OK, so this story is about weeds and weedkillers, neither of which is
ever the hero of a story, but stay with me for a second: It’s also
about plants with superpowers.
Unless
you grow cotton, corn or soybeans for a living, it’s hard to appreciate
just how amazing and wonderful it seemed, 15 years ago, when Roundup-tolerant crops hit the market. I’ve seen crusty farmers turn giddy just talking about it.
All
they had to do was spray the herbicide Roundup over their fields and
everything died — except their remarkable new crops, with their
laboratory-inserted genes that made them resistant to that weedkiller.
Alas, the giddiness faded.
