Rachel Was Wrong Agrochemicals’ Benefits to Human Health and the Environment By Angela Logomasini, Ph.D. N 2012 ovember Competitive enterprise institute issue Analysis 2012 no. 8 Rachel Was Wrong Agrochemicals’ Benefits to Human Health and the Environment by Angela Logomasini, Ph.D. Executive Summary among other things. Policies that allow strategic This year marks the 50th anniversary of biologist development and application of such tools will continue Rachel Carson’s 1962 book,Silent Spring, which to facilitate the Green Revolution and increase argued that man-made chemicals represented a grave agriculture’s ability to feed the world’s growing threat to human health and the environment. Using population. In addition, high-yield agriculture reduces harsh and unscientific rhetoric—which was the amount of land necessary to meet those needs, rebuked in the journal Sciencemagazine shortly after thereby providingmore land for conservation and its publication—Carson postulated that man-made biodiversity. The adverseimpacts of pesticides on chemicals affect processes of the human body in human health and the environment are often greatly “sinister and often deadly ways.” exaggerated and history shows that these risks can be managed to ensure substantial net benefits. History has proven Carson’s claims wrong. Contrary to her admonitions, a chemically caused cancer Unfortunately, these benefits are at risk as Carson’s epidemic never came to pass. Researchers who legacy of misinformation lives on within the politically identified environmental factors did not simply target organized environmental movement. Green activists trace chemical exposures as significant, but instead oppose strategic pesticide spraying to control deadly focused on major cancer causes such as tobacco and diseases like the West Nile virus and advocate “organic poor diets. In fact, people are living longer and healthier farming”using “natural chemicals,” even though there lives, cancer rates have declined even as chemical use is little evidence that organic farming makes food any has increased, and chemicals are not among the key healthier.As a result, regulatory trends around the causes of cancer. world have supplanted wise management with heavy regulations and product bans. The cost and risks As the world reexamines Carson’s anti-pesticide legacy, associated with bureaucratic regulations alone dampens this paper focuses on the importance of chemicals the market for innovative new products, diminishes designed for crop production. These agrochemicals the supply of pest control options for farmers, and represent a subset of the many technologies and reduces their efficiency. The result is lower food practices designed to promote high-yield farming— production, higher food prices, and fewer making it possible for farmers to increase food environmental benefits. production per acre. Other technologies include biotechnology, better soil and water management, * This paper was originally produced for the biannual meeting of the International Center for Research on Environmental Issues (ICREI), Provence France, June 2012. Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong 1 2 Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong Introduction In her chapter, “Elixirs of Death,” In 1996, the Competitive Enterprise Carson postulates that man-made Institute’s Jonathan Tolman authored chemicals affect processes of the an article entitled “Rachel Was Wrong,”1 human body in “sinister and often in which he explained why biologist deadly ways.”6Regarding the pesticide Carson’s crusade Rachel Carson mistakenly condemned DDT, which was then used to control called for bans chemicals—and pesticides in particular. malaria-carrying mosquitoes, she This year marks the 50th anniversary concluded that, “the threat of chronic and regulations on of her 1962 book, Silent Spring,2 poisoning and degenerative changes of more than DDT. which history shows is, in fact, the liver and organs is very real.” In still wrong. her book’s chapter on cancer, “One in Every Four,” she cites one expert who Carson’s supporters claim that the “now gives DDT the definite rating of biologist made a reasonable call for a chemical carcinogen.”7 prudent pesticide use. She noted in her book: “All this is not to say that Carson’s crusade called for bans and there is no insect problem and no need regulations on more than DDT. She of control. I am saying, rather, that declared, “The most determined effort control must be geared to realities, not should be made to eliminate those mythical situations, and that the methods carcinogens that now contaminate our employed must be such that they do food, our water supplies, and our not destroy us along with insects.”3 atmosphere, because these provide the most dangerous type of contact— Yet her book’s harsh and unscientific minute exposures, repeated over and rhetoric about chemicals in general— over throughout the years.”8Carson which was rebuked in the journal closed her chapter, “One in Every Four,” Sciencemagazine4 shortly after its by claiming that, “the most eminent publication—took policy in the men in cancer research” believe that opposite direction. And while Carson “malignant diseases can be reduced called for policy based on reason over significantly by determined efforts to myths, she opened her book up with a identify the environmental causes “Fable for Tomorrow,” describing a and to eliminate them or reduce their town in which chemicals have destroyed impact.”9Bans on modern chemicals wildlife and people die from chemical must be implemented because “for exposures. She admitted