GlifoStop, a European Union-funded project to find competitive and sustainable alternatives to glyphosate, one of the most widely used herbicides that is also toxic to us and the environment, was born in Emilia-Romagna.
The “non-hazardousness” according to EFSA
On December 15, 2022, the five-year extension granted to glyphosate on 5.11.2017 will expire without a new risk assessment being done. The European Commission seems determined to extend it for another year, although the risk assessment done by EFSA will not be available until July 2023.
At the moment, per ECHA, the European Chemicals Authority, glyphosate causes serious eye damage and is toxic to aquatic life, while, as stated among the ‘latest news’ on EFSA’s page dedicated to the herbicide, ‘it is not justified to classify glyphosate as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction’. (1)
The ignored evidence
So it is of little use that 17 top experts in oncology, back in 2015, had listed glyphosate as a ‘probable human carcinogen,’ (2) or the research conducted on 24 mother-child pairs confirming that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor, particularly on girls.
Or, again, the $2 billion that the California Court of Appeal commuted as a penalty for Bayer-Monsanto for causing bone and brain tumors in Mr. and Mrs. Pilliod as a result of their prolonged use of the herbicide.
The GlifoStop Project
Fortunately, there are realities aware of the risks of glyphosate that seek alternatives to it. One example is a project called GlifoStop (3), which came to life in Emilia Romagna funded by the European Union under the Operational Groups of the European Partnership for Innovation: Productivity and Sustainability in Agriculture (EIP-AGRI), a partnership with the aim of making agriculture and forestry more productive, sustainable and able at the same time to compete in the marketplace and meet the highest environmental and climate change standards. (4)
The goal of Glifostop is to implement a model of environmentally friendly best practices involving the use of other substances as an alternative to glyphosate to manage competing weeds in arable land.
Partners
The project is part of the region’s 2014-2020 Regional Rural Development Program and has as partners
- 4 area farms that grow, among other things, cereal crops,
- the Department of Agrifood Technological Sciences (DISTAL) of the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna for which the area of Agronomy and Herbaceous Crops was involved, and
- other consulting and training companies (AGRITES and DINAMICA) and a social cooperative involving girls and boys with disabilities to tend a vegetable garden and a restaurant (Anima).
Field experimentation
In the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 crop years, farms participating in the project did several experiments such as the use of different cover crops, both pure and in mixtures, and different terminations of alternative cover crops to glyphosate such as foam, vinegar, and intertractor machines.
The effects of different cover crops on cereal crops, particularly corn, soybean and sunflower, will then be assessed. The data will be compared both from the point of view of the presence of weeds and the amount of product obtained and the amount of protein contained in the grains in question with those of traditional agriculture.
Best-practices will be defined from the data collected and will be applicable to different types of farming systems, both integrated and organic model, with related cost analysis.
How to choose the best crop cover
While waiting for the data to be published, a web toolkit is already available on the Glifostop website that allows you to choose the best cover crop based on the product you want to grow among sugar beet, potato, soybean, corn, sunflower and sorghum and the type of soil.
Finding alternatives to glyphosate is critical to reducing soil and water pollution and protecting the health of all of us, from farmers to consumers. Also, a return to ‘old’ practices such as crop rotation with cover crops to improve adaptation of cultural systems to climate change.
Notes
(1) https://www.efsa.europa.eu/it/topics/topic/glyphosate
(2) K. Z Guyton, D. Loomis, Y. Grosse, F. El Ghissassi, L. Bennrahim-Tallaa, N. Guha el al, Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate, The Lancet, 20.03.2015 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(15)70134-8/fulltext
(3) The project with related information can be found at https://glifostop.progeo.net/
Graduated in Law from the University of Bologna, she attended the Master in Food Law at the same University. You participate in the WIISE srl benefit team by dedicating yourself to European and international research and innovation projects.
