Are fungicides and pesticides contaminating grapes and wine?
19 October 2005

Mark Wells has written to the website on this extremely alarming topic:

Grape production here in the Western Cape uses the highest levels of pesticides in food production according to studies by the University of Cape Town. It is now commonly acknowledged that the synthetic herbicides and fungicides used not only cause acute poisoning but also extremely harmful permanent damage to the immune system and have been shown to cause cancer.

We asked for a comment from an experienced local viticulturist, who prefers to remain anonymous:

I have heard rumours of international studies regarding the long-term effects of Roundup. In every country I have been to over the last years (France, Italy, California) vineyard managers and farmers are concerned about the effect of specifically glyphosate on the workers applying it as well as the consumer, not only of wine, but all agricultural products. We all use it - here, in France, in Italy, all over the world. That does not make it right (if the use thereof is wrong) but we have to follow somebody’s advice. Farmers are not scientists and we follow the directions of governmental authorities as well as controlling bodies – ie Europgap, IPM etc.

Many of us know that we have to farm with less fungicides, pesticides and herbicides and constantly try to build the vine to withstand diseases naturally, rather than just spraying blindly. We use mulching to rebuild the soil and control weeds naturally, we have monitors in the vineyards checking for pests and disease, then determine the severity thereof and only then, is absolutely necessary, spray for it. We use cover crops to combat weeds and do spot spraying rather than an blanket spray. At the same time we have to farm economically and produce a crop every year.

In South Africa we have to follow certain withholding periods prescribed by law. Our system of Integrated Pest Management assists in the correct use of chemicals and Europgap standards are even stricter. In terms of the Law on Agricultural Chemicals No 36, all chemicals used must be registered. We follow these directions because we believe the scientists approving the use of these chemicals know what they are doing.

But there is an ever growing awareness that maybe this is not enough.

While we discovered that a Google search for ‘Roundup’ produces a great many websites making similar claims, we also asked Mark Wells to provide some background to support what are very serious allegations. He also spoke of alternatives in a growing range of biopesticides, ‘which are natural products (not synthetic) which means solving the endocrine disruption problems’, but that is too lengthy to include here. Whether or not you look closely at the examples he gives of research, please read his final paragraphs:

Although I am presently no longer farming on my farm right now I am studying the ZERI Integrated Farming System which involves the production of energy (biogas and biodiesel) and biodiverse food using the five natural kingdoms of plants, animals, bacteria, algae and fungi. For more info visit www.zeri.org.

With respect to the endocrine-disrupting nature of fungicides: This list is by no means comprehensive as there has not been much independent research on these chemicals, due to lack of funding by regulators and the academic institutions receiving funding from multinational producers of these chemicals. For a comprehensive list of the fungicides/herbicides/pesticides linked to endocrine disruption please visit www.ourstolenfuture.org/Basics/chemlist.htm where the chemicals are listed by their active ingredients, for instance mancozeb which is used in Beyer’s popular Mikal M.

The information on the effects of Roundup have been well documented recently. Here are three independent studies to satisfy those who might still believe Monsanto, the creators of glyphosate (who have been fined for bribary, and found guilty of suppression of truth, outrage, wantoness and trespass in a US court of law).

Study 1: Differential Effects of Glyphosate and Roundup on Human Placental Cells and Aromatase, Sophie Richard, Safa Moslemi, Herbert Sipahutar, Nora Benachour, and Gilles-Eric Seralini, Laboratoire de Biochimie et Biologie Moleculaire, USC-INCRA, Université de Caen, Caen, France. August 2004. This study shows that concentrations that are one-third of the maximum concentrations typically found in waterways, glyphosate still killed up to 71 percent of the tadpoles in the study.

Study 2: Welsh, L.P. et al. 2000. Roundup inhibits steroidogenesis by disrupting steroidogenic acute regulatory (StAR) protein expression. Environ. Health Persp. 108:769-776. This study shows that low level exposures (measured in parts per billion) to Roundup will result in 90% less production of the male sex hormones.

Study 3: In June 2005, the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives reported that glyphosate, sold by Monsanto under the brand name Roundup, damages human placental cells at exposure levels ten times lower than what the company claims is safe.

The results of other glyphosate studies around the world have been equally alarming. Epidemiological research by the American Academy of Family Physicians has now linked exposure to the herbicide with increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a life-threatening cancer, and a Canadian study has linked glyphosate exposure to an increased risk of miscarriage. A 2002 study also linked glyphosate exposure to an increased incidence of attention deficit disorder in children.

