The Pesticide Conspiracy
This month's books include an investigation into the potential dangers of the pest control industry, and a Chritian's view of the causes of world hunger. Review Editor: Anuradha Vittachi
The Pesticide Conspiracy
by Robert van den Bosch
US: Doubleday & Co. Inc.
(hardback $8.95 / paperback $4.95)
UK: Prism Press
(hardback £6.95 / paperback 3.95)
Aus: Supplied by Lonely Planet Publications
(paperback $7.95)
The campaign to ban 245T and a rash of articles on 'dumping' of banned chemicals in the Third World have put pesticides in the spotlight. This book tackles some of the wider issues. Are pesticides the technical fix which can enable the hungry to eat? Are their adverse effects on workers and the environment an acceptable risk? The late Professor van den Bosch gives us some answers.
The message of this distinguished entomologist is that 'bugs' are no easy foe to be wiped out with a chemical sledgehammer. Instead they are part of a complex ecosystem and the chemical strategy can lead to a treadmill of ever greater applications of more toxic substances - a vain attempt to keep up with secondary pest outbreaks and resistant strains.
Although this book is largely focused on the US, its implications for the Third World are plain to see. With the spread of cash crop agriculture and the Green Revolution, Third World farmers, too, are getting trapped on the pesticide treadmill. In the absence of sound, independent advice and the equipment necessary for safety, many people are poisoned, often with no extra crops to show for it. While Third World people use only 20% of pesticides, they suffer half the poisonings (at least 250,000 a year).
But these numbers are dwarfed by the 1'h billion at risk from malaria - a disease on the march again due to the development of pesticide resistant mosquitoes. This resistance has 'resulted substantially from the veritable chemical cloud' created by agricultural spraying.
For all this, though, chemicals do have a place - as a part of 'integrated control', a mix of techniques pioneered by van den Bosch. Used with some success in China, integrated control can reduce costs and pesticide use and increase yields. Van den Bosch is not against pesticides per se, as one tactic in integrated control, but 'it is the chemical control strategy that has gotten us into serious trouble with the insects, and unless we abandon this strategy, things will only get worse '.
It is not just a few toxic chemicals which the West and its companies are dumping on the Third World, but an entire pest control strategy from which the insects are bound to survive even if we don't. The last sentence reads: 'And as a final bit of irony, it will be the insects that polish the bones of the very last of us to fall.'
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Voices from the margins:
Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.
- Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
- The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
- Iranian women speak out
- 3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
- Raised Voices audio:
- Benny from West Papua on Corporate Power
- Vinayan from India on agriculture
New Internationalist (NI) workers' co-operative exists to report on issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice.
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