by F.R. Duplantier
As usual, the mass media have gotten the story completely backwards. Far from threatening our health, the pesticides that control bugs, rodents, and plant disease have proven to be a boon to mankind.
"Pesticides are not scary; they're wonderful. They rank equal to pharmaceuticals in saving and extending life. They save the environment, they save wildlife, they give the American housewife a roach- and rat-free home," contends Pat Tigges of the Pacific Northwest Aerial Application Education Foundation. Tigges says she is "sick and tired of agriculture being on the defensive. We don't have to defend; we should be on the offensive," she insists. "Crop production technology has made our quality of life the envy of the world."
Radical environmentalists are winning the propaganda war, however, primarily because they've been the only ones waging battle. "The focused concerns of a few will take precedence over the unfocused concerns of the majority," Tigges warns, unless farmers -- and the American consumers whose larders they fill with inexpensive, unspoiled food -- fight back. Of particular concern, she says, is "new EPA-recommended legislation that would phase out consideration of benefits when establishing food-use pesticide tolerances." The net effect would be to raise the cost of the food we eat, while lowering its quality.
"The 'pesticide scare' is not about pesticides," Tigges insists; "it's about fear and control." She charges that radical environmentalists "use pesticide misinformation to create fear, from which they create a crisis, and a crisis generates funds. These funds are not spent saving anything. They are spent furthering a political and social agenda. The pseudo-environmentalist leaders don't want to solve problems. They love problems. Problems give them more press, create more fear, and gain them credibility and money."
Fear mongers capitalize on the agricultural ignorance of the average American, but that ignorance can be overcome. "We can fight fear in children with education," says Tigges. "Children are afraid of the unknown. Farm pesticides are an unknown," she observes, "but household pesticides are not." Tigges fights fear in children by showing them that farm chemicals are similar to "things they touch and use every day in their homes. They aren't afraid of mom's shower cleaner; they just don't know it's a fungicide. They aren't afraid of pool chlorine; they just don't know it's a bactericide."
It's not just children who are afraid, but their teachers too. That's where Pat Tigges and the Pacific Northwest Aerial Application Education Foundation come in. "We teach teachers the truth," she explains. "We refute all the lies and misinformation that, for the past 30 years, have been repeated so often they are taken as truth." The foundation offers "continuing education classes, teacher conferences, in-service workshops, and structured farm fairs." Tigges and her colleagues come prepared to discuss "the history of the environmental movement, man-made vs. 'natural' biochemistry, organic farming, Alar, and anything else a class wants to talk about." They know that minds, like farmland, need to be cultivated.
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