Carey Gillam had little interest in agriculture, pesticides or GM technology in 1998, but now it’s become her life.

Somewhere over the last two decades she realized that farming and food is “life.”

“I don’t think there’s any more important topic,” she said. “It’s our families. It’s the food we serve our kids.”

Gillam emphasizes she’s not anti-glyphosate. For her, the herbicide is a vehicle to talk about a larger issue in the agricultural sector.

She hopes her book convinces a few people that agriculture has become too dependent on chemicals.

“There has to be a balance…. When we get out of balance, we endanger ourselves,” she said.

“This overuse and over-reliance on pesticides creates public health concerns as well as an array of environmental concerns, and I think it’s crucial that we wake up to the problems we’re creating for future generations unless we find a way off the pesticide-driven treadmill.”