herbicides/pesticides/insecticides

Factual Questions
1

hi everyone ,
ive heard talk/ rumour/gossip that besides the oil… there was another reason for war in iraq etc
the base chemicals used in the making of herbicides and insecticides /pesticides all originate from the ““dead sea”” or in iraq , is this true ???
or just simply urban legend.
and is also true that the food production in USA and europe etc would all collaspe within a decade without these chemicals ??
more importantly the question is that … is the dead sea is the ONLY place in the world that they can get these poisonous salts used in the manufacturing of herbicides /pesticides/insecticides etc ???

please note im NOt asking about fertilizers.

ive found some info on it , eg a company in egypt that sells base chemicals for herbicide/insecticides.
http://www.ma-industries.com/product...n/insecticides

and this is some info on chemical use in the usa .
http://croplifefoundation.files.word…-2003-full.pdf

quote from the last artical “” By contrast, widespread use of herbicides to kill weeds did not begin until the development
of synthetic organic chemicals in the late 1940s. Currently, herbicides are routinely used on more than
90% of the acreage of most U.S. crops.

is this an urban legend ??
Thanks in advance
Keano

2

Herbicides and pesticides are vastly different chemicals, so it seems pretty unlikely that they both use the same magic ingredient from Iraq.

One of the biggest herbicides is Glyphosate (Round Up ®) you can see three methods for it’s manufacture here. None of them use any magic material from the Mid-East.

So, I think this isn’t even an Urban Legend, just B.S.

3

Pretty much everything found in the Dead Sea is found in seawater (and the Earth’s crust, for that matter), just in different absolute and relative concentrations. Of course petroleum is the ultimate source of many of the organic compounds that I imagine are used in the synthesis of many pesticides, but that’s true of any sort of organic molecule you want to synthesize, and you can get those from refining oil from anywhere, there’s nothing really special about Iraq crude in that respect. The amount of petroleum needed for the production of pesticides is surely orders of magnitude lower than the amount needed for fuel.

I’m going with beowulff, this sounds like BS to me.

4

thankyou both Beowulff, and Wheresmymind…

cheers