Benbrook summarized the crop losses--pesticide use
thread about as brief and straight forward as you can get.
When you decrease crop diversity and narrow the gene
pool, you wind up with a delicious treat for the bugs.
Anyways, what I found to be really useful about Benbrook's
post is the link at the very end to the following paper he wrote.
"World Food System Challenges and Opportunities: GMO's,
Biodiversity, and Lessons from America's Heartland"
by Charles Benbrook
http://www.pmac.net/IWFS.pdf
Benbrook asks:
"How will the University of Illinois, a great land grant university,
engage the farm community, consumers, environmentalists, and the
private sector in distinguishing between sustainable and
unsustainable paths to intensifiation?"
"And second, how will the university help the U.S. and global
food systems steer away from one by consciously choosing the
other?"
It's worth reading, or keeping this link as a bookmark for future
reference.
Steve Diver
> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 09:43:06 -0800
> To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu
> From: Charles Benbrook <benbrook@hillnet.com>
> Subject: Response to David Re Pest Losses
> David -- Pimentel et all have done a number of articles over the
> years on pesticide use, indirect costs (i.e., water pollution, bee kills and
> poor pollination), crop losses, and "cost-benefits".
>
> I have followed the "losses to weeds, apthogens, insects literature"
> for 20 years and do not think, on the whole, it supports the conclusion that
> pest losses have gotten worse, and indeed in the developed world, major crop
> losses are now rare. What is amazing though, is that losses have remained
> roughly comparable despite the several hundred fold increase in pesticide
> use, coupled with increasingly sophisticated delivery mechanisms and other
> technology. The bottom-line is clear -- the chemical component of the pest
> management "tool box" is much, much more extensive and powerful than 2
> decades ago, and is relied upon 3X or more heavily, yet its about as hard
> (and way more costly) for most farmers to manage pests. What gives?
>
> The answer is also clear and abundantly documented in the
> literature. Modern agricultural systems, from glasshouse size, to a few
> acres, to 20,000 acre fields, are specialized, very nutrient rich (lots of
> free energy for pests), genetically narrow, and are in many other respects
> "made to order" for the pathogen or pest of the day. We have managed
> agriculture as if pests do not matter but alas, Nature bats last and always
> gets another turn. We will continue to have more and more trouble managing
> pests as long as farmers rely on narrow, largely chemical based pest
> management systems. These points are made in great detail in the Illinois
> paper/talk I did in January, accessible in pdf format at
> <www.pmac.net/IWFS.pdf>.
>
> chuck
>
>
>
> Charles Benbrook 208-263-5236 (voice)
> Benbrook Consulting Services 208-263-7342 (fax)
> 5085 Upper Pack River Road benbrook@hillnet.com [e-mail]
> Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 http://www.pmac.net
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail