employees wrote the article but were not named as coauthors. Authors of the two latest papers under scrutiny stand by their work and deny any ghostwriting occurred.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is highly contentious, with critics arguing the substance is carcinogenic and supporters contending the chemical is safe. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing whether states can hold companies liable for failing to include cancer warnings on products containing the substance.
In December 2025, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology retracted a 2000 review article about glyphosate by Gary Williams, then a pathologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla, and two colleagues. The retraction came eight years after emails surfaced in court that revealed employees of Monsanto, which developed Roundup, ghostwrote the paper.
Taylor & Francis is now looking into two more papers about glyphosate by authors named in the same court documents. A spokesperson for the publisher told Retraction Watch it “recently received information related to two papers in Critical Reviews in Toxicology:” A 2015 review article led by toxicologist Helmut Greim of the Technical University of Munich and a 2013 paper by toxicologists Larry Kier and David Kirkland that support the safety of glyphosate.
“As a result of this new information, these papers are currently subject to an investigation by Taylor & Francis’ publishing ethics and integrity team,” the spokesperson told us. “As with all such investigations, we are seeking to address the concerns raised promptly, and cannot provide any further detail until the investigation is complete.”
Authors of the two papers are mentioned in internal Monsanto documents released in 2017 during the course of a lawsuit alleging exposure to glyphosate caused people to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Keeping Research Paper Costs Down
In an email discussion about producing a scientific paper with outside scientists, a Monsanto employee wrote, “an option would be to add Greim and Kier or [David J.] Kirkland to have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak. Recall that is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro, 2000.”
Over the last year, researchers Alexander Kaurov, Jason MacLean and Naomi Oreskes have urged Critical Reviews in Toxicology to request retraction of the two papers. Kaurov and Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, previously analyzed the impact of the Williams study and wrote about their findings in Science and Undark. The scholars’ work led to the Williams retraction.
The upcoming editorial defends a ghostwritten paper by citing additional ghostwritten papers...
The Kier and Greim papers are arguably more consequential for glyphosate regulation than the Williams paper, said Kaurov, a researcher at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
“In regulatory use, the two often travel together,” said Kaurov, noting a 2018 document from the Agency about glyphosate that cites both papers. The EPA maintains glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen.
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Since then, regulators have used Greim’s paper to counter the finding and justify reapprovals of glyphosate, MacLean told us. Reliance on the article has “unduly skewed the regulation and adjudication of glyphosate’s cancer risks,” said MacLean, who has acted as an expert witness for plaintiffs in glyphosate litigation.
Christian Strupp, a coauthor of that article, told us he and his colleagues “stand by the scientific integrity of the publication, which has undergone professional peer review, and await clarification from the publishers as to any concerns raised.”
Kirkland, the coauthor of the 2013 paper, told us the article “was not ghostwritten.” He and Kier “state clearly” in the text they had “sole responsibility for the writing and content of the paper,” Kirkland told us in an email.
“As an editor of Special Issues for Mutation Research (at that time), I firmly believed it was important to ignore any suggestions from the glyphosate manufacturers in relation to our review process, our interpretation of results and our conclusions in order that our review would be independent,” he said.
Kirkland said Taylor & Francis informed the authors of some concerns with the paper, but the publisher has not provided details about the nature of the concerns. If asked for more information, he “will be happy to collaborate with their investigation,” he said.
Bayer Says Allegations are Absurd
A spokesperson for Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, provided a statement from the company calling the allegations about the papers “absurd.” The statement added a Monsanto employee, David Saltmiras, was a coauthor of the Greim paper and was “clearly identified as such” in the article.
“This appears to be yet another attempt by the litigation industry – this time specifically including a paid plaintiff expert from the Roundup litigation – to discredit sound science for its own purposes and financial benefit,” Bayer said in the statement.
The retraction of the Williams article remains the subject of intense debate. A group of 66 researchers have written an editorial calling for Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology to reverse its retraction of the paper. The group contends there was no evidence of scientific weakness in the paper that justified retraction.
Christopher Borgert, a pharmacology researcher who is leading the campaign, told us the rationale given for the retraction “is not defensible,” and the ghostwriting concerns about the paper are “flimsy.” Borgert said the editorial was originally accepted by Archives of Toxicology, but that he withdrew it. He said another journal has provisionally accepted it, but he declined to name the journal.
But Martin van den Berg, co-editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, told us the journal would not be reversing the retraction. The decision to remove the paper was fully independent, based on the COPE guidelines. “Any suggestion otherwise should be considered mud smearing and bullying,” he said in an email.
Kaurov, MacLean and Oreskes responded to Borgert’s upcoming editorial in a post on their blog Reckoning Science that called the piece an “editorial that defends a ghostwritten paper by citing additional ghostwritten papers.”
Read the original article on Retraction Watch »
In Trade, the Customer Is Always Right, Glyphosate Proves It
Canada's dependency puts trade diversification at risk.
By Camelia Touzany and Dan Ciuriak
Published June 16, 2026 on Centre for International Government Innovation
The trade shock to Canada’s economy from US protectionism has prompted Canadian leaders to beat the drum on trade diversification — a point underscored by the Carney government’s goal of doubling non-US exports over the coming decade. Canada has been described as an agriculture and agri-food superpower; its agri-food sector contributed more than $100 billion to Canada’s exports in 2024, with about 38 percent going to non-US destinations. So it is already punching above its weight in contributing to Canada’s non-US trade diversification. But can it do more?
