Sorry guys, no bullshit here. The article linked in the question is right in describing the practice (I'm no expert on the health issue, no comment from me). I don't know if it's really a standard practice in the US, but I do know it is a part of the toolbox of "modern" agriculture worldwide to kill grains with Roundup before harvest.
The reason for treating grains with Roundup 10-14 days before harvest (7 days is permitted but too short to work) is given in the article:
A wheat field often ripens unevenly, thus applying Roundup preharvest evens up the greener parts of the field with the more mature.
Whether or not a field ripens unevenly varies greatly from year to year. German farms, as far as I know, opt for the pre-harvest use of Roundup only in quite difficult years, and they decide field-wise.
Although I cannot judge on the toxological part of the issue, I find this practice problematic. But, as always, matters are complicated when you want to acknowledge all relevant aspects. I'll list some advantages of the application of Roundup to an unevenly ripended field:
Harvest loss is reduced substantially. Green grains and damp straw result in substantially more grains not separated in the drum. You leave up to 5% (ceteris paribus) of the harvest on the fields when maturity of the grain is very uneven if you don't spray.
Apart from not taking the lost grains home, these sprout, which means you have to get rid of more unwanted plants in the next culture. Thus using Roundup pre-harvest can spare you one ore two tillage cycles, or the post-harvest use of Roundup.
The harvest you take home is moister than what you get with pre-harvest Roundup treatment. Under ideal weather conditions and with German varieties, you have 13-14,5% humidity with a perfectly ripe field, which means you don't have to dry the harvest. An unevenly ripened field can result in plus 2% humidity, which means a) you have to get it into and out of a dryer, which consumes time and energy, and b) you have to dry it, which takes a huge amount of energy.
You can schedule the harvest better, which means that you're able to harvest other fields than the named under ideal ripening conditions.
Summary: pre-harvest Roundup treatment can help to reduce harvest losses and to spare human and machine time and energy on a couple of levels. In other words it can, if only applied when really necessary, produce a notably smaller CO2 footstep than without the treatment.
This is not meant to propagate Roundup, just to make sure. I'm not in the position to weight these factors against toxicological factors, to state it for the third time. Just to make sure. But I like to have all facts on the table.
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