My husband and I watched The World According to Monsanto a month or two ago and were horrified. I'm also reading two equally horrifying books,
The Hundred-Year Lie and
Fight for your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America, both of which explain just how Monsanto has created its evil empire, with the HELP of the FDA (in the U.S. -- parallel agencies in other countries do the same thing). That second book especially is a MUST-READ.
It's sickening and has spurred me in my family's quest to be as self-sufficient as possible... thankfully there is an organic farm near me that gives us more produce than we could possibly eat for only $25 a week. They also have free-range chickens and grass-fed cows, so I'm going to start buying poultry, eggs, milk, and beef there as well. It's more expensive than at the grocery store but SO well worth it.
I honestly don't think the mega-corporations like Monsanto are going to change. I won't get into why, but it's just not gonna happen. So our best bet is, as many have said already, buy local, and become as self-sufficient as feasible.
Unfortunately today's modern farming practices dictate the use of various herbicides and pesticides in order to achieve optimal yield potential from today's commercial crops. Without Glyphosate, 2-4D, Atrazine, triazine, dicamba, callisto, warrior and a plethora of other chemicals on the commercial market non-residual and residual weed control with today's no-till, strip tillage and even conventional tillage would be a nightmare. All of the seed genetics would be a waste and we might as well crawl on back to the 1930's or 40's and fire up our Farmall M's with the 3 bottom trip plows and 2 row hill drop planters... Conventional cultivation in today's soybean and corn production would be a regression back to 1940's technology and with the price of fuel, time requirements and operation costs everyone would pretty much go under, even with $5 corn and $12 beans. With 1800 acres of corn, soybeans and alfalfa in the ground there is absolutely no way I could manage it and make it pencil out on ancient, out-dated, farming practices.
The world demands a lot of product, cheaply. If you cannot produce a lot of product on a given piece of land the input costs will quickly put you out of business... Technology and evolution of operations has allowed us to grow 200+ bushel / acre corn when 50 years ago we'd be jumping for joy if we shelled 75 bushels / acre.
Am I understanding you correctly? you use all those chemicals because you fully believe there's no way you could do otherwise with "ancient, out-dated" (i.e. organic) farming practices? Wow, send me back to the 30's then. I'd rather be dirt-poor and have my health than live a materially rich life and be subjected to all the poisons that assault us in this wonderful modern era.