By Pat Tigges
Pesticides are not scary, they’re wonderful!
They rank equal to pharmaceuticals in saving and extending life. They save the environment, they save wildlife, they give the American housewife a roach- and rat-free home, and I’m sick and tired of agriculture being on the defensive. We don’t have to defend; we should be on the offense. Crop production technology has made our quality of life the envy of the world.
Agriculture has to stop pretending the radicals will go away and common sense will prevail. They will not go away because they are winning the war.
The focused concerns of a few will take precedence over the non focused concerns of the majority. This is alarmingly evidenced by new EPA-recommended legislation that would phase out consideration of benefits when establishing food use pesticide tolerances.
This is akin to banning polio vaccinations because a few children had a reaction to the vaccine. Have we gone mad? Our food is safe, wholesome and nutritious and our life span has nearly doubled in the last 40 years.
Our industry must stop feeling guilty and learn to use the tactics of the opposition. The “pesticide scare” is not about pesticides, it’s about fear and control.
They don’t want mouse droppings in their cereal any more than the rest of us. They use pesticide misinformation to create fear, from which they create a crisis, and a crisis generates funds.
These funds are not spent saving anything. They are spent furthering a political and social agenda. The pseudo environmentalist leaders don’t want to solve problems. They love problems. Problems give them more press, create more fear and gain them credibility and money.
How can we fight the fear they spread? Every person involved in production agriculture must start by holding up his or her head and saying loud and clear:
“I use pesticides and, if I didn’t, you radicals wouldn’t have the time to be running around spreading your paranoia. You’d be home scratching in your garden trying to feed your kids or holding down a second job to pay your increased grocery bill. I do a darn good job of producing cheap, abundant, and safe food on the same amount of acres this county farmed 80 years ago. I’m proud to be in agriculture and I’ve just become an activist, too!”
We can fight the fear in children with education. Children are afraid of the unknown. Farm pesticides are an unknown but household pesticides are not.
We can relate farm chemicals to things they touch and use every day in their homes. They aren’t afraid of mom’s shower cleaner, they just don’t know it’s a fungicide. They aren’t afraid of pool chlorine, they just don’t know it’s a bactericide.
How do we get pesticide education into the urban classroom? We teach teachers the truth. We refute all the lies and misinformation that, for the past 30 years, have been repeated so often they are taken as truth.
We have research and published information to prove that every major pesticide crisis was later proved to be false. Unfortunately, the proof didn’t make the headlines.
Educating teachers and students sounds great on paper but is it actually being done? It can, and we are now doing it through continuing education classes, teacher conferences, in-service workshops and structured farm fairs.
Our material covers the history of the environmental movement, manmade vs. “natural” biochemistry, organic farming, Alar, and anything else a class wants to talk about. We also cover the mind boggling cost to our society of all the laws and regulations that, more often than not, make things worse instead of better.
During 1992-93 we taught 468 teachers in class and more than 4,000 students at farm fairs. Our materials were taken back to 10,000 students and we personally visited another 20 classrooms. We scheduled 919 teachers for 1994.
Along with pesticide issues, we compare how agriculture stacks up against other industries when it comes to environmental care. No contest there, we win hands down.
Pat Tigges is administrator of the Pacific Northwest Aerial Application Education Foundation. She and her husband own an agricultural flying service in Coulee City, Washington. She holds a B.S. degree in Animal Husbandry, a M.S. degree in Animal Nutrition, has taught part-time in secondary and elementary schools and served as editor/publisher for a newspaper.
Reprint permission given by AgAirupdate, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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