There are warning labels on everything these days. For example: “Do not eat iPod shuffle” is a warning posted on the Apple website.
“This product moves when used” was a label posted on a Razor scooter.

A label on a chain saw warned, “Do not hold the wrong end of a chain saw.”

A Yellow Pages telephone directory carried the helpful warning, “Caution: Please do not use this directory while operating a moving vehicle.”

Yet, in my research on warning labels, I did not come across a television or newspaper with the warning, “Contents of this publication or broadcast may contain lies, deliberate misrepresentations, and personal opinions disguised as facts.” This is a label that would truly be helpful as we try to make intelligent decisions about how to live our lives and make sense of the world around us.

Alex Avery has just released a report on the history of pesticide activism. Titled 50 Years of Panic and Propaganda, the report documents the deliberate and calculated distortion of the facts by scientists, politicians and journalists. He shows how this has impacted our world today, and how it may shape our world of the future.

“For the past half century, society has been repeatedly misled by activist-orchestrated campaigns on the supposed environmental impact of chemicals in general and pesticides in particular,” said Avery, who is director of research and education with the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute.

He documented in detail three major events that prove - when it comes to reports on agricultural chemicals - scientists, the EPA and the media cannot be trusted. He began with the campaign to ban DDT in the 1960s.

Avery said the stated reason for the ban on DDT by the politically appointed head of the EPA was that it was a probable human carcinogen. “Yet 30-plus years of subsequent research has failed to find any compelling evidence that DDT or its breakdown products, DDD and DDE, caused significant cancer or other health problems in humans. A 1997 study by researchers at Harvard Medical School found no link between DDT exposures and cancers of any type.”
But this is more than just a case of Rachael Carson getting the science wrong. Avery documented a recently discovered letter by Carson that clearly states her personal bias against DDT. “Even more astonishing is the history of the activist orchestrated campaign against DDT and how the media and science publications – who should have inclined toward data and facts – aided in the political assassination of DDT.”

This collusion between activists, scientists, regulators and the media was at the core of another incident that Avery chronicled. Alar was a plant growth regulator long used to manage fruit ripening in orchards. In 1986, the Natural Resources Defense Council had asked the EPA to label Alar an “imminent hazard,” allowing an immediate ban. The EPA denied the request and proceeded with testing of Alar.

On Feb. 26 of 1989, CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes aired a segment called ‘A’ Is for Apple that began, “The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees longer and make them look better. That’s the conclusion of a number of scientific experts, and who is most at risk? Children who may someday develop cancer.”

Avery pointed out that, “What almost no one knew at the time was that the NRDC and CBS-TV had negotiated an exclusive deal for the scare segments based on an NRDC report titled Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children’s Food. And NRDC hired a public relations firm, Fenton Communications, to capitalize on and monetize the CBS deal.

In an interview David Fenton said, “The campaign was designed so that revenue would flow back to NRDC from the public. The group sold a book about pesticides through a 900 number on the Donahue Show and to date 90,000 have been sold.” What was also not reported was that the claims were based on exposure levels that were roughly the equivalent of a child drinking more than 4,000 gallons of apple juice every day for life.

Yet, despite this sordid history, the deliberate misrepresenting of the facts and misreporting of the news continues. Today Atrazine is the issue. Many of the same agencies, organizations and media outlets that participated in the DDT and Alar hoaxes are again attempting to remove a perfectly safe product from the market.
Avery concluded his report with a dire prediction, “After studying these controversies and their underlying science for more than 15 years, I’ve come to believe that pesticide paranoia is a deep social disease that is not easily overcome with facts and reason. It’s the same disease that has turned so many otherwise rational consumers against ag biotechnology, nuclear energy and other useful – perhaps critical – technologies.

Given the never-ending and often baseless agitating by anti-pesticide and anti-technology activist groups – and the never ending media coverage of their discredited claims – this social disease is likely to plague humanity for the foreseeable future.”
What makes Avery’s prediction so ominous is that, at a time when we need to be producing more food, the tools of productivity are being taken away. The current rate of agricultural productivity growth is lagging the world’s expanding demands, according to a new report. The Global Harvest Initiative’s 2010 GAP Report™, developed with the Farm Foundation, NFP and USDA’s Economics Research Service (ERS) for the first time quantifies the difference between the current rate of global agricultural productivity growth and the pace required to meet future needs.

Doubling agricultural output to meet global demand by 2050 will require an annual average growth of at least 1.75 percent in total factor productivity (TFP), said Neil Conklin, president of the Farm Foundation, NFP, and author of the report. Between 2000-07, ERS estimated global agricultural TFP growth averaged 1.4 percent per year.

In short, if we let toxic journalism continue to reduce our farm productivity, we will not be able to meet our food needs in a fairly short period of time.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.