02/17/2026
Corteva says it’s discontinuing Enlist Duo, an herbicide that combined glyphosate with one of the chemicals used in Agent Orange, the Vietnam-era defoliant that left a long trail of harm.
If this sounds like ancient history, it isn’t. Enlist Duo has been used on millions of acres of US farm fields, and it has been approved by the EPA for use on food crops.
Environmental groups have spent more than a decade challenging that approval, arguing the risks were underestimated. A federal court invalidated the approval in 2020, and the EPA later renewed the registration in 2022. Now the manufacturer is stepping away from this specific product.
The bigger issue is the one we keep avoiding.
We built an agricultural model that treats chemistry as the default answer to problems created by the model itself, monocrops, depleted soil, and an arms race against resistant weeds. Then we act surprised when the “solution” becomes the next problem.
The bar for safety in our food system should be higher than this.
