I believe you are right to a degree, but I also believe that anyone spending exorbitant amounts of money on eradicating roundup resistant weeds is fighting a losing battle and in the end will be doing themselves a disservice because of that fact. If it were possible to eliminate the roundup ready weeds that are already out there and significantly extend the long term viability of roundup as a chemical, then it stands to reason that with intensive enough weed control, you should be able to eliminate a weed from existence entirely. Just get every single pigweed out there before it goes to seed for the next 15 to 20 years and you will maybe have gotten the entire seed bank and then we won't need to control them at all anymore. The probability of that being a cost effective solution is slim though.

When you consider that there are weeds in ditches that will get a lower dose of roundup (or any other chemical) due to drift from the sprayed fields, chemical resistant weeds are going to develop over time. Fortunately it has taken a long time for it to happen to roundup. In some places (I like to believe our fields are counted in that) it's taking longer for roundup resistant weeds to develop because of proper management of application methods. The problem is that it doesn't matter if you do a perfect application job every time. It doesn't even matter if you go out there with a hoe to get the resistant weeds that blew in from your neighbors field. What matters is that there are a ton of farmers out there who don't do as good of a job as others and there are always going to be ditches and other areas that get chemical drifted into them so that it doesn't totally kill the weeds there.

Maybe someone screwed up to create the situation in the pictures shown. Maybe not. It's no use pointing fingers though. Agriculture in general is becoming more and more dynamic all the time. The useful thing to do after seeing pictures like that is not to point fingers but use the thread as a means to educate yourself and be prepared for when it happens to you. Whether you like it or not, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

I'm not saying roundup is useless because we saw some pictures. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do what we can reasonably do to prevent the spread of such weeds. I'm saying that this is a good opportunity to learn what people think is a cost effective and efficient method of preventing this from spreading any faster than it has to. Maybe we should be tank mixing small amounts of other chemicals while we're spraying that will add another mode of action and nail the roundup resistant stuff. Maybe we should be utilizing specific rotations in specific areas of the country to enable us to rely on other chemicals to help control the roundup resistant stuff. I will admit, I'm not going to have a lot of suggestions on how to solve this problem because I'm a young farmer and I'm trying to learn. I was hoping to learn of some viable efficient solutions in the replies to the original poster and I must admit, I was pretty disappointed.