Pesticides: une épée à double tranchant? Pesticides: a double-edged sword?

The title of this paper has been chosen to fall squarely in line with that of the Symposium “Chemical pesticides: a weapon to ban?” It allows me to look at both sides of the debate and still conclude somewhere on the continuum between the extremes. A few words about my background might be useful to let you where I am coming from for the presentation. Following initial agricultural studies in Scotland, I studied crop protection in the UK and then sold pesticides for Chipman Chemicals Ltd in Saskatchewan based in Saskatoon in 1969. I followed this with a few months of field research for a company, long since bought out, in England. Many of the activities that we carried out were done so in line with prevailing norms, which, looked back on today, seem at times quite bizarre. Some of us working in the industry wondered just how long pesticides would be used so widely. I think that this was more a case of our own self-interest rather than us taking any moral stance on the subject. Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”, having been published in 1962, was still a subject for discussion and as an employee of firms “in the business”, I was party to these discussions, often from just one side. That said I attempt in this paper to provide a balanced view of the subject from, with no apology for doing so, an economic perspective. The balance might be provided at times from the extremes, like a teeter-totter, but this is done to be a little more controversial so that we can think about both sides of the problem. I attempt to end the presentation towards a central, and hopefully still balanced, position. My objective with this paper is not so much to justify the use or elimination of chemical pesticides; rather I attempt to raise cautionary comments on these choices in light of what we know at this time. The symposium title “demanded” that I at least address the issue of use and abuse, which allows me to consider both commercial and non-commercial uses of chemical pesticides. One such non-commercial use is by the military with perhaps the best-known example being that of Agent Orange. I am being perhaps confrontational in raising the issue of Agent Orange, as this is a touchy subject due primarily to the military connection. A search on the web (www) for Agent Orange, results in many sites dedicated to those who have suffered from exposure to this chemical cocktail. However, at the time of its use during the Vietnam War, we were not that knowledgeable of its effects on human health. This is not an unusual situation where we act in the present, hopefully following the rules and guidelines acceptable at that time. However, the best intentions all too often come unglued when looked on after the fact. I am sure that in future years we will look back on our actions today and criticize these actions in light of the knowledge gained between now and that future date. Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of this was the Thalidomide tragedy during the late 1950s. Having hopefully learned from this lesson, it is once again being used under much stricter controls. When I was an agricultural student in the 1960s, some of my friends had summer jobs as field markers for aerial spraying firms. Equipped with rain gear, their job was to pace out the field and mark the spray line using themselves as the target. Thus, they were drenched with spray on every pass of the plane over the …