Startling headlines about a weed killer in children’s cereal and snack bars are swamping social media and scaring parents this month.

Glyphosate is among the most widely used agricultural chemicals in the world, and the companies that make it describe it as safer and more environmentally-friendly than other herbicides.

Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used herbicide. Because it’s considered safe for animals, it’s extensively used not only in agriculture, but also for weed control in urban areas and home gardens.

The herbicide glyphosate will continue to be used by farmers globally for the foreseeable future unless a suitable and safe alternative is found, despite the recent rise in public concern on the safety of its use, market sources told Agricensus.

Every season, for every field, farmers have to make more than 40 key decisions – all of which can make or break a harvest. Many of these decisions relate to crop protection, because at every stage of the growing season, seeds and plants are at risk from weeds, insects and disease.

Weeds are the bane of a farmer’s existence—the “most important of all crop pests,” as one scientist put it. They kill crops by hogging nutrients in the soil, water, space and light. Worldwide, they are the largest source of yield losses.

Farmers have been using the weed killer glyphosate—a key ingredient of the product Roundup—at soaring levels, even as the chemical has become increasingly less effective and as health concerns and lawsuits mount.

Civil society organisations and citizens across Africa are calling upon their governments to issue an immediate ban on all use of glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs).

Glyphosate continues to be subject of much controversy, and the sensitive debates surrounding the process of renewal of its license in Europe are turbulent.

What would happen if glyphosate were no longer available? A new report from Aimpoint Research provides an answer.

Living near farmland can significantly increase people’s exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used herbicide Roundup, new research shows. This chemical has been connected to health concerns, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma and a higher risk of preterm birth.

A scientific review identifies glyphosate as a possible cause of the global rise in wheat intolerance. This condition is increasingly reported by people who don’t have a diagnosis of celiac disease (a condition where your immune system attacks your own tissues when you eat the protein gluten), GMWatch reported.

Six years ago, Hawaii became the first state in the U.S. to ban the toxic insecticide chlorpyrifos from use in agriculture. The rest of the U.S. and the European Union followed.

There is possibly no chemical more vilified in modern culture than glyphosate. This chemical is plagued with coordinated disinformation campaigns, lawsuits, anti-science activist groups, and clickbait media headlines.