it doesn’t those not yet touched by the disease exist, but somehow we are supposed [cancer] and certainly for the act on her myth because, “It might generations yet unborn, prevention is easily have a thousand counterparts the imperative need.”10 in America.”5 Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong 3 But contrary to her admonitions, a food any healthier.18 It is also true that, chemically caused cancer epidemic despite green contentions, organic never came to pass. Researchers who farming is not necessarily better for identified environmental factors did not the environment, which is the subject Carson’s simply target trace chemical exposures of this paper. as significant, but instead focused on anti-DDT rhetoric As the world reexamines Carson’s major cancer causes such as tobacco anti-pesticide legacy, this paper contributed to and poor diets.11 In fact, people are focuses on the importance of chemicals living longer and healthier lives,12 malaria outbreaks designed for crop production. These cancer rates have declined even as agrochemicals represent a subset of by encouraging chemical use has increased,13and the many technologies and practices chemicals are not among the key many governments designed to promote high-yield causes of cancer.14 farming—making it possible for around the world Carson was particularly wrong about farmers to increase food production to stop using it DDT. For decades before it was peracre. Other technologies include banned, humans were exposed to biotechnology, better soil and water completely. massive amounts of DDT without management, among other things. showing ill effect. Many scholars have Policies that allow strategic development well documented how Carson’s anti- and application of such tools will DDT rhetoric contributed to malaria continue to facilitate the Green outbreaks by encouraging many Revolution and increase agriculture’s governments around the world to ability to feed the world’s growing stop using it completely.15Limited and population. targeted uses of DDT could have saved millions of lives. Unfortunately, Benefits of Pesticides malaria now kills more than 1 million Agrochemicals, along with other people and makes hundreds of millions important technologies such as biotech- seriously ill annually, mostly children nology,help produce a growing food in the developing world.16 supply to feed the world’s expanding Today, Carson’s legacy of misinforma- population. A 2007 report by Jerry tion lives on within the politically Cooper and Hans Dobson of the organized environmental movement. University of Greenwich highlights Green activists oppose pesticide many of the benefits documented in spraying to control deadly diseases the literature over the past several like the West Nile virus, and advocate decades.19The authors explain that “organic farming”17using “natural their overview is designed to provide chemicals,” even though there is little a counterbalance to overly negative evidence that organic farming makes news coverage related to pesticides. 4 Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong For example, the authors’ survey of yields have grown by more than the news discovered that negative pes- 230 percent per acre between 1920 ticide stories outnumber positive arti- and 1980.26 cles at a rate of 40 to one.20 Cooper and Dobbs acknowledge As more food is The Cooper-Dobson review notes other factors that work in concert with that pesticide benefits fall within three agrochemicals to increase yield, produced per categories: social, economic, and including improvements in water and acre of land, less environmental. This paper focuses soil management. Dr. Erich-Christian on public health (a subset of social Oerke of the University of Bonn takes land is needed benefits) and environmental benefits. a similar view, noting how crop for agriculture, It does not focus on economic benefits protection products are among one of directly, but those are also critically a number of important technologies thereby increasing important to human health. Data and practices that have contributed to land available demonstrates that wealthier populations greater crop productivity. He explains: are healthier.21 But these indirect for conservation. Despite a clear increase in pesticide benefits fall outside the scope of this use, crop losses have not signifi- conversation. cantly decreased during the last Cooper and Dobbs document a host of 40 years. However, pesticide use benefits resulting from the increased has enabled farmers to modify agricultural productivity associated production systems and to with agrochemicals. The ability of increase crop productivity without these products to control pests results sustaining the higher losses likely in “greater availability of food, at a to occur from an increased reasonable price, all year round.”22 susceptibility to the damaging It also means that as more food is effect of pests…Because of global produced per acre of land, less land is population growth in a world of needed for agriculture, thereby limits, sustainable crop production increasing land available for at elevated levels is urgently conservation. needed. The active control of crops and their genetics, of soil Consider some examples. The authors fertility via chemical fertilization note that India has increased its grain and irrigation, and of pests via production four times over since 1951,23 synthetic pesticides are hallmarks and “now not only feeds itself but of the Green Revolution. The exports produce.”24 Farmers in the combined effect of these factors United Kingdom have increased the has