Glyphosate has been used as an agricultural herbicide for 30 years. However, since the 1990s, and the advent of glyphosate resistant GE crops, its use has mushroomed. The chemical worldwide use has increased from 5 000 tonnes a year in 1995 to more than 30 000 tonnes in 2002. Nowadays, glyphosate is sprayed heavily on 140 million acres of genetically engineered crops across the world and Monsanto continues to advertise it as one of the safest herbicides on the market.

This problem is not just limited to the herbicide glyphosate; the second most ‘eco-friendly’ pesticide is Syngenta Atrazine which has now been shown to cause hermaphrodism in frogs and lower sperm counts in rats at doses as low as 0.1 µg/litre (equivalent to 0.1 parts per billion) in water according to the study: Hayes, Tyrone B. 2002. ‘Hermaphroditic, demasculinised frogs after exposure to the herbicide atrazine at low ecologically relevant doses.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 99, No. 8.

Do you think that if consumers knew about the effects of these persistent chemicals that are systemically absorbed into the grapes that they would buy our wine?

There needs to be some serious agricultural reform to address this issue. Ethical farmers need to take account of the latest findings and ignore the diatribes from industry and their paid experts. There are many solutions that have been used in the past and which are being developed, In my opinion, large scale monoculture is just not sustainable or biocompatible.

We only have one planet: let’s learn to live in harmony with it for the sake of our future generations

Here's some reassurance offered by Francois:

Research is the key, and sorry to say but your report is extremely onesided and partial to gloom; here are some other overlooked facts.

Glyphosate is absorbed by plants, they then inhibit production of essential amino acids and hence reduce protein production; some plants have the ability to metabolise glyphosate and form Aminomethylphospharic acid, others don't. The half life of this compound is 3 to 130 days in soils and 35 to 63 in water. My math might not be brilliant but even at the most lengthy decomposition rate you will have a hard time to find significant traces after three years!! Chances of forming part of the ground water system is very slim as well, because of the compounds binding strength to soil.

There have been no proof of any effect on soil organisms. The oral LD50 for rats are 4320mg/ kg. The Evironmental Protection Agency has concluded that this compound should be classified as non- carcinogenic to humans due to no convincing evidence to prove otherwise - and the EPA is not the easiest organisation to please, ask any food product exporter to the States.

I do agree that pesticides and the like should be treated with more respect and not at whim. But the amount of wine consumed by the average person, with the amount of glyphosate that might or might not be in it (didn't mention that any wines have been tested for this compound in your report) is nothing compared to the amounts of processed food and junk foods laden with other chemicals. I think secondhand car fumes cause more cancer, that one has been proven!!

So relax, have a nice glass or wine, and accept you will die one day, it might as well be because of that wonderful drink!

From Tom Lubbe, winemaker in the south of France and in the Perdeberg (see our recent article on his biodynamic vineyards for a photo of a vineyard that has certainly not seen a herbicide for a long time)

Encouraging to see debate on the use of chemicals in agriculture. Worrying as it is to see the debate at such a miserable stage of development. Is Roundup good or bad? Crikey! The experienced and anonymous ‘viticulturist’ would make me weep if I hadn’t heard his feeble babble a hundred times before. ‘We all use it [Roundup]’. Bullshit we all do, chump. A few farmers around the world have refused to follow the chemical salesman's (‘someone’s’) shiny banter and offers of free T-shirts for every 100 litres bought, and they have refused to accept that monoculture and a dead soil are the way forward.

‘Farmers are not scientists....’ Ye gods, what is this? Scientists are not farmers, farmers are meant to be those who work with the earth, they should not have any need for ‘scientists’, or chemical salesman such as Francois who can read the back-label of a poison bottle, gleaning a bit of reassuringly scientific-sounding drivel.

Anyone who tries to stick to the official take on the active-life of Roundup has never worked land where it has been used. Leeks, for instance, will show traces in their leaves for up to six years. In vineyards the signs remain evident for years after the last usage, not just in the vines themselves but in the growth patterns of the ‘weeds’ that will hopefully have grown back into the vineyards. If these are not welcome why not mow or plough? It is not like there aren't alternatives. Get out there and skoffel a bit, work off a bit of that brandy-and-coke tummy endemic to the South African vigneron.

