Hester van Hensbergen: Big Ag (opens in new tab)

In​ 2018, the German company Bayer bought the US agrochemical giant Monsanto, inheriting not just its vast portfolio of seeds and pesticides, but also thousands of lawsuits alleging that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, causes cancer. Since it was patented in the 1970s, eight billion tonnes of Roundup have been sprayed on fields around the world. It’s the main weedkiller used on 80 per cent of genetically modified crops, as well as many non-GM crops, and it is also a dr...