By Pat Tigges
During the past few years I have been on several programs that also included “green advocacy kooks”. It is beyond my comprehension as to why ag includes them on programs. When I have asked, the answers range from “getting them to hear our side” to “opening a dialog”, to “being fair”.
Are we nuts? Giving them a platform, especially on a technical program, gives them creditability. It also gives them press. Newspeople always run the story on the controversy or the “different opinion”.
Green groups don’t want a dialog. They most certainly aren’t interested in “our side” and they don’t care about the truth. Those things don’t raise money, and if they don’t raise money they don’t have a job! As for being fair, no one ever said the world was fair. “Nice guys finish last!”
Untrue! Pesticides, whether made by man or Mother Nature, or genetically engineered into plants, will always be necessary. Organic gardening is chic for the affluent but not a single study shows that its methods could produce enough food for the world. If everyone in Washington planted an organic garden we still couldn’t feed the people in Seattle.
Children need to know the choices. All pesticides, including Mother Nature’s ‘organic toxins’, have small risks, but those tiny risks must be compared with the enormous risks of not using them. Those devastating risks would include using more land for food and less of wildlife, using more water for less food, more soil opened to erosion, more air pollution, and less food for export. The latter would assure plow down of the world’s remaining wildlands in developing countries as they struggle to feed increasing populations. Students should also learn that natural toxins are often more dangerous than the synthetics we use to control them.
Pat Tigges, Administrator of Eat First! A project of the Pacific Northwest Aerial Application Education Foundation. P.O. Box 415, Coulee City, WA 99115. Phone: 509-632-5256, Fax 509-632-5100. Newsletter is $25.00 per year.
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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