Rational Agriculture

Michael Meacher, freed from his responsibilites as a government Minister, continues to make mischief and act as the willing mouthpiece of the environmentalist lobby. In today's Grauniad, in a piece entitled Indecent Exposure, he tries to scare us all about the (unsubstantiated) links between pesticides and ill-health.

According to him "Government figures just released reveal startling evidence of the continued increase in the use of pesticides, despite their known toxic damage to the environment and probably to human health. In the past decade, the area of crops sprayed with pesticides in the UK has increased by a further million hectares. The use of pesticides has increased by more than 30% in the same period, even though the area of land under cultivation has decreased."

What he ignores, of course, is fact that crude figures tell you nothing: it's the environmental impact which is important. Increasingly, farmers are turning to the principles of Integrated Crop Management and, via schemes such as LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), obtaining high yields of good quality crops while using crop protection products when needed rather than on a precautionary basis. As for "toxic damage to the environment" we know that all farming methods, including organic, have a massive impact on the farmed environment. Nitrogen run-off can have the same effect on water courses whether the nitrogen has been chemically fixed or added to the soil as animal or green manure. The deep ploughing needed to control weeds in organic systems results in greater carbon loss and increased soil erosion.

But the most egregious phrase is "toxic damage...and probably to human health". The impression is that pesticides harm health, but the "probably" has to be included because there's no evidence to support the statement. The article goes on to raise more fears of the "linked to" and "associated with" type, in the absence of hard data.

Where the article does quote figures, it gets them wrong in its eagerness to target Man-made chemicals. According to Meacher "The recent findings, which suggest that farmers who have been exposed to pesticides are 43 times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, confirm suspicions that date back years." In fact, the reference is to a recent University of Aberdeen study which found that farmers had a 43% (note to Michael, that's not the same as 43 times) greater likelihood of developing Parkinson's disease. In fact, this study just looked at self-reported exposure to pesticides, in data collated from interviews in several countries (see link to original New Scientist story). This evidence is, at best, circumstantial, and the researchers themselves say that there are other more significant risk factors. It also has to be seen in light of the fact that these same farmers, exposed to these same chemicals, have a lower incidence of cancer than the general population. A clear warning that you need to take the broader picture rather than just pick out facts which apparently support your favourite case.

The most indecent thing this article exposes is Meacher's belief in the insinuations and half-truths put out by those who believe that use of synthetic pesticides is an offence against nature.