Campaigners demand action to break UK’s ‘addiction’ to controversial herbicide

It was Scottish farmers in the 1980s who pioneered the practice of spraying glyphosate on their wheat just before harvest. Struggling in the damp glens to get their crop to dry evenly, they came up with the idea of accelerating the process by killing it a week or two before harvesting.

Glyphosate, then a revolutionary herbicide that killed everything plant-based but spared animal life, seemed perfect for the job. Soon the practice spread to wetter, colder agricultural regions around the world.

Four decades on, thousands of tonnes of glyphosate are now applied every year to UK farmland as well as to municipal green spaces and domestic gardens. But the herbicide’s safety record has become deeply contested and – with its licence up for renewal in December – there are calls for it to be banned or severely restricted.