Once helpful in addressing hunger by ensuring rocketing agricultural production, pesticides have turned out to put both the environment and people in jeopardy. Almost half of the world’s population working on farms is subject to pesticide poisoning. Nevertheless, the use of these substances is on the rise in some countries. This is in parallel with efforts by some food growers to reduce the use of pesticides to zero and replace them with more sustainable and healthy ways of production. This article addresses this critical issue and provides insights for the way forward.
What are pesticides and why do we use them?
Pesticides is a broad term encompassing chemical substances used in conventional agriculture to kill weeds and a range of organisms (e.g., insects, fungi) that damage crops. Their origin can be found in the mid-20th century. Back then and for some time afterwards, pesticides were perceived to be a huge technological advance and part of the development and progress made in agriculture as they contributed to ensuring incredibly high yields.
See the article: Can high yields today feed us in 10 years?
While the use of pesticides remains a widely spread practice among both food producers and gardeners, today there is increasingly more evidence that it is possible to succeed without their use and, more importantly, that it is vital to do so.
The impact of pesticides on human health
Decades of use of agrochemicals has revealed a range of drawbacks. A recent study shows that about 385 million farmers or 44% of the global population working on farms are subject to acute poisoning every year. The figure is up from 25 million cases in 1990. The authors of the study warn that this figure is not precise as many pesticide poisoning cases go unreported. The same study puts the number of fatalities at 11,000 annually.
Humans inhale pesticides both directly, during their production, storage, and use, and indirectly via air, water and food. Regardless of whether it is accidental exposure or overexposure to pesticides, they have a severe impact on human health ‘causing many diseases, including metabolic syndrome, malnutrition, atherosclerosis, inflammation, pathogen invasion, nerve injury and susceptibility to infectious diseases.’
While farmers are the first to be exposed to this risk, recent studies alert about the pesticide drift to areas which are far beyond farm’s boarders. Thus, for instance, ‘32 different agricultural pesticides were detected on children’s playgrounds’ in one province in Italy. Most of them were substances called Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals which among others cause ‘cancer, infertility, developmental and behavioural disorders and diabetes’.
Vicious circle in agriculture
Apparently, pesticides help farmers increase their production. Yet, it is no longer a secret that the use of pesticides creates a sort of a vicious circle in agriculture as they weaken cultivated plants, decreasing their natural resistance to pests and diseases, which therefore need more and/or other pesticides to resist the latter.
It has also been proven that pesticides do not kill insects or fungi against which they are used, turning them stronger instead and more resistant to pesticides. This imposes using higher amounts or more efficient pesticides in order to destroy them. At the same time, they also destroy organisms that are vital to the soil and plants.
Fauna strongly affected
It goes without saying that pesticides have a detrimental impact on soil biodiversity, indispensable in agriculture, but may also strongly affect fauna. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that about 67 million birds die from pesticide poisoning each year and more than 600 million are exposed. Specialists have been raising red flags for some time now as to the extinction of bees following contamination with pesticides including. Beekeepers have been on alert for many years now over the poor activity of bees, increasingly less honey production, which actually means increasingly less pollination, which is vital for plants’ reproduction.
Is it still worth using them?
Despite all their side effects, in France alone in the past 10 years, the use of pesticides soared by 25% although the state aimed to reduce it by 50% by 2025. Why? Higher yields and less costs, most probably. Yet, the cost issue is debatable, with experts pointing out that the matter should be approached in a more complex manner so as to take into consideration the cost of health deterioration, the cost of lower pollination, the cost of soil deterioration, the cost of measures taken to regulate the use of pesticides and clean up the environment. Although there are no complete data in this respect, studies pointed out that health costs associated with the use of pesticides amounted to EUR 157 billion per year in the EU alone. An EU-funded research estimated that “pollination services provided by bees are worth EUR 153 billion a year”. Another 2016 research found out that “the annual costs of land degradation due to land use and land cover change are about US$231 billion per year”.
Prospects
Tackling the use of agrochemicals in food production is a vital matter. European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC), a grassroot organization gathering 31 national and regional farmers, farmworkers, and rural organizations from 21 European countries launched a peasant agroecology manual on how to phase out the use of pesticides. ECVC also shares short agroecological training videos and even has an European Agroecology Knowledge Exchange Network which makes knowledge more accessible to food producers and can help to disseminate it further to the public.
All in all, healthy and sustainable solutions exist. Surprisingly or not, farmers have been searching and finding ways to protect themselves, as well as our (and their) food. More than ever, the time is ripe to look at these solutions as opportunities in order to foster progress and development in agriculture while building new sustainable food production models for all.
