Michael Grunwald

No, it actually goes directly to farmers

Yes that is my sense too - the @nickkristof.bsky.social column was persuasive! I just haven’t done the research.

Nothing, except for tens of billions of dollars worth of bailout money!

I don’t have a deeper message other than: Food and farming issues almost always involve tradeoffs. I wish people would grapple with the tradeoffs rather than retreat to vibes and ideology. END

That’s the story. Obviously, this kind of thing can happen with highly toxic agrichemicals. It’s still worth keeping in mind that some agrichemicals are extremely useful for farmers and the world - they can help prevent malnutrition and deforestation. (Also: glyphosate isn’t highly toxic!) 7

Even after it was childproofed, a couple farmers left leftover paraquat in bottles in their sheds, so someone could drink it and die a horrible death. So Syngenta had to adult-proof it! They packaged it in backpacks so it could only be applied in fields, and nobody could drink it. 6

Huh. Seems like a problem!

Well, obviously people aren’t supposed to drink it. But she explained that after a couple awful tragedies with kids, Syngenta made a serious effort to childproof the packaging.

Oof. But then problem solved?

Actually, not quite. 5

The problem, she explained, is that when people drink paraquat, they die excruciatingly horrible deaths. 4

One of the execs said: No. Absolutely not. The Parkinson’s stuff is nonsense, just like the cancer stuff about glyphosate. But…there is one big problem with paraquat.

Again, I don’t know if what she said about Parkinson’s is accurate. But obviously I was curious: What’s the big problem? 3

A couple of Syngenta execs who read my book and my glyphosate essay and presumably realized I’m not reflexively anti-pesticide reached out to me. And since I’m me, my first question was: What’s the deal with paraquat? Do you have a huge Parkinson’s problem? 2

Syngenta says it will stop making pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease Company will halt production of controversial paraquat weed killer by end of June as it faces thousands of lawsuits

Syngenta announced today that it’s getting out of the paraquat business. I haven’t done a deep dive into paraquat’s health effects like I did with glyphosate, but I do have a macabre story about it! 1

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I think I’ve spent $120 on maintenance for our ($23K!) 2017 Bolt, not including the deep clean for the crappy seats. The Tesla was $36K (still WAY less expensive than similarly nice gas cars my wife wouldn’t make fun of) and not quite as reliable as the Bolt but way more fun.

She has a Tesla 3 (boo! I know!) that she loves. My Bolt (again, the bare bones early model) is peppy but it does get blown around a bit on the highway.

It’s like a 16% bond on my roof!

No the seats do suck - I got the original bare bones model - and at one point she claimed they had soaked up 9 years of my tennis sweat. I got them deep-cleaned and now she admits they’re fine, but they’re still high on her list of Bolt-is-unsexy complaints.

It was followed by a soliloquy about how unsexy the car is and how embarrassing it is to have a husband who drives it so I’m gonna say no.

It’s got extremely cheap seats that according to my beloved spouse have soaked up 9 years of my tennis sweat. Anyone want to buy it?

FYI, while I really like my Chevy Bolt, yesterday my wife called it a “golf cart piece of shit stinky stank tank.”

Florida Plunder & Loot did not want us to make our own electricity. They liked selling us electricity! But we jumped through their hoops, and if enough of us can do it we can destroy their unsustainable business model.

Our solar panels paid for themselves in 7.5 years if you only count lower electric bills, 6 years if you also count how they replaced our gasoline bills.

Oil price spikes don’t affect my family because we drive electric cars. Natural gas price spikes don’t affect my family because we have solar panels. Your family can be like my family!

Seems bad that the official US foreign policy is now 🤷‍♂️

Ok, I’ll just say the main message of the museum was that Chileans who had way more reason to be fatalistic than we do, and way more to lose from resistance than we do, eventually won.

I’m at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago today. I wonder if we’re going to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission when all this is over.

My daughter, too. Very solid piece.

HEAL Report Questions Precision Agriculture The HEAL Food Alliance asks whether precision agriculture can truly deliver on sustainability promises.

Your helpful innovation is a pernicious distraction from my One True Solution. (Which is inevitably regenerative agriculture.)

foodtank.com/news/2026/02...

Wow: USDA just shoveled more $ to sugar farmers to offset “market disruptions.” The entire U.S. sugar program is a market disruption! It’s a price floor that makes consumers pay more for candy. And Trump already increased it last year!

I feel like factory-farmed pork should not be blamed on our people

Opinion | The Climate Solution That’s Horrible for the Climate (Published 2023)

www.nytimes.com/2023/06/06/o...

And sure, there are subtleties on the ground - land titles, law enforcement, discount rates, etc. But to argue that land sparing is a myth is to suggest that tripling crop and livestock yields over the last 60 years had no impact on deforestation. It’s lalalalalaing the counterfactual.