In what could well be a major global precedent, Switzerland will vote on a total pesticide ban. The technologically antiquated fantasyland of Big Agriculture may never be the same again.
Deutsches Welle has a somewhat lengthy but highly informative article detailing the ramifications for the pesticide industry. The global issues are truly vast and pretty well known.
(Note: I have one issue with the DW article – Organic farming doesn’t use up more land. Structured organic farming like permaculture, creating “food forests”, actually produces more organic food in smaller areas.)
The problems, however, have been very difficult and incomprehensibly stupidly managed:
- The pesticide industry has shown no interest at all in public calls for safer pesticides and all environmental issues related to pesticides. Health issues related to pesticides are routinely ignored.
- Governments worldwide have been equally ignorant, and abysmally slow to respond to public demands for better options. Political donations, particularly in the US, are major factors in this suicidal apathy.
- Growers have been largely ignored, except, of course, in Monsanto’s decades-long history of litigation and endless controversies over glyphosate.
- Pollinating insects have been in drastic decline for years almost entirely due to pesticides. The decline is threatening the entire food chain, particularly the huge monocultures dependent on pollination. This could easily be a catastrophe for the entire food industry.
The old ways of massive chemical pest control have long since been superseded by better economics and better, cheaper and far safer methods. This is Big Ag at its most dinosaur-like. Instead of simply supplying safer and cheaper to produce pest control methods, complex, expensive antiques like glyphosate are still on the market.
The market must adapt, and fast. Cheaper pest control in this case does mean better, and much safer. The big pest control manufacturers could switch to these products without even retooling. Cost of changes to production would be minimal, and actual savings on production would result.
The parallel horror story
Climate problems and water supply issues are driving a universal push to better economics in food production. (The US almost decade-long ongoing mega drought is a case in point.) These situations are getting more dangerous by the year. It’s projected that food production in traditional areas is likely to suffer severely. It may be necessary to relocate the growing areas to more temperate zones in some scenarios.
Food production adaption to change must include more economic, more efficient, pest management. There’s no option. The sector must have proper support, and more flexible options. Now is the time to change the structure of food production and focus on top quality efficiencies, not a few bucks here or there.
This vote in Switzerland is about the future of global agriculture, in so many ways.
