Besides glysophate based herbicides, there isn't too many alternatives which stack up in terms of being feasible and effective for any large scale commercial use by Australian farmers.
Paraquat is one of them. It's feasible and it's damn effective alright. But it's "safety profile" is horrendously dangerous.
Some years ago, there was an overseas news article that I read which in layman's terms outlined a typical scenario of a farmer using paraquat on their property.
I am sure every farmer who is using paraquat in Australia, which is banned outright in many countries, would know this is the case.
In the article, it told of how a farmer could walk from the front of their property to the back of it, spray a patch of weeds with paraquat with a pump back pack, walk straight back to their house at the front of the property, get a set of binoculars, and within five minutes, the weeds would already be leaning over like the Tower of Pisa. Meaning, they were already basically dying.
DDT and Chlordane was outlawed years ago because they were both highly carcinogenic and neurotoxic. So why wasn't paraquat outlawed as well years ago?
It's terrible stuff. One could only imagine the great potential that it's already leached into the food chain in Australia, like any accumulative poison.
If farmers don't have other options besides paraquat and glysophate herbicide, they've got to find them. Organic farming sounds like a really good idea in the meantime.
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