12
Jul
Study Captures Agronomists’ Advice to Farmers and Continued Reliance on Toxic Pesticides
(Beyond Pesticides, July 12, 2024) No one can deny that the dominant agricultural system developed in the 20th century is unsustainable, and indeed is in escalating crisis from the combined effects of pesticide resistance, climate change and resource overexploitation. The frontline members of this system are farmers, who must juggle numerous considerations to maintain their livelihoods. Any proposal for improvement that threatens their bottom lines is likely to encounter resistance, and any proposal that promises to improve the bottom line is more likely to be implemented. Thus there is a powerful incentive to accept suggestions from “crop advisors”—usually known as agronomists—a category that includes government extension agents, independent consultants usually paid directly by farmers, and those who work for agribusiness, particularly chemical companies.
A study published in the Journal of Rural Studies in April by Iowa State University sociologist Katherine Dentzman, PhD examines the relationships among agronomists, farmers and farming communities. Dr. Denzman conducted focus groups with agronomists in in Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northwest, and Southwest states to determine what pressures limit the types of advice they give farmers.
When it comes to pesticides and resistance to them, the advice provided by typical agronomists has generally led to more pesticide use, despite the policy known as Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which purports to handle resistance by judiciously and efficiently using pesticides rather than eliminating them. Pesticide resistance is portrayed as something that is too complex to be addressed by combining approaches such as no-till soil conservation, protection of beneficial insects, and regenerative agriculture in general. EPA continues to endorse IPM despite its ineffectiveness.
Dr. Dentzman’s study findings show that agronomists must balance scientific and economic factors along with the cultural preferences of farmers. Farmers and their communities feel more sense of mutual responsibility and trust when they know their advisors personally and feel engaged with them, and the advisors are intimately familiar with the local environment. Crop advisors “significantly influence” farmers’ behaviors and understanding of nutrient use, water and soil management, climate and nonpoint-source pollution. But if agronomists are perceived as presenting “modern,” top-down, expert-to-student attitudes, farmers are less likely to trust them. Dentzman found that many agronomists would prefer to provide more diverse and sustainable options for farmers by blending science and expertise with more traditional and experiential knowledge, but feel constrained by “structures based in the capitalist industrialized US agricultural system.”
In agriculture, recommended best management practices to combat pesticide resistance by reducing pesticide use, such as hand-pulling weeds and changing row widths, are impractical, Dentzman writes, in part because they are almost impossible to implement in the current system. For example, labor availability and the requirements of farm equipment restrict the applicability of such suggestions. This illustrates the problem that the agricultural system assumes pesticide resistance is something that must be handled at the farm level, rather than by changes in economic, political and governance policies nationally and globally, which is where much of the problem lies. According to Dr. Dentzman, “[N]etworks of communication and dominant ideologies, including techno-optimism and individualism…place limitations on what kinds of management approaches can be imagined as practicable.”
Not all agronomists are alike, however. Independent agronomists tend to make more varied recommendations than those working for corporate interests. On the other hand, government extension agents usually take a top-down approach, causing farmers to feel patronized, according to Dr. Dentzman. And corporate agronomists have an obvious motivation to encourage the use of more corporate products, especially petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers.
The aggressive investment in outreach and promotion by chemical companies creates the impression that pesticides remain the best way to deal with pesticide resistance. This ignores the fact that pesticide resistance is an inevitable result of natural selection and thus can never be conquered; pesticide companies rely on serial development of products that will perforce have only short-term effectiveness, driving up investment costs and passing those on to farmers in a vicious cycle, often called the “pesticide treadmill.”
Dr. Dentzman’s work complements a broader global push to implement the precepts of agroecology, which is an attempt to combine ecology and agronomy. It is related to concepts in organic farming, conservation agriculture, and regenerative agriculture, including alternatives to pesticides. A 2023 paper on agroecology in the Annual Review of Resource Economics by German scholar Frank Ewert, PhD and colleagues notes that to have “sustainable and resilient agri-food systems” there must be “integrated multiscale systems from farm to region to globe.” One of the field’s strongest advocates is University of California at Santa Cruz professor Stephen Gliessman, PhD. According to Dr. Gliessman, “The approach is grounded in ecological thinking where a holistic, systems-level understanding of food system sustainability is required” and “confronts the economic and political power structures of the current industrial food system with alternative social structures and policy action.”
