The Destructive Use of Pesticides in Agriculture

The Destructive Use of Pesticides in Agriculture

When I was a child, I can remember my parents taking me into the apple orchard and picking apples. I couldn't wait to eat them until I got home, so I would have one for a snack right in the middle of the field. Today, when I take my children apple picking, I cannot let the children eat an apple out of fear of what pesticides could be on the apple and the harmful affects they can cause. Instead I have to take them home and scrub them before they can even take a bite. This is the result of the harmful pesticides that have left their mark on our argriculture.

A pest is any species that competes with us for food invades our homes and gardens, destroys wood in houses, spreads disease, or is simply a nuisance in our natural ecosystem. In many polyculture agroecosytems, natural enemies such as predators parasites in disease organisms control the population between 50 and 90 percent of the pest species(Miller, 1998).

When we keep the natural ecosystem simple we upset the natural checks and balances. The natural system keeps any form of pest from taking over before too long. We have devised ways to protect our crops, tree farms, and lawns from insect and other pests that nature could have once controlled.

We have done this by primarily developing a variety of pesticides. Pesticides are chemicals created to kill organisms that we consider undesirable. Some types of pesticides include insecticides which are insect killers, herbicide which are weed killers, fungicides which are fungus killers, nematocides which are round eat worm killers, and rodenticides which are rat in mouse killers.

According to the EPA, worldwide and we used to 2.5 million tons of these pestic...

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...rating many of these things would be difficult to, but many environmentalists believe that a new revolution could take place through most of the world over the next 30 to 50 years by instituting the policies outlined. If we continue to use pesticides, we will continue to harm our population through explosure, food contamination, and insect mutation. Is up to the people to force our government to make change, before we create irreversible damage that will have detrimental effects on our world in its population.

WORKS CITED

Miller, Tyler. 1998.Sustaining the Earth. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company:

New England Weed Control Specialists. 1994. 1994 New England Guide to Weed Control in Corn and Forage Crops. University of Vermont and University of Massachusetts

Hansen, Michael. 1997. EPA Reduced Risk Comments. www.pmac.net/eparr.htm