Part three
by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards
Good Health Promotes Abundance
Because of the poor conditions of workers, India produced less than 25 million tons of wheat per year in the 1940’s. Twenty years later, after DDT had been widely used for public health purposes there, the people were living much longer and doing much more work. Their wheat productions quadrupled to more than 100 million tons annually. Other crops showed equally impressive increases. Meanwhile, the number of cases of malaria had dropped from 100,000,000 per year in the 1940’s, with about 2,500,000 deaths annually, to only 300,000 cases a year and only about 1,500 deaths.
Obviously, a population that is able to work hard and produce abundant food can reduce levels of malnutrition and starvation, and live more satisfying lives with increased resistance to contagious diseases.
“But why use any pesticides at all?”, ask the environmentalist from their plush offices. After all, they say, there are surely alternative measures that can effectively control most pests. Well, while it is true that many kinds of scales and aphids have been controlled by biological control agents or integrated pest management, a successful program of that sort requires great numbers of trained entomologist, modern rearing facilities for the parasites, and a great many other essentials that no underdeveloped nation could possibly afford. Also, such programs have yet to be truly effective in the control of most other kinds of pests.
We need not look very hard to find refutation for such irresponsible suggestions as those by the organic farming groups. China has used those alternative measures for many centuries, starving most of the time, and 80% of their people still work all day in the fields to eke out a bare subsistence. Similar conditions prevail in many third world nations, except where chemical tools from industrialized nations have been introduced. The miracle of modern agriculture can be appreciated only by comparing it with alternative programs! Thanks to that sort of agriculture, each modern farmer in the United States now provides enough food for himself and 70 other persons (including 20 persons overseas). That would not be possible without the use of essential agricultural chemicals, yet some Americans continue their campaign to ban the use of pesticides in the United States and to prevent their export to starving third world countries.
The Audubon Society and Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit in 1977 seeking to force the Export-Import Bank to file environmental impact statements for all overseas projects it finances. This was intended to halt the purchase of life-saving pesticides for use in those under-developed countries. More funds were involved than one might expect, since from 1974 through 1976 over $20 billion of financial assistance was provided to those countries by the Ex-Im Bank, of which more than $3 billion was for pesticides. The suit was opposed by the Mid-America Legal Foundation. After four years, a federal court ruled against the pseudo-environmentalist. As the president of the Foundation phrased it, “The federal court order means that American exports will not be curtailed and our nation will not be practicing environmental imperialism.”
In 1978, a White House Executive Order was drafted by President Carter’s assistant for consumer affairs. The Order proposed a ban on “hazardous substances” which would otherwise be shipped overseas. Despite opposition by the Department of State, Treasury, Commerce and Defence, activist in the EPA and CEQ (Council for Environmental Quality) persisted in their efforts to require all federal agencies to prepare environmental impact assessments on their international activities. When President Reagan took office he set aside the order which Carter had put into effect during his final days in the White House. The clamor was immediately deafening, with activists claiming that President Reagan was releasing tons of deadly insecticides which would poison members of the third world countries. As a matter of fact, President Carter’s Order merely included pesticides among other “hazardous substances” specified as “chemicals, non-nuclear hazardous wastes, food (including meat and poultry), food additives, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices and electronics products.” Ironically, exempted from the order were “alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, nuclear fuels and firearms.”
When one considers all the commotion caused by American “envir- onmentalist” and notices that many of their positions are very destructive to the environment itself, rather than preserving it, one wonders just what is their motivation. Why would they fight against the use of insecticides that could prevent the destruction of millions of acres of forest by gypsy moths? Why oppose the export of insecticides to countries that need them to grow their essential crops? Why oppose the importation of food grown in those countries because it might have traces of insecticides? Do they really think the birds they enjoy counting may decline as a result? Are they really afraid to eat food with traces of the insecticides that were once so available, but harmless, on food produced in the United States?
Dr. Edwards, a Counselor of the National Council for Environmental Balance, is a professor of entomology at San Jose State University, San Jose, CA. A ranger, naturalist-botanist, he has written for many publications on bio-logy, ecology, entomology, mountain climbing, ornithology and zoology.
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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