Dr. Ewert and colleagues note that there have been numerous local solutions that have provided the desired ecological effects and “reduced injustice and inequality of the currently predominant conventional agricultural practices,” and that most of these have been introduced by small farmers and indigenous peoples. Gliessman estimates that about 30 percent of farmers globally have adopted some practices or redesigned their production systems on agroecologial principles.
But the question, Dr. Ewert and colleagues write, is whether these efforts can be scaled up. In a masterpiece of understatement, they note that “The related implications of such shifts for the economic and political system will likely be considerable.” The “agricultural research community and established knowledge systems” do not yet support agroecology. This is especially true in the U.S.
Nowhere is the sustainability problem more urgent and obvious than in pesticide use. A 2022 review in Agronomy for Sustainable Development by Florence Jacquet, PhD of France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment discusses the goal of eliminating pesticides altogether rather than simply aiming to reduce their use. “By remaining in a framework in which pesticides are still a solution, it is difficult to initiate a paradigm shift for research, which is essential for radical innovations to emerge.”
Most agricultural research focuses on progressive reduction of pesticide use and finding substitutions. Dr. Jacquet and colleagues emphasize that “extension services remain dominated by approaches oriented to finding one solution to each problem, with little emphasis on systemic approaches that address a set of problems or propose changes in several aspects simultaneously.” This perpetuates a “fixation” effect, the authors write, “characterized by the development of common and conservative solutions to address a complex problem that should require breakthrough innovations.”
There are some encouraging signs. In the last 20 years, the number of peer-reviewed scientific publications on agroecology has gone from about zero to 600 articles per year. Related subjects like landscape ecology, plant health, microbiomes, and soil management have also increased. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization has developed a set of strategic documents, and the EU has developed the Agroecology Partnership to encourage collaboration and experimentation.
Currently, farmers suffer under pressures from large economic and political structures that push them to follow advice from many consultants whose goal is simply to sell more pesticides, with the strong implication that staying in the pesticide system is the only way to remain financially viable. But the ideological position that sustainable methods are not economically viable is incorrect, according to many researchers and practitioners. Dr. Ewert and colleagues cite a series of studies indicating that agroecological practices result in significantly higher value added and higher profits in grassland and dairy farms.
In the face of this pressure, agroecology faces the daunting challenge of supporting farmers’ individual autonomy, trust in institutions and communities, and social justice, while also encouraging agronomists to combine local wisdom with reliable scientific information independent of corporate interests. This can point to a way off the pesticide treadmill. Farmers—and good-faith advisors—cannot be left to depend on disingenuous sources of expertise. Agroecology, including the substitution of ecosystem benefits for pesticide use, will be strongest if developed from the bottom up.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
Sources:
Reflexivity and certified crop advisors’ knowledge paradigms as related to pesticide resistance management
Katherine Dentzman, PhD
Journal of Rural Studies May 2024
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0743016724000901?via%3Dihub
Agroecology for a Sustainable Agriculture and Food System: From Local Solutions to Large-Scale Adoption
Drs. Frank Ewert, Roland Baatz, and Robert Finger Annual Review of Resource Economics 2023 https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-resource-102422-090105
Pesticide-free agriculture as a new paradigm for research
Florence Jacquet, PhD et al.
Agron. Sustain. Dev. 42, 8 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-021-00742-8
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-021-00742-8#author-information
Chemical-Intensive Practices in Florida Citrus Lead to Harm and Collapse, as Organic Methods Offer Path Forward Beyond Pesticides April 11, 2024 https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2024/04/chemical-intensive-practices-in-florida-citrus-lead-to-harm-and-collapse-as-organic-methods-offer-path-forward/
Environmental and Trade Groups Successfully Call for End to Pesticide Company Alliance with UN-FAO
July 5, 2024 https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2024/07/environmental-and-trade-groups-successfully-call-for-end-to-pesticide-company-alliance-with-un-fao/
Research Shatters Myth of Pesticide Benefits
Documenting unreasonable risks: sustainable alternatives Beyond Pesticides
https://www.bp-dc.org/assets/media/documents/journal/VIII%20Research%20Shatters%20Myth%20of%20Pesticide%20Benefits.pdf
Comment Period Ends Today: Advocates Say USDA Needs Organic Certifier Information on Soil