That is a lot easier said than done. For one thing, global trade gives every market plenty of choice in sourcing, and every market is free to set its own standards, including in areas such as the following examples from the European Union:
- Pesticide and other chemical residues in food products or soil contaminants that could harbour endemic pests: MRLs or maximum residue limits vary among countries (and can perhaps be set at arbitrarily low levels to serve as trade barriers, as India has accused in the case of the European Union’s aflatoxin limits, set well below the international Codex Alimentariusrecommended levels, affecting exports such as peanuts).
- Production methods: The European Union, for instance, has banned washing chicken meat with chlorine to kill salmonella and other bacteria, not because of chlorine residues, but because the practice is seen as a compensating measure for poor hygiene and safety standards in the supply chain.
- Precautionary regulations: When the science on the safety of production techniques remains unsettled, certain imports may be banned on a precautionary basis, as has happened in the European Union when growth hormones have been used for livestock production or crops have been genetically modified to make them pesticide-resistant.
For agriculture and agri-foods, standards can be prohibitive for market access: if you do not meet them, you do not get in. In this context, how food is produced in Canada will play a major role in determining whether our shipments will be welcomed in new markets.
This is a particularly acute problem for Canada’s trade diversification push because of the supply chain integration with the United States, which is prioritizing the protection of its existing agricultural production model, even as global markets, especially in Europe and Asia, are moving in different directions.
No export irritant highlights this issue as clearly as glyphosate. According to Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Canada uses more than 25 million kilograms of glyphosate-based herbicides each year, making glyphosate the most widely applied pesticide in the country.
Glyphosate, brought to market by Monsanto in 1974, is used across major crops, including wheat, canola, oats and pulses, both for weed control and, in some cases, to dry down crops before harvest. The product itself is overwhelmingly manufactured by US companies — most notably Bayer (which acquired Monsanto) and Corteva — which anchor glyphosate firmly within the North American production system.
Defending Innovation Against Lockout
New toxicology data shows that chronic, low-dose exposure to glyphosate residues disrupts the gut microbiome and liver metabolism. While the scientific evidence for a causal link from glyphosate to cancer is considered unsettled, there is no disputing that glyphosate residues have been found in various food products, urine samples of children, and even breast milk. There is also no disputing that glyphosate producers have settled lawsuits for more than $10 billion. And, most importantly for our present discussion, there is no disputing that glyphosate usage is considered a health issue in many of the very markets into which Canada hopes to expand.
When the Italians moved to restrict pre-harvest use of glyphosate, buyers cut back purchases of Canadian durum wheat...
The European Union, for example, has restricted or discouraged glyphosate usage, applying the precautionary principle under Regulation (EC) No. 1107/2009, which allows regulators to restrict or discourage pre-harvest uses that are more likely to leave higher residues; Italy has banned pre-harvest applications outright; and Germany is phasing out glyphosate entirely. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture in India has tightened residue testing at the border for imported pulses and cereals under a 2022 national order from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. These are not marginal markets; they are among the fastest-growing destinations for Canadian agri-food exports.
The Italian measures should be a wakeup call: when the authorities moved to restrict pre-harvest use of glyphosate, some Italian buyers quietly cut back purchases of Canadian durum wheat and shifted sourcing to countries more closely aligned with EU regulation, such as Russia and Türkiye. Canadian wheat remained legal under EU residue limits, but it became harder to sell without regulatory friction.
More generally, the European Commission monitoring reports show a marked increase in pesticide-residue testing and border rejections since 2019, particularly for cereals and pulses. Agricultural imports are now more heavily scrutinized than before, and regulators are more willing to detain or reject shipments that do not meet their standards.
Once you strip away the rhetoric, the question of glyphosate stops being a regulatory or agronomic debate and becomes a trade exposure problem. Countries that apply stricter residue limits or restrict pre-harvest use of glyphosate can effectively close their markets to Canadian crops, regardless of Canada’s domestic policy choices.
Old Rules, Changing Enforcement
For many years, regulatory convergence with the United States made sense. The United States was viewed as a reliable global standards setter, applying science-based, predictable standards that were generally aligned with international norms. Canadian trade thinkers Michael Hart and Bill Dymond once described cross-border regulatory disputes as the “tyranny of small differences,” reflecting the belief that minor divergences could be managed because both countries operated within broadly similar frameworks.
That assumption, however, is harder to make today.
In February 2026, the United States invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 to secure domestic access to glyphosate-based herbicides, directing manufacturers to prioritize US agricultural demand before filling export orders. With this move, the United States doubled down on glyphosate, making it a national security issue; at the same time, the move ensured American farmers would be served first during supply tightness.
Glyphosate alternatives exist and they are already in use. Many European producers rely on integrated weed management systems that reduce reliance on chemical pesticides, in part because of growing weed resistance to traditional herbicides. Other examples include crop rotation, mechanical controls and biological products. Biopesticides derived from fungi, bacteria and naturally occurring compounds are increasingly used to manage weeds and plant health, particularly for crops headed to residue-sensitive markets.
In this context, aligning with the United States works against Canada’s interests in three distinct ways:
- It risks Canada’s market access globally and thus potentially compromises the trade diversification objectives
- It makes Canada’s agricultural production dependent on an input for which it does not have security of supply because of US domination of production and express US policy choices; and
- It locks Canada into a mature technology that is already being innovated against by both nature, in the form of glyphosate-resistant weeds, and by human beings, in the form of alternative technologies
If Canada wants to sell to markets with increasingly stringent agricultural regulations, its exports must meet those standards. There is no workaround, and no diplomatic persuasion can resolve the issue.
Meeting those standards might be considered a burden: put another way, it might be considered a specialization strategy. Producers that operate to the cleaner standard can sell everywhere; those that do not are limited to fewer markets. In trade, the customer is always right — and the border always has the last word.
The opinions expressed in this article/multimedia are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIGI or its Board of Directors.
Read the original article on the Centre for International Government Innovation »