allowed world food production yield of wheat crops by 200 percent to double in the past 40 years. between 1948 and 1997.25 U.S. corn Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong 5 Diverse ecosystems have been viable and farmers would have to replaced in many regions by sim- use their land for other purposes.”30 ple agro-ecosystems vulnerable to Similarly, Russian farmers increased pest attack. In order to safeguard apple orchard yields by one and a half Thanks to modern the high level of productivity to two times and increased marketable necessary to meet the human produce by 80 to 90 percent after farming with demand, these crops require beginning pesticide applications.31 In chemicals, protection from pests. The yield Zimbabwe, the use of fungicides of cultivated plants is threatened makes growing tomatoes possible food production by competition and destruction during the rainy season. Without these has outpaced from pests, especially when grown technologies, farmers there would in large-scale monocultures or likely suffer “total crop failure” during population with heavy fertilizer applications.27 that time of year.32 growth—providing Herbicides have also yielded a number While it is difficult to separate out the people in both of clear benefits important to agricul- benefits of crop protection products tural productivity. Cooper and Dobson developed and from those of other technologies such note the importance of herbicides, as plant breeding biotechnology, the developing which “represent around 50 percent of evidence, explains Washington State all crop protection chemicals used countries with University professor Allan S. Felsot in throughout the world, compared with a 2011 paper he authored for the more food insecticides and fungicides that are American Council on Science and around 17 percent.”34 Herbicides have per capita. Health, “shows that both types of some direct benefits to farm workers technologies have had major becausethey replace arduous contributions.”28For example, he mechanical harvesting of weeds. notes that the productivity of potatoes Mechanical weed removal also raises exploded after 1950 thanks to the the costs of farmingand thereby introduction of fumigants to reduce increases food prices. Also,it is often the impacts of nematodes. Yields grew less effective in controlling these from 153 100-lb. bags (cwt) per acre pests, thereby reducing yield. in the 1950s to 752 cwt per acre—a nearly 400 percent increase.29 Health Benefits Cooper and Dobson maintain that Thanks to modern farming with chem- the application of “pesticides has icals, food production has outpaced undoubtedly played a very significant population growth—providing people role.” According to one study they in both developed and developing reviewed, “without pesticides, apple countries with more food per capita production would not be commercially and helping in the battle against star- 6 Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong vation and malnutrition. Per capita Dobson note that “cereal diseases” grain supplies have grown by 27 can result when farmers do not use percent since 1950, and food prices fungicides, which can create toxins have declined in real terms by 57 that make humans sick and can even percent since 1980.34At the turn of the prove “lethal” in extreme cases. Agrochemicals 20th century, before the use of modern Interestingly, agrochemicals are not are also used agricultural practices, Americans spent only applied to the land, they are also 20 percent of their income on food. to defend farm used to defend farm animals from Today the average American family disease. For example, applications of animals from spends less than 9 percent of its pesticides to livestock in Burkina Faso, disposable income on food.35 disease. in Africa, helps prevent transmission In addition to combating hunger and of trypanosomiasis—a potentially fatal starvation, more affordable fruits and disease transmitted to animals and vegetables is the best defense against humans from tsetse flies. These appli- many illnesses, including cancer. The cations reduced livestock mortality by quarter of the U.S. population consum- 63 percent, increased offspring survival ingthe least amount of fruits and by more than 50 percent, and increased vegetables has a cancer rate twice as milk yield. As a result, herd sizes grew high as the quarter of the population by 25 percent, making it possible for consuming the most fruits and vegeta- more households to own oxen, which bles.36Accordingly, the World Health were also each more productive.38 Organization advocates increased Pesticides also reduce risks related to intake of fruits and vegetables, to a host of vector-borne diseases by reduce the cancer incidence rate by 30 controlling populations of mosquitoes, percent across the board.37 By making ticks, cockroaches, rodents and fruits and vegetables more affordable, other pests.39 high-yield agriculture facilitates greater consumption of these cancer- fighting foods. Environmental Conservation Benefits Less obvious health benefits associated While many environmental advocacy with pesticides include their ability to groups suggest that chemicals have restrain the natural development of tremendously adverse impacts on the toxic substances in food products. When environment and wildlife, the fact is plants are exposed to pests without the that these products have substantial use of pesticides, they will develop environmental benefits. We consider a their own defense mechanisms that few here, such as the impacts on habi- include highly toxic naturally occurring tats and