When I was a kid growing up on the near westside of Cleveland, OH, I loved to play touch football with my friends. But the one thing I hated about these games was the dreaded “dog pile” exercise. This usually occurred when I happened to accidentally slip or fall down while running a play. Someone would call out “dog pile on Eric,” and all the other players would try to crush me.
In today’s world, it seems to me that the industry has slipped and someone has called out “dog pile on agriculture.” There’s no other way to explain the shear number of challenges facing the marketplace right now — many to tried and true industry practices and products.
This all seemed to start a few years back, when multiple challenges from certain environmental groups to the use of atrazine began cropping up. Although this active ingredient has been used safely for more than 50 years by growers to control weeds and been upheld as such by 10 administrations and an EPA 12-year review completed in 2006, opposition has risen to the point where the agency is conducting a re-review of atrazine’s safety.
This has forced product manufacturers to spend millions of dollars conducting its own studies to refute atrazine safety claims.
According to EPA estimates, the elimination of atrazine for ag use would cost the market approximately $2 billion annually in lost crop yields, coupled with the substitution of more expensive crop production alternatives. Many growers, unable to cope with these increased costs, would likely give up farming altogether.
Another recent report targets the entire crop production business. In an analysis in the journal Pediatrics, a study of 1,139 children from 2000 to 2004 hinted at a link between exposure to pesticides and the chances of developing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While the study couldn’t prove that pesticides were to blame, experts quoted in the story called the research “persuasive.”
More worrisome were a few of the comments I read posted on-line along with this article. One read: “Enough talk! Government should already implement a plan to phase out the use of pesticides and provide incentives for growers to switch to organic farming.”
And these two issues only scratch the surface of the growing dog pile. I don’t have the room in this column to discuss others, which include regulating greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Clean Air Act, spray drift, and over-the-road transport of nurse tanks.
It’s clear that the groups that oppose modern farming practices sense the time is right to strike. Agriculture needs to quickly and forcefully respond with its own studies and marketing efforts reinforcing the positive role our industry plays in the nation.
Take it from someone who knows — it’s never fun being at the bottom of the dog pile. The sooner our industry gets out from underneath it, the better.
