Bayer’s $2 Billion Loss: Will the Glyphosate Crisis Force a Cultural Shift in Food?

The reckoning is here. Forget commercial failure; this is a systemic crisis. The $2 billion verdict against Bayer over glyphosate, and the likely US market withdrawal, proves it. As Andrea Rasca has long argued, the global broken food system demands immediate, and clear attention.

What is glyphosate? It’s the world’s most widely used herbicide, famously the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup. Bayer acquired the liability when it purchased Monsanto in 2018. The controversy is severe: multiple courts and health bodies link it to diseases like non-Hodgkin lymphoma, alongside its devastating environmental impact. For those unfamiliar with Monsanto, we highly recommend the MoM book club pick, The Monsanto Papers, which chronicles the astonishing true story of the landmark lawsuit.

This corporate failure is deeply personal for farmers and consumers. Our food system is failing both the land and the agricultural worker, as we noted last week in our piece on The Food Crisis is Personal.

The brutal truth of Bayer’s potential exit lays bare two urgent, interconnected threats:

1. Farmer dependency: our current system made farmers dependent on this cheap chemical. Pulling it suddenly creates an immediate weed crisis and severe financial risk for those reliant on it. This is a failure to uphold the most basic human right—the right to dignity in work.

2. The ChemChina threat: the critical danger. If Bayer drops US liability, companies like ChemChina could export cheaper, potentially more toxic glyphosate, free from US legal exposure. We risk replacing one problem with an unregulated, higher-risk product.

Does this failure lead to a system collapse for those dependent on it, or does this critical moment finally force the transition towards a confident regenerative future, and cultural shift?

The stakes are enormous. Which direction do you believe the food system will take next?

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