water quality. chemicals. For example, Cooper and Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong 7 Researcher Roger Sedjo of Resources experience the highest rates of for the Future notes: “Almost certainly deforestation. the primary cause of contemporary Brazil, which along with Indonesia biodiversity decline is habitat destruc- had the highest net loss of forests High-yield tion and the degradation that results in the 1990s, has significantly from the expansion of human popula- reduced its rate of loss. Recent farming helps tions and activities.”40Clearing land data suggest that Indonesia’s rate reduce for agriculture is surely one of those of deforestation is also slowing.41 human activities, as is clearing land encroachment for living space. Such reforestation would not be into wildlife possible without high-yield agriculture Many people assume that any and the chemicals that are part of habitat. deforestation is bad. They forget that that process. deforestation has made it possible for developed nations to provide an From a conservationist perspective, abundant food supply for domestic and the problem is not deforestation and international markets. As populations habitat destruction, per se, but mis- grow and people switch from gathering management of resources. This is true food to farming, some deforestation for both the developed and developing becomes necessary. History shows world. A large part of the problem stems that once enough agricultural land is from the tragedy of the commons—the set aside and farming practices become fact that much of the world’s forests are sustainable, forests stabilize. owned by central governmentsthat do not exercise any management or Steven Hayward of the Ashbrook control over the lands. As a result, much Center at Ashland University documents of the forests are an open resource such trends in his Environmental lacking a steward, which leads to Almanac 2011, showing how deforesta- serious abuse as everyone takes from tionhas declined in recent years in the forest, yet no one has an interest in many parts of the world and in some maintaining the resource. In addition cases reforestation has begun. He notes: poverty contributes as clearing more Although data on the global scale and more land for agriculture becomes are inconsistent and incomplete, necessary to produce food. the rate of deforestation appears There is much debate as to the extent to be steadily declining. Between of rainforest deforestation. It is clear 1995 and 2005, Asia dramatically that high-yield farming helps reduce reversed its deforestation trends; encroachment into wildlife habitat, it is now reforesting rapidly. and the measured impact is substantial. Africa and South America still 8 Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong If farmers continued to use 1950s tilling the soil to control weeds, a technology—when most of the world practice that led to sediment runoff did not use pesticides and fertilizers— into nearby waters. Such sediment they would have to plant 10 million blocked sunlight out of streams and square miles of additional land to waterways, killed vegetation and If farmers generate the food that is produced harmed wildlife. “Many environmental continued to use today, notes researcher Dennis Avery scientists agree” Felsot explains, “that of the Hudson Institute.42That is more eutrophication and sedimentation of 1950s technology, land than all of North America (about aquatic resources due to runoff and they would have 9.4 million square miles) and almost as erosion from agricultural land is the much as all the land in Africa (about most important cause of water quality to plant 10 million 11.7 million square miles). Researcher impairment, not to mention being square miles of Indur Goklany has also quantified responsible for transportation problems these conservation gains. He explains: as rivers backfill with sediment.”44 additional land If U.S. agricultural technology The answer to this problem came from to generate the had been frozen at 1910 levels— no-till and conservation tillage (reduced food that is i.e. if cropland per capita had tilling) for farming, a practice made stayed at 1910 levels—then to possible by chemical herbicides. Using produced today. produce the same output as herbicides to control weeds decreases achieved in 2004, U.S. farmers the need for tilling soil, which, in turn, would have had to utilize 1,007 reduces soil erosion by 50 to 98 percent, million acres rather than the 305 notes Avery.45 Felsot notes that soil million acres that were actually erosion resulting from tilling in Illinois, harvested that year. That’s more Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska amounted than four times the total amount to 14.9 tons/acre/year, whereas of land and habitat under special no-till farms there released only protection in the U.S. in 1999— 0.8 tons/acre/year.46 including National Parks, National One of the key herbicides used that Wildlife Refuges, and National make no-till farming possible is Wilderness Areas. Quite possibly, atrazine. A target of environmentalists the increase in land productivity who say it pollutes waterways, averted a potential catastrophe atrazine is one of the most studied for U.S. wildlife and perhaps even chemicals in the world and is widely biodiversity more generally.43 recognized as posing negligible health and environmental impacts.47 The use of chemical herbicides produces another set of environmental benefits. At a November 2011webcast confer- Before the 1960s, farmers relied on ence, a number of U.S. researchers Logomasini: Rachel Was Wrong 9