It's not just the pesticides, though. The whole method of treating the dirt as a tabula rasa in which to put "input" like artificial fertilizers and pesticides and expensive imported water causes a toxic environment for everyone involved. Artificial fertilizers, even though they are made of compounds which are highly valuable nturients, are themselves toxic when they are applied in the ever-larger amoutns demanded by the conventional system.
(I need to make an aside here and point out that it would be ridiculous to insist that there is no place in well-managed agriculture for any of these types of additions. But their place ought to be very small and well-thought out)
Over-applications of nutrients kill the wild plants at the periphery of the farms, which robs the soil of their roots and cover, making it more vulnerable to destructive erosion. It also kills, directly and indirectly, the matrix of soil organisms that makes soil soil and not just dust: it kills the animals living in the habitats created by the plants: and so on.
Eroded soils clog up the waterways, turning creeks into marshes and marshes into drylands. The washed-away soils include the overabundant nutrients and the pesticides I'm not talking about right now, and until the waterways dry up and disappear from the silt and from the over-irrigation I'm not talking about at the moment, they carry these polluted silts and gravels in suspension downstream where they pile up in other areas that might not have otherwise been affected. I have heard from watershed scientists that they have found DDT in waterways where it has not been used for decades, because it was buried in the soil, turned up by deep plowing, and washed into the waterways by irrigation runoff.
But, as to pesticides: methyl bromide is one of the very, very worst. There is no level at which it is safe to use. It kills every kind of organism, including large mammals. It can be carried around by air currents, in which case it tends to concentrate in certain areas, but it also can linger on produce and delivered to the consumer. It's heavily used on strawberries and other crops which are otherwise difficult to grow due to the fact that so many tough little animals find them delicious. It was supposed to be completely outlawed and retired from the scene by 2005. That is, no longer even manufactured.
However, it is still being made and used. And the only strawberries which are not treated with methyl bromide are the ones marked "organic."
Cotton is a bad offender too, but I don't know the specifics or what are the favorite pesticides to use with it.
no subject
(I need to make an aside here and point out that it would be ridiculous to insist that there is no place in well-managed agriculture for any of these types of additions. But their place ought to be very small and well-thought out)
Over-applications of nutrients kill the wild plants at the periphery of the farms, which robs the soil of their roots and cover, making it more vulnerable to destructive erosion. It also kills, directly and indirectly, the matrix of soil organisms that makes soil soil and not just dust: it kills the animals living in the habitats created by the plants: and so on.
Eroded soils clog up the waterways, turning creeks into marshes and marshes into drylands. The washed-away soils include the overabundant nutrients and the pesticides I'm not talking about right now, and until the waterways dry up and disappear from the silt and from the over-irrigation I'm not talking about at the moment, they carry these polluted silts and gravels in suspension downstream where they pile up in other areas that might not have otherwise been affected. I have heard from watershed scientists that they have found DDT in waterways where it has not been used for decades, because it was buried in the soil, turned up by deep plowing, and washed into the waterways by irrigation runoff.
But, as to pesticides: methyl bromide is one of the very, very worst. There is no level at which it is safe to use. It kills every kind of organism, including large mammals. It can be carried around by air currents, in which case it tends to concentrate in certain areas, but it also can linger on produce and delivered to the consumer. It's heavily used on strawberries and other crops which are otherwise difficult to grow due to the fact that so many tough little animals find them delicious. It was supposed to be completely outlawed and retired from the scene by 2005. That is, no longer even manufactured.
However, it is still being made and used. And the only strawberries which are not treated with methyl bromide are the ones marked "organic."
Cotton is a bad offender too, but I don't know the specifics or what are the favorite pesticides to use with it.