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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 1d

We shouldn’t keep throwing money at rich farmers with no strings attached. Agriculture is an important manufacturing industry, and we should help farmers manufacture even more food, but we should insist they do it with less mess.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 1d

Herbicides (like insecticides and fungicides) are considered a class of pesticides

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 2d

That book was famously and spectacularly wrong!

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 2d

Sri Lanka tried banning all synthetic pesticides and fertilizers - yields crashed, they had brutal food shortages and food riots, the government fell and the president had to flee…hmm actually maybe we should give that terrible idea a shot.

COwriter @hlacey.bsky.social · 3d

Ban them all.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 2d

Sure, worked great in Sri Lanka!

swiss-food.ch/en/articles/...

Sri Lanka: Pesticide ban with disastrous consequences

swiss-food.ch

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 2d

In any case I don’t think anyone has challenged anything I actually wrote, and I do think people who consider climate a crisis (and you’re at the top of the list) ought to be on my side of these food and ag issues.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 2d

Doc I always enjoy reading your takes, but I gotta admit I’m surprised to hear “don’t be dismissive of people you disagree with” from you!

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

I can’t speak to how the general public understands the science - but people who read my article would understand why there’s no real evidence that glyphosate causes harm to humans in remotely plausible real-world doses.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

Thank you. A perfect example of the knee-jerk reaction to this stuff: Roundup is the most common pesticide, pesticides are dangerous, ergo Roundup is dangerous. But Roundup is the most common because it’s the least dangerous!

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

They didn’t address anything I actually wrote!

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

Her letter complained about a 2017 study that she says was bad and influential - but I didn’t cite that study in my article!

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

Most of them didn’t object to what I wrote! They raised different objections. Or they said that industry has funded science finding no harm. Which is true but there’s also independent science finding no harm - and nobody grappled with what I wrote about the BS studies claiming possible harm.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

Yes! The reason monarchs and milkweed are disappearing is that agriculture has overrun two of every five acres of land on Earth. It’s that farms are replacing nature. The solution is not lower-yield farms that need more land to make the same amount of food.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

It’s hilarious that the central mystery, baffling the supposedly brilliant CIA analyst, is basically: What on earth does Venezuela have in common with Saudi Arabia? And at the end he’s like Sherlock Holmes: “It was all about oil!” Still, a cool fucking movie.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR: Riveting but flawed. So 1975 - the cars, the clothes, the post-Watergate/Vietnam/oil crisis ultra-cynicism. Was that the first film with a “computer”? Redford was fun again, even though his thing with Dunaway made no sense.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

Everyone: ROUNDUP IS KILLING YOU!

Me in NYT: There’s no evidence of that.

Letters to NYT: Well, the science must be biased, and anyway Roundup is killing milkweed and bacteria even if it isn’t killing us, and in any case you sound like an agribusiness shill.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/o...

🤷‍♂️

Opinion | Debating the Dangers of a Pesticide

www.nytimes.com

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

The natural-food ideologues who righteously denounce GMOs probably don't spend much time thinking about how @pcronald.bsky.social has genetically modified rice crops to help smallholder farmers survive floods in Southeast Asia.

Pam Ronald @pcronald.bsky.social · 4d

Nice video Michael!!

Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 4d

Twinkies aren’t unhealthy because they have GMOs in them. They’re unhealthy because they’re Twinkies! GMO crops are safe, and gene-edited crops can help make more food with less land. There’s no need to freak out about them.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks Pam!

Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 4d

Twinkies aren’t unhealthy because they have GMOs in them. They’re unhealthy because they’re Twinkies! GMO crops are safe, and gene-edited crops can help make more food with less land. There’s no need to freak out about them.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 4d

I keep getting asked when the audio version of WE ARE EATING THE EARTH is coming out. It's out! Get it here: www.audible.com/pd/We-Are-Ea...

We Are Eating the Earth

Check out this great listen on Audible.com. From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate war: the fight to f...

www.audible.com

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 5d

Yes, his takes on vaccines, Tylenol, NIH, CDC, circumcision, GMOs, meat alternatives, agri-chemicals and agriculture generally are also terrible.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 5d

Yes, that's fair, a bunch of Republicans who trashed her as a communist nanny-stater are now doing stuff she wanted. But it's good that they're doing it. And good for Dems like Jared Polis and Newsom who are also doing it.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 5d

I think there's a case to be made for abolishing food stamps (and quite a few other programs for the poor) and replacing it with cash assistance. Partly because food stamps themselves can be humiliating! But if we're going to have food stamps, they shouldn't buy the most poisonous food.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 5d

I should mention how crazy it is that RFK is actively promoting junk foods like Coca-Cola (as long as it's made with sugar, not corn syrup) and French fries (as long as they're cooked with beef tallow, not seed oils) but still, the good stuff is good.

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Michael Grunwald @mikegrunwald.bsky.social · 5d

I get what you're saying, it's not a slam dunk like school lunches. But as long as the government is giving poor people food stamps rather than money, it makes sense to say that government assistance won't fund the least nutritious crap.

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