Roundup (and many other herbicides) are heavy salts.
The salts pull the water out of the bodies of microbes and kill them in mass numbers, causing the soil to compact and loose structure, airspace and the ability to cycle minerals to plants
Also because the salt has a strong electrical charge, it ties up trace minerals in the soil, bonding them to itself in a strong bond that keeps them from the plant
The trace minerals, although needed in small amounts, control every function of our bodies (and that of plants and animals and microbes)…from growth to cellular reproduction to hormones and immunity to digestion and reproduction…to protein synthesis and photosynthesis.
These trace minerals are critical to every function because they are like keys that plug into enzymes to make all things living work.
No reaction happens without enzymes and therefore these trace minerals.
So when roundup residues are present, life shuts down and pathogens and weeds will actually become worse.
For, although the roundup may kill a flush of weeds in the short run, it compacts the soil further (by killing the life that produces the glues that build pore spaces and structure in the soil).
This compaction causes water to run down and then across and creates anaerobic slime layers of facultative anaerobes (plant and human pathogens). It is kind of like if you leave your dogs water out a day and you can feel the slime even before you can see it.
By that time it is hundreds of cell layers thick. The same thing happens when water sits in the soil on top of a compacted or more dense layer.
These facultative anaerobes wake up as the concentration (ppm) of oxygen drops in the soil (because oxygen dissolves more slowly through the water layer that is on top of the compacted soil instead of infiltrating down into it if the good microbes were present holding aggregates together with their glues, creating airspaces, macro and micro pores,and good soil structure.
The pathogens breed and their numbers grow in the compacted facultative ,anaerobic slime layer, and then they use up oxygen and die off in large numbers (because they are not strict anaerobes).
Because bacteria are mostly protein, when they die a lot of nitrogen is released into the soil
This nitrogen is in the form of NO3, or nitrate. This die off causes a huge pulse of nitrate
Now this nitrate triggers a whole new germination flush of weeds, because it is precisely the form and amounts of nitrogen that weeds take.
For healthy meadow and grasslands, we want to create more balanced forms of nitrogen in the soil, a mix of both NO3 and NH4.
So meadow making protocols that call for glyphosate may be using the glyphosate to trigger weeds to germinate for pollinators
However this is unethical as glyphosate residues are showing up in our guts and the guts of animals
Plus it ties up trace minerals from the bees…causing the colony death
So you end up with a meadow of flowers that to the untrained observer might look healthy, but actually much of the whole ecosystem has been destroyed and filled with harmful toxins.
And the glyphosate shuts down the soil function, so the meadow soil is not functioning to filter out groundwater and keep nutrients out of our streams, lakes and oceans.
We have bee recipes that are economical and easy to make
The bees grow in size, don’t die off and produce more quantity and quality of honey when fed minerals and enzymes
So please don’t put out glyphosate which ties up minerals and enzymes
It harms the pollinators, compacts the soil which makes it more vulnerable to flood and drought…plus causes it to turn to dust and runoff into our water supplies (causing the dead rivers and oceans)
It also is behind our human diseases (carcinogen) but mostly because it harms our endocrine systems by tying up trace minerals.
Glyphosate breaks down the actin protein filaments that hold our colon cells together (called “tight junctions”)
This causes leaky gut where the toxins our body is trying to eliminate go straight into our bloodstream and to our brains and poison us.
Glyphosate was originally developed as a microbicide to keep industrial pipes clean
There are so many better ways to restore natural healthy habitat
The glyphosate has a super long half life and recycles through the perennial weeds and is re-released back into the soil and ecosystem, and so does not go away very fast.
So even if the glyphosate programs are getting “meadows” they have a poisoned landscape
Health is not restored and they are harming the very pollinators they are trying to protect!
And then they wonder why the bees die, and then try more chemicals to “fix” that problem.