If recent reports are any indication of how green marketing initiatives may be having a hard time finding their mark, it seems Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE: DOW) has some lessons to learn in convincing consumers it is on a sustainable path.
The Midland, Mich.-based company was recently in the line of fire as its new herbicide and genetically modified corn project, Enlist, moves closer toward regulatory appeal.
If approved, the company will roll out the new corn seeds, alongside its 2,4-D herbicide next year. The new corn will be immune to the chemical compound, which contains 2,4-D and glyphosate. The combination will be able to kill the surrounding weeds that have become resistant to the glyphosate alone, without harming the corn itself.
But convincing consumers that their new agriculture product is the greener option has been an especially challenging task for Dow.
In recent months, Dow has been spending a lot of energy denying allegations on several fronts – that 2,4-D is a threat to human health and conventional farmers (just to name a few), which has further confounded its marketing message.
Dow insists its new version of 2,4-D with glyphosate will not only kill the petulant “superweeds”, but will also prevent new weeds from building resistance, reduce soil erosion and help protect water quality by reducing agricultural runoff.
In addition, the company says it has met with thousands of agricultural stakeholders and regulatory authorities and developed a stewardship program to educate the public about its new corn and herbicide.
Still, despite all of its efforts, more than 365,000 public comments were reportedly filed with the USDA opposing approval of the genetically engineered corn. So, is the company’s message really getting through?
Looking back
Dow’s past history is a major challenge for the company as it attempts to introduce its new products. Perhaps the most sensational is its link to Agent Orange, which environmental advocates are terming the new Dow corn, arguing that it’s a carcinogen.
The company has repeatedly said that while Agent Orange contained 2,4-D, it was another herbicide, 2,4,5-T that was the cause of birth defects, cancer and other health problems, and was phased off the market in the 1980s.
From a marketing standpoint, this may create some confusion as consumers try and make sense of the conflicting information that they are presented.
Dow claims that the corn of yesteryear cannot continue to grow under current conditions. Today, most corn farmers are already dousing their corn with herbicides in order to tackle the increasingly invasive problem of superweeds. Fifteen years ago, the chemical glyphosate was practically the only herbicide farmers used to kill weeds, which in turn, through repeated use over time created weed resistance to the herbicide.
Some critics say Enlist only starts the cycle over again. While in theory, less 2,4-D would be required to be effective, it’s not clear what will actually happen in practice.
Photo of industrial irrigation equipment courtesy of Elena Elisseeva via Shutterstock
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Flawed exposition in this
Flawed exposition in this article
Corn is not primarily being grown for human consumption anyway. http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
Much of it is diverted for biofuels, as well as for animal feed (for cattle, pork and poultry). The "sustainability" of chemical-and-water-intensive grains being utilized to produce industrial-farmed CAFO (Concentrated animal feeding operations) meat and poop is questionable at best. This stands in contrast to pastured beef, free-range or uncaged hens and pork, etc. As a result I question whether changes in productivity afforded by these new GMO/herbicide techniques will truly benefit the farmer or the planet at all. Farmers feel pressured to keep up with the Joneses on this score, and I suspect their net profits after inflation haven't changed very much in the past 25 years and actually may be declining with the onset of "superweeds", etc. CSA agriculture is the truly profitable sustainable agriculture.
My bigger worry continues to be the loss of biodiversity from the increased usage of GMOs (with genetic drift) and pesticides (with many other bystander losses in the ecosystem). The health of the soil microbe ecosystem is even more a concern. This mirrors the problems in our oceans from overfishing and "bycatch" losses, and persistent plastics pollution in the marine food chain. When Brominated flame retardant chemicals are detectable in the arctic food chain, it is laughable to imagine that these chemicals loosed in one field will not persist or migrate elsewhere causing unwanted effects.
The federal EPA regulatory position that unsafety must be proven before they will take action to keep this product off the market is not consistent with actual protection of a dynamic, anthropogenically stressed ecosystem. This is the Anthropocene era... we can't go chopping off legs of the ecosystem and expect the planet to remain habitable for human life. Dow's quest for short term profit seems in direct conflict with sustainability for everyone else.
The Anthropocene Era is here
http://www.stanford.edu/group/anthropocene/cgi-bin/wordpress/
Can we be clear, this is NOT
Can we be clear, this is NOT about food in the way most people think about it; this is about the production of a few specific commodity crops on huge industrial scale farms. The production of GM crops and "superweed" herbicides is a race to the bottom relative to sustainability. Anyone who studies ecology 101 knows that this simple system of inputs and outputs that Dow describes doesn't mirror any natural ecosystem or truly sustainable farming style on the planet. The idea that synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and GM mono culture crops can help to build soil over time is preposterous.
Maybe the issue isn't that the marketing message misses the mark, but that the company's philosophy does, the marketing is simply a propagation of the inaccurate understanding of sustainability at Dow.
The company should be taken to task. Wolves shouldn't hide in sheep's clothing; in other words call factory farming what it is, more of the same. I'm not even arguing that there isn't a market for industrial farms and GM products--just don't confuse people by calling them sustainable!