If you don't follow this German glyphosate mess, I'll lay out the basic story. For almost forty years, worldwide, glyphosate has been around and used by farmers to prevent weeds on row-crops. It's commonly called Round-Up in the US. The vast amount of research done on the chemical is (almost 98-percent of the reports) say that it doesn't cause cancer. In the last three to five years, a couple of German groups have come out and suggested that it may cause cancer (it's not a hard definite belief). Among the Green Party of Germany, and the SPD Party.....this has been picked up and they are working to either limit the use, or totally ban the chemical.
What appears now likely to occur in Germany is that the Environmental Ministry will control the use, and force farmers to ask permission. How the request will be handled is a virtual unknown. You could have 200,000 German farmers make the request and all of them get permission. You could have the same number apply and half be denied. If you denied half the farmers in some district the use of the chemical....could they sue the government in court? Yes, and if found guilty of some abuse....the government would have to pay the farmers. You can sense that this is a fairly big mess that is building up into a bigger mess.
Politically? This is the odd part of the story. The FDP says they want more research done before any real solution is screwed around with. The CDU-CSU folks want the farmers to have the right to use it. Then you have the AfD folks, the Greens, the Linke Party and the SPD.....all wanting to ban the product.
Adding to this discussion is the idea that it affects insects, birds and other plants of their 'livelihood'. On this topic, there's probably a full decade of research required before you'd come to a complete answer. Maybe they are correct.
My impression of where this goes?
I would offer five observations:
1. By the end of 2018, I think the ban over glyphosate will occur and probably over half the requests to use the chemical will be denied. I would suggest that the request 'cycle' here....from the day that the farmer requests to use the chemical....to the day of permission granted.....may take over twelve months, and be of a very limited nature (maybe limiting the mixture to 50-percent effectiveness).....thus making the value of the chemical questionable. You can imagine the German bureaucracy game involved, and how many people need to review the request document before it can be approved.
2. I would suggest that by 2022, farm production levels will Germany will likely show some decline. Maybe five-percent.....maybe ten-percent....maybe fifteen-percent. The government will start a study to understand why, but it'll take five years for the government to admit that weeds hindered full production levels that German farmers enjoyed for forty-odd years.
3. Someone will show up with a new chemical....totally unrelated to glyphosate. It'll be immediately put out and used by farmers. Then I'll predict within a couple of years....it'll be deemed a cancer-threat as well.
4. All of this will lead to one single 'funnel' or production strategy. More will have to produced elsewhere (outside of Germany), where no ban will exist. Maybe in the Ukraine....maybe in Romania. This will eventually draw the same ban crowd to demand control over those nations as well, or to completely deny them the ability to import into Germany.
5. All of this leads to a long-term production problem for agricultural products in Germany, and increased cost. Just to speculate on on five-percent increased cost because of this strategy is a joke. I would be looking long-term at 20-percent cost easily coming out of this strategy and most working-class Germans just shaking their heads because they worry about cancer, but they can't really afford the solution.
This brings me to this last bit of pondering. This only involves row-crops and glyphosates. What of cattle and pork? What about Pepsi and Coke? What about chips and dips? Is it possible that government regulations will come there as well? Oh, it's best not to suggest that to Germans.
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