250 Pesticides are Poison
Why are pesticides used?
Pesticides are not healthy for the food, the farm, the farmer, the farm worker,
or the environment. So why do people use them?
Pesticides are often used
together with farm machines,
giant irrigation systems, low-
paid workers, and government
subsidies to produce crops that
Farm owners call
pesticides “medicine.”
But are they really
medicines?
can be sold cheaply. Pesticides can
kill everything that might reduce
crop yields or make the food look less
attractive, so large farm corporations
use them as part of a system to sell
more food.
No. They are
poisons that
kill weeds and
insects. They can
even kill people.
For family farmers to compete
with large corporate farms, they often
believe they too must use pesticides.
When a struggling farmer needs to
feed his family today, he may not
think about what will happen to his
own health or his family’s health tomorrow. But this way of producing crops
has high costs for people’s health and the environment.
Over time, pesticides cause great harm. After years of spraying, pests may
become resistant to chemicals (see page 273). Pesticides also kill many insects
and birds that are not pests and that actually control crop pests. When this
happens, pesticides no longer reduce crop loss from pests, crop yields go down,
and family farmers are forced into poverty. Worse, pesticides kill thousands of
people every year and make many more sick.
The companies that make pesticides say their products will help farmers
“feed the world.” But what these companies really want is to feed their profits
without considering the long-term harm they cause. Pesticides are one part
of an unjust and unhealthy system that makes a few people richer and makes
everyone else sick.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012