AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Marti Crouch, talk about this superweed that's taking over Indiana.

DR. MARTHA CROUCH: Yes. There's a headline here, "Monsanto's G.E. Crop Spawns Superweeds Across Indiana." This is interesting because when genetically-engineered crops were first developed, there was a lot of hype about how they were going to reduce the use of pesticides, that we were going to be able to get rid of weeds with safe chemicals, that sort of a thing. And one of the first crops that was genetically engineered was Roundup Ready. Now Roundup is glyphosate, one of the most common herbicides, weed killers in the world. And it was patented to Monsanto, about to come off patent, so they were going to start losing their income stream from that. And so, they genetically engineered a series of crops to be able to withstand Roundup. They called them Roundup Ready, so that you could spray the weed killer over them, they would survive, the weeds would die. And the idea was that you'd be able to use less weed killer, that Roundup was less toxic than some of the other ones, and that it would simplify weed management.

Well, in Indiana, about 5 million acres are now cultivated in Roundup Ready soybeans; about 90% of the soybean crop. And so, a quarter of our land area in Indiana, and this is typical throughout the soybean-growing regions, is sprayed with Roundup herbicide, one, two, three times during a season. Naturally, weeds, being smarter than people, are learning how to become resistant to the Roundup, as predicted. And this year, in the last couple of years, there's a new weed in Indiana called Mare's Tail. It's actually a native plant that has learned how to grow under these conditions, has become resistant, and is moving very rapidly across the State. Which means that the Roundup Ready approach doesn't work anymore, unless you mix in different herbicides. So, now they're recommending that farmers, whenever they see this weed, and even if they don't, start mixing the Roundup with 2,4-D, which is an old herbicide that has a lot of evidence now that it's linked to certain cancers, and reproductive problems, a much more dangerous herbicide. So, the -- and also because of this, more and more and more of the pesticides are being used, and as genetically-engineered crops have become more popular, pesticide use has increased instead of decreased.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, this issue of using crop plants for drugs?

DR. MARTHA CROUCH: Yes. This is the thing that I never even thought of 15 years ago when I decided to quit my research and makes me even more confident that I made the right decision, and that is that now people are making drugs, pharmaceuticals, in crops like corn, some are engineered into rice, sugar cane, other food crops. They're in the testing phase. Only one industrial enzyme is being grown commercially for research purposes, but there are hundreds of tests of these pharmaceuticals. They include birth control agents, vaccines--

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait. I don't understand. So, do the birth control agent. What is happening?

DR. MARTHA CROUCH: You take a gene from an organism that makes a protein that can control conception, and you splice that into the DNA of a corn plant, and you ask the corn plant to become a factory to make that birth control agent.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you can have cornfields that sterilize whole communities?

DR. MARTHA CROUCH: You could. Or that make AIDS vaccines, or that make growth hormone, or that make plastic precursors. And the idea is factories are expensive, cornfields are cheap. So you get agriculture to make all of these things that used to be made in pharmaceutical factories or in industrial factories. Now, these are being field-tested around Indiana and around the United States and the world in secret field tests. The locations are not made public. And usually what particular drug or chemical being made is confidential business information.