What happens when the institutions we trust fail to protect us.
Long before I planted my first garden — before I even knew what compost was or could tell the difference between soil and dirt — I asked my dad what to do about all the weeds in my backyard.
He responded with two words: “Round Up.”
Not knowing any better at the time, I followed his guidance.
The weeds went away.
Problem solved.
Or so I thought.
At the time, I had no idea that a future in agriculture awaited me, nor the challenges that would follow, with many showing roots that reached into our regulatory agencies, our courts, and the institutions we trust to protect public health.
Round Up is a chemical used in agriculture to kill and suppress weeds. It’s what’s known in the industry as an herbicide (not to be confused with pesticides that are used to kill and suppress rodents and other non-plant life).
Its active ingredient, glyphosate, has been at the center of scientific and legal debate for decades. Some maintain that the evidence supports a causal link between glyphosate and cancer.
Others, like Monsanto — the inventors and manufacturers of Round Up — deny this claim.
But they are being challenged.
And not just in the court of public opinion.
In 2018, a case was brought against Monsanto, claiming a failure to notify the potential dangers of its products on their labels.
This case came after a Californian groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after an accident that caused him to be showered by a tank of Ranger Pro (the industrial version of Round Up).
Not only did the trial expose evidence of Monsanto knowing about the potential harms involving Round Up, but also their attempts at trying to suppress this information in order to mislead consumers and regulators.
The jury ultimately ruled in Johnson's favor.
And thousands of similar lawsuits followed.
For many people, it appeared the courts were finally holding a powerful corporation accountable.
Then, just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued a decision that significantly limits many of those failure-to-warn claims.
As big of a letdown as this was, looking further into the ruling, I couldn't help but think that this outcome had more to do with the failing of our regulatory agencies than it did the courts.
After reading the summary of the Court's ruling along with Justice Kavanaugh's opinion, it seems to me that the determining factor in the court's decision was the fact that Monsanto acted in accordance with federal regulations regarding the labeling of its products.
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for evaluating pesticides and approving the warning labels that appear on them.
Since glyphosate was first registered in the 1970s, the EPA has consistently concluded that the available evidence does not warrant classifying it as carcinogenic for labeling purposes.
That position has remained largely unchanged across administrations.
Whether you agree with that conclusion or not, it helps explain why the Court ruled as it did.
Courts generally interpret the law.
Regulatory agencies determine what the law requires.
If the underlying regulations never required a cancer warning, the Court had limited room to say otherwise, assuming they are following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it.
That's why, for me, this story is less about the Supreme Court than it is about the institutions upstream from it.
It raises uncomfortable questions about how scientific evidence is evaluated, how regulators balance uncertainty, and how much influence large corporations have over the systems designed to oversee them.
Those are difficult questions.
And they are questions worth asking.
At the same time, I don't believe the answer is simply to become cynical.
If anything, this has reinforced why I care so deeply about local agriculture.
Every week I meet people who want to know where their food came from.
People who want to know the farmer.
People who are willing to support growing practices that prioritize healthy soil over chemical shortcuts.
That's a quiet shift.
But it's a real one.
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I don't know whether Washington will fix our food system.
I don't know whether another lawsuit will change the course of industrial agriculture.
What I do know is that every time someone chooses to buy food from a local farmer instead of treating food like another anonymous commodity, they're casting a vote for a different kind of agriculture.
One built from the ground up.
And perhaps that's fitting.
Because the answer has always been beneath our feet.
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