We would be remiss to ignore the positive effects that modern crop protection has had for us. Without pesticides, crop losses would be between 50 and 80%, which in turn would lead to higher food prices, and shortages leading to queues in front of supermarkets the likes we only experience in times of crisis.
Our history of farming ought to be a cautionary tale of how it used to be, and what we don’t want to go back to. Unfortunately, environmental organisations are supporting a “back to basics” approach to agriculture, by supporting production methods such as “agro-ecology”, which reject the notion of using pesticides altogether. They do so by challenging crop protection tools, even after they passed rigorous safety testing. In the long-run, this will [reduce] the availability of their products, but by failing to guarantee the safety of the food they consume.
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We should not pretend that those consumers who buy conventional food products have moved away from the “healthy” or the “natural” – not only is that untrue, it is also an underappreciation of what modern farming has done to improve the lives of farmers and consumers alike.
