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The War on Bugs

By Will Allen

Summarized with permission of Chelsea Green.
All rights reserved.

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Prior to the twentieth century, conservationism was much more the national ethic than consumerism. However, after their experience selling the war, advertising agencies realized that they could change the impression of the consuming public on almost any issue or product. At the same time, large-scale farmers had become dependent on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers to manage their large farms, reduce labor costs, and avoid labor strife. The combination of these two realities resulted in the following consequences to agricultural marketing beginning in the post-World War I period:

Large-scale farmers who used the "most advanced" farm products were increasingly paraded before the farmers and the general public as the ideal.
Mega-farmers became the beacons of progress to the rural and national media.
Farm ads emphasized the importance of being modern, and advocated replacing horses, antiquated equipment, and outmoded practices with modern tools and techniques.
Most corporations exploited the parallels between the themes of war and the farmer's struggle with nature.

From the mid-1920s until about 2000, the war with nature was the most important sales theme in the world of agricultural marketing. The toxicity of artificial fertilizers and pesticides has been known to the chemical companies and to those agencies attempting unsuccessfully to regulate them since the 1920s; however, these companies and the ad agencies have consistently defended these terrible toxins and alleged them to be safe, if used correctly. Now, in the new millennium, the chemical merchants are making an effort to portray their products as environmentally friendly and safe, and to portray themselves as good stewards of the earth. In spite of the fact that these corporations have fought for decades against public demands for pesticide regulation, cleanup of toxic spills, and environmental protections, some of the biggest chemical corporations have now funded propaganda campaigns touting their efforts to clean up the environment.

In the face of this powerful wall of denial and resistance to safe substances and practices, the following steps can ensure that the public can assert its will to be protected by effective regulation of pesticides, fertilizers, and GMOs.

An important national publication or farm magazine, such as Farm Journal, Atlantic Monthly, or Newsweek needs to make a bold move against chemical ads.
Chemical corporations should be prosecuted for their reckless criminal behavior, which includes:

Falsifying tests
Obstructing or employing the regulators
With their congressional allies, watering down the laws that we had passed to protect ourselves from their poisonous products

Where do we go From Here?

We are now at a crossroads similar to the ones farmers faced at the beginning of the last two centuries. Farmers and consumers must decide what kind of future environment they want and what kind of food they want. The choice is between more ecological and biological systems, which are still used by most of the farmers in the world, versus the large-scale industrialized agriculture that pays off in the short term for corporate farmers and the Wall Street investor class but is unfriendly and often dangerous to the lives and livelihoods of real farmers and consumers. We must reinvest in the farms and we must do it now. U.S. consumers, who pay taxes for all the farm programs, must demand a shift in agricultural policy.

It is hoped that this book will inspire consumers, researchers, investigative journalists, lawyers, and whistleblowers in corporations and government to voice their own interests and help win those victories. Perhaps then safe food will be available to us—wherever we live, whatever our incomes—and poisonous products will stop showing up as unwanted guests at our dining room tables.

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The War on Bugs

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