Recently, at a presentation given by a pesticides company to the members of a farmers' association, the audience was told how to increase profits manifold by using pesticides. Interestingly, the gathering was also told about a 'wonder 'pesticide, marketed vigorously till last year, that it has now been found to be dangerous for human health.

The audience was advised that its use should be discontinued and that new potent ones were available in the market which were comparatively less harmful to humans and the environment. Less harmful as compared to what? It was as though a person committing suicide was told not to use cyanide to end his life, instead he should use rat poison as it was comparatively less harmful. Throughout the presentation no one from the educated farmers forum questioned about the effects of these poisons being applied to our food system although they all must have been aware of the hazards of using them. The entire response was about comparative prices and the money involved.

Perhaps, economy precedes health and well-being in our system of things, or, perhaps, well-being is translated into monetary terms. Somewhere along the road of "progress" in this race for economic and material benefits we have lost sight of the primary goal of raising crops and farming: The sustenance of mankind.

During the middle of the last century, industry aided by science decided to convert the hitherto self-sustaining farming community into an economic activity interlinked and wholly dependent on it for sustenance. Consumerism was advocated and farmers were brainwashed into believing that science and the market economy had all the answers to their well-being, a glaring example being the presentation mentioned earlier.

If we look carefully into the factors influencing conventional crop production we find that there are six broad categories: soil, tillage, fertilizers, pests and their control, weeds and their eradication and most importantly seeds or plant breeding. The soil in the eyes of the "modern" agriculturist is seen as not much more than a mechanical substrate allowing the plant to anchor itself, so as not to be swept away by the wind and the rain. It is also seen as a vehicle for mineral nutrients that are soluble in water. It doesn't really matter whether it is inhabited by living beings--by earthworms, by arthropods, by fungi, algae or protozoa. And it does not really matter what all those downpour of poisons do to soil life. Since most of those creatures are more of a bother than a discernible advantage, we might as well kill them off altogether.

Similarly, weeds are plants that should not exist. They compete with our crops for water, for space and they harbour pests. Hence, we should totally eradicate them from the face of the earth. Science has come with excellent weapons against them-herbicides, potent plant killers, handy, cheap and easy to use; simply add them, sprinkle them or spray them, some will kill anything green that comes their way, others are "selective", they will kill some species leaving others to grow. Some are applied to the soil to stop the germination of weeds while others kill the grown plant.

In the modern clinical approach to farming, the fields are kept naked and devoid of all other plants except the crop. No longer can you see the wild flowers growing in the fields of wheat and barley, splashing shades of colour around the countryside, no longer can you hear the croaking of the frogs in the village ponds at night and no longer can you see the butterflies and the bees...they are all dead.

The greatest tragedy of science is that it has fragmented our vision, we have stopped seeing things in their entirety, in their correct perspectives. Therefore, when we look at agronomy as a subject, we see soil physics, soil chemistry and soil microbiology being taught separately and having no connection either with each other or with plant health. If you happen to take a sample of soil for analysis you will understand what I mean. The result will show you the nitrogen content, the phosphorus, potassium, calcium and even the micro-elements, but it will never evaluate the biochemical contents, the ammonia compounds, the aminoacids, the polypeptides, the proteins and the enzymes. In other words the Humus, the growing medium, the supporter of all soil life does not matter in these tests. It is therefore not strange when we are told that all living things other than the desired crops are useless. In this age of accelerated scientific advancement, every day we hear about a new chemical being discovered, a more potent one. Incidentally we have to rapidly change the pesticides as the "pests" develop khresistance to them and more and more is needed to kill them. Therefore science has to come up with a new poison every few years.

No doubt pests pose a danger to the crop they attack and they have always done so from centuries but today the modern farmer feels so threatened by them that he has to resort to all those poisons to kill them. Traditional farmers with their age-old wisdom knew that pests attacked plants that were not healthy, so they strove to keep their plants healthy through proper soil management, tillage, compositing, crop residues, farmyard manuring, green manuring and most importantly crop rotation. They used neem extracts, tobacco leaves, herbal remedies and turmeric solutions. With proper soil management it is possible to have a pest-free crop even though fields of the same crop might surround it infested by pests. What the modern farmer has forgotten is the age-old knowledge that healthy plants have stronger defences against the pests and that they take up from the soil or produce substances that repel the pests.

Francis Chaboussou, a French agronomist with about 25 years of research at the IRNA, France, has come up with a revolutionary theory that 90 per cent of all pests starve on healthy plants. According to him most pests lack the enzymes to break up proteins into their constituent amino acids. This is an important step when one organism feeds on another. He also showed that many of the modern pesticides inhibit photosynthesis and penetrate the plant system to circulate in its sap and have a disastrous effect on the plant metabolism and the humans that consume it. This is the reason why with increasing use of pesticides we get increasing pest attacks, a complaint voiced by a majority of pesticide users.

Another reason for the increasing pest attacks are monoculture. Fields after fields of the same crop, be it rice or wheat, are grown year after year without variation or letting the land rest that is fallow. This relentless monoculture gives pests, whether they are viral, animal or bacterial ample space to breed and spread attacking plant after plant. Weeds and pests die a natural death when faced by a different culture or crop. This is the wisdom and philosophy behind diversity of crop production. A situation like this would never happen in the traditional farms where you would find different crops growing side by side.

Till now we have talked about the effects of these poisons on the soil and plant life. Research has shown that the use of pesticides has weakened the human immune system and opened a way for a multitude of diseases. Various forms of cancers, gastro-intestinal infections, tuberculosis and other life-threatening diseases have assumed epidemic proportions. A comparison of the health of the village population during the last two decades would bear testimony to the fact that despite advancements in the fields of medicines and health care available, the general health of the people has deteriorated. No longer can you see beaming faces and sparkling eyes of the rural population; they have all been lost forever in the chemical harvest that we are reaping.

Does health and lives of the population really matter in the eyes of the multi-national corporations and the poison manufacturers? Or with their myopic visions they forget that the population also includes themselves and their families; ironically those who frequently go for organic and pesticide-free foods.

(From Dawn.com)