"ELSBERRY -- After driving several miles along a winding rural road west of this Mississippi River town, Denny Mertz finds what he’s looking for. The retired engineer, turned full-time farmer, stops next to a neighbor’s field covered in soybeans — and something sinister.

At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. Until Mertz points out the yellowish cast infiltrating the deep green of the soybean leaves.

It’s waterhemp, a fast-growing weed that torments Midwestern farmers.

But this isn’t ordinary waterhemp, Mertz says."

Tim Barker reports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch July 13, 2014. [2]