The "other" side

[Martha V. Lutz & Charles T. Lutz]

Hello all . . . I really should be working, but this seemed like a
reasonable opportunity to put my $0.02 worth in on a hot topic.

Gary Anweiler wrote:

"Well, pleased to meet you Paul.  While yours may not be the most popular of
positions, I for one am glad to hear from someone on the "other" side as
well."


I guess I just don't understand why it is called the "other" side.  The
unstated premise seems to be that anyone involved in pest control is
anti-environment.  This is not said in accusation . . . merely trying to
probe the underlying terrain.

My own thoughts on this are that anyone living in a house, driving a car,
biking on a concrete path, etc., could also be considered anti-environment,
since the natural equilibrium of the environment had to be disturbed to
build houses, roads, paths, etc.

The notion that we can and should share the earth with other organisms (not
being 'speciesist,' I want to include plants and many other life forms,
though I draw the line at sharing my body with pathogenic organisms--I kill
them if they infect!) is excellent.  I hope no one objects to that as a
goal.  However, the notion that we can live in 'harmony' with nature, not
disturbing it at all, is like saying that my son's pet snake should live in
harmony with rodents, or my daughter's pet tarantula should live in harmony
with crickets.  Organisms do and must exploit other organisms in order to
survive.  This involves disturbing the environment.


Humans long ago disturbed the natural equilibrium when they invented
agriculture.  Monoculture, in particular, is an unnatural 'ecological'
construct.  I have no data on whether we could feed the human population
without monoculture (can anyone help me on that?) but suspect that we would
end up letting huge numbers of people starve if we abandoned monoculture
and agriculture.


The point is this:  in order to maintain the unnatural 'ecology' of
agricultural systems, we need to keep insects (and various other living
things) at bay.  We deliberately design a literal insect utopia when we
plant a field of wheat or corn . . . or leave an open box of oatmeal in the
kitchen.

How can we keep insects at bay?  Sure, we ought to share with our fellow
travelers on planet Earth, but at what point do we draw the line and tell
the Hessian fly that it can't have any more wheat--that we need it to feed
our children?


And how do we tell stalk borers and soybean loopers and brown planthoppers
to leave some for us?

Realistically, unless there is pest control, we probably cannot produce
enough food to keep the current human population alive.  Even drastic
methods of population control will take generations to bring the human
population back to the point where we can feed everyone without resorting
to pest control.


Do I like using poisons in the environment?  No.  But I also don't like the
idea of letting huge numbers of people starve, and since I don't have a
time machine I can't go back to the hunter-gatherer societies and tell them
not to invent agricuture, not to increase populations, not to invent
medicine, not to prolong human life and decrease infant mortality.


So, as in the little poem/prayer someone sent to me (Thanks, Anne!) we may
have to learn to change the things we can while accepting the things we
cannot change.


Short of major catastrophe, which I hope no one wants to see, we are going
to have to accept the challenge of feeding the people of the world, even if
it means compromise with the ideal of living in harmony with nature.  If we
can feed the world's people while minimizing negative impact to the
environment, so much the better.  That's a noble goal if ever there was
one!  But we can't make the problem go away by maligning those among us
whose profession is to find a way to reach that goal . . . and that
includes work with pesticides, GMOs, cultural control methods, and plant
breeding.

No one has yet written the definitive book on how to produce enough food to
prevent starvation, while at the same time minimizing environmental
disturbance.  And we not only need to feed all these people, we need to
shelter and clothe them.  An awesome challenge.


My humble suggestion, on which I hope others will enlarge, is that we pool
our knowledge and wisdom, not fight one another.  If we operate with the
unstated first premise that people in the pesticide industry are
automatically anti-environment, we are wasting precious energy and time and
creative intelligence squabbling with each other instead of combining our
abilities to meet this phenomenal challenge of finding a way to support
human life on Earth with minimum damage to our planet and maximum
preservation of the wonders we inherited from the Past.


Sorry to be so prolix; thanks for your kind patience.  I'll be quiet now
and go back to lurking while I try to get my kids ready for school (they
start in less than 3 weeks and we still need supplies, schedules, etc.).


In Stride,
Martha Rosett Lutz


P.S.  No time to proof-read (sorry!) so I hope there are not too many copy
errors.