Shifts In Pesticide Use

It’s amazing how time moves so much quicker as we age.  Then despite the faster moving clock we feel we need to extend ourselves with too many priorities.  I’m no exception to this odd phenomenon as I’m sure you’ve notice by the longer time spans between my articles.  This is one of those priorities, so though it may not be a frequent as I like, it will not fall to the wayside.  So…on with the show…

In my last article I talked about Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring.  Many have criticized the quality of that work, but regardless she did point out the risks of pesticides more than anyone else before.  Research shifted to pesticides that are more pest-specific and farming methods to reduce the use of pesticides.  Today they design many pesticides after pesticides from nature.  Yes, I said pesticides from nature.  These pesticides they are made to mimic processes that actually occur in nature.  Plant derived poisons that have been used for hundreds of years called pyrethrins, spawned pyrethroid insecticides.  Insect growth regulators have been created to mimic natural hormones that affect the insects’ growth, having what they call “very little effect” on non-target animals.  Why they don’t use the actual natural processes they are trying to recreate is beyond me…maybe they haven’t learned that man does not know better than nature. They do use bacteria and viruses as a method of control and call those bio-rational pesticides.  I would imagine that even though bio-rational pesticides do use natural substances, using actual illnesses could be dangerous.  Isn’t illness a sign that things are off balance anyway?  I’m not an expert, but it seems that introducing an illness could potentially make things worse.  But then, so can pesticide use.

In the 1960’s researchers did begin trying a type of “balance” as a method of pest control and named it, integrated pest management.  The goals were to keep pests at insignificant levels by using farming methods that discouraged pests by encouraging beneficial predators or parasites that attack what’s not beneficial to the crops.  They mixed this with pesticide applications that would coincide with the most susceptible period of the pest’s lifecycle therefore decreasing pesticide use.  Many farmers believe that pesticides are the only way to deal with a sudden pest outbreak.  This may be true, but I still don’t understand why the pesticides that nature has provided us cannot be then applied.  There are also many who, due to economic concerns, feel that there is no level of pest that is insignificant.  Their crops have less value if they are blemished from disease or insects.  Due to consumer bias’s, the farmers livelihood would be affected.  Out of fear they use pesticides at the first sign there could be a pest. 

This argument was extremely heated in 90’s when the Clinton administration was getting more mainstreamers eco-minded.  There were forecasts of gloom and doom…we would collapse financially and our people would be starving due to a lack of unaffordable food.   Oddly, today food large manufacturers are coming out with an organic version of their non-organic counterparts.  The formerly odd smelly hippie health market is now a  place you see movie stars pushing a cart with their kids in tow.  These stores have beautiful, non blemished produce that we want to buy.  Somehow, despite no subsidies for organic farmers…organic has become trendy.

There is so much out there on pesticides and their affects, I could write about them exclusively for longer than I want to…not to mention I’ll get far too depressed…so it’s time for a topic change.  So my next article will be “What the Heck Does Fair Trade Mean Anyway?  And barring any of life’s little emergencies that might come up should be ready within a week.  Hope you’ll be here!

S

~ by digitalpoetry on January 11, 2008.