Wine Noise Part IV: Glyphosate — A History

Wine 101

This episode traces the historical trajectory of glyphosate, from its initial isolation in the 1950s to its status as a cornerstone of moder

Key takeaways

• Dr. Henry Martin at CILAG first isolated the compound N-phosphonamethylglycine in the 1950s.
• Stauffer chemical company patented glyphosate after discovering its ability to bind to metal ions like copper and magnesium.

Main topics

• History of glyphosate discovery
• Monsanto and Roundup development

Notable quotes

The story of glyphosate begins in the 1950s.

Conclusion

The episode provides a factual, historical foundation for understandin

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) My name is Keith Beavers, and do you guys have like a favorite mug or cup? This is my favorite cup. Okay, yeah, it's Ikea, but I found it at a thrift store for like $1.50, and it's just like my cup now. I don't know. Fun fight. Speaker 1 (0:22) Okay, so we're on a journey here, wine lovers. We've talked about yeast. We've talked about botanomyces. We've talked about what the real facts are behind all the noise online with wine. And it's time to talk about glyphosate. You're going to see this word all over the internet when it comes to people talking about wine. The quote-unquote natural wine movement is really big on glyphosate. There's this... a narrative out there that this thing, glyphosate, this evil thing, is destroying agriculture, and to not use it is to be the purest of farming, and to use it is to be like... Big bad. So let's talk about this. What is glyphosate? What is the history of this thing? Where did it come from? Why are we using it? Let's talk about that first, and then we can get into the more deep sort of like social discussion about it. But first, we need facts, history, and data. Let's go. The story of glyphosate begins in the 1950s. And when you're reading about this stuff, you have to kind of, as a wine person, or even if you were a farmer, you'd have to really kind of understand the chemical world, the world of chemists and pharmaceuticals. And in the 1950s, now I'm not sure if this happens anymore. Again, if anybody's in this world, let me know. But there's this, in the 1950s... Scientists were sort of isolating compounds, creating inventories of chemical compounds, and hoping that one day those chemical compounds could be used for things like pharmaceuticals or for medical uses or anything like that. So that was happening. And a Swiss scientist by the name of Dr. Henry Martin at a smallish pharmaceutical firm called, I think, CILAG, C-I-L-A-G, which would eventually be bought by Johnson & Johnson, and he isolated a specific compound. Bear with me. N-phosphonamethylglycine. Whew. This was known at the time as a novel compound, a discovered molecule that has yet to be assigned to any kind of... thing, whether it be medically or whatever. So no paper was ever written on it. Nothing was ever published. It was shelved. And when Johnson and Johnson bought C-LAG, they started selling off chemical inventories to other companies to recuperate cash, apparently from the sale. In the early 1960s, a chemical company by the name of Stouffer or Stouffer, S-T-A-U-F-F-E-R, chemical company bought samples of this particular compound that is now called glyphosate. What they discovered is that glyphosate had the ability to bind itself to the ions of metal, like copper, calcium, and magnesium, making it an amazing descaling agent. Stauffer was the company to actually patent glyphosate, and it was then used industrially in boilers and different kind of municipalities to flush out deposits in... large piping systems. That big word I said earlier is actually what glyphosate is. It's an acid. It's a phosphonic acid. And a company called Monsanto at