Spending more time (working) in your vineyard is the only way to understand the natural processes that are going on without the scientist’s ‘advice’. The old expression says that the best compost is the farmers footprint, not his bakkie-tyre track. Nowhere is this more true than in viticulture, where the ideal of the end-product should be informing your every action as a farmer. (Do many wine-farmers dream of making the crappest wine possible? I suppose not, then why do they farm as if they do?)

Get rid of Roundup and with decent viticulture you should be able to stop using tartaric acid in your cellar. The two biggest expenses for most wineries, after entertaining the press, gone. And maybe even a better wine at the end for the consumer.  

On a more sober note, I was speaking to the doctor in my neighbouring village [in the Languedoc] where about half the population are chemical vignerons. Infertility rates have risen drastically in the last twenty years out of proportion to metropolitan France, ditto certain cancers associated with systemic chemicals used in industrial agriculture. Enthusiasm for these chemicals is largely unabated, even though wine quality has dropped to a point where the plonk they make is unsaleable. Everyone's a winner ... hoopla!

Wine is not a wonderful drink if it is not intimately associated with life on many levels (microbial, social, historical, ecological...).

... but Francois isn't taking it lying down:
 

To Tom Lubbe: I have to applaud your convictions and fury with which you proclaim it! Firstly none of what I stated is stated on the backlabel, its actual scientific test, oops, sciences creep into it again, sorry Tom! Secondly, I did state that the use of pesticides, herbicides etc, should be done with much more thought!

As for my comment about residues of this compound being found in wines..... still waiting, have you checked if it even exists in wine at all??

We know how you farm Tom, if you could indulge as to what your production is and at what price point your wines sell? Making a thousand cases and knowing every 10000 vines by name is very noble and would probably be any winemaker's (non Stellenbosch University, Elsenburg, Geisenheim, Bordeaux, Roseworthy, UCL Davis, Fresno state, Christchurch trained excluded of course.... science!!!!  evil !! ) dream, but reality comes to play all too often, having a few hundred hectares, producing tens of thousands of cases, selling at less than lets say R60 a bottle ( do you have any of those Tom ?) to the stupid, inhumane, uneducated masses who know nothing is a different ballgame.

If you thought soils were at risk take a quick flight over China and Taiwan, where they pump thousands of metric tons of carbon compounds into the air daily, to make what? Your sneakers, gumboots even your plastic buckets you use in your organic cellar ( garage ?? ) So when you fight a fight with so much disdain and ill respect for other peoples' practices you have to go the whole way! Hope I never see you driving a fossil fuel car to a restaurant, where sit on chairs made from ethnic wood logged in Indonesia eating fish that was caught with drag nets in international waters, wearing your Manufactured in China clothing!!!

Thanks to Francois for his applause for my convictions, though in assurance, that was no fury, simply mild irritation. I  do believe the standard line on Roundup and the scientific research supporting this to be rubbish. After that things get a little more complicated and his response requires several pages.

Suffice to say that it is, at bottom, however huge your business, a question of responsibility, personal accountability even. (Francois may like to look at the example of Fetzer who have managed to
combine sustainable practices and large-scale wine production, using the odd graduate from Davis). Pointing the finger at the Chinese pollution problem and saying 'now that's bad!' doesn't really cut it.

It is an unfortunately common reaction when I start talking about soil life in the vineyard context, that people immediately think 'effing hippy, go save a whale, rainforest etc'. My sphere of activity and knowledge is making wine, and that is where I am trying to make a difference. I would never ask anyone who worked for me to use a product that I didn't feel happy using myself, and if this means that I am out of touch with reality so be it. It gives me pleasure that the soils I am responsible for are
full of life and that the resulting wines are as well. That my production is not vast with associated pricing structures, does not change the fact that vineyard chemicals do irreparable damage to the environment and the people who use them. Neither do I see people who cannot pay more than 60
rands per bottle as being stupid because of this, there are plenty of stupid people buying expensive wine (three-quarters of Northern Rhone Syrah for example is a foolish purchase for the money asked

Yes, it has taken us 4 years to get balance and life back in our soil - believe you me it was dead!!! Finally, now it is flourishing and coping. What I say to farmers is start with a small piece of your land and slowly piece by piece get life back into your soil and balance on your farm. Tom, I think you were lucky to farm on land that wasn't totally dead yet. Stellenbosch area and Somerset West is a big problem. As a total novice my advice would be to just start making a difference by working with smaller units that are affordable to change to organic or bio but the first change must be in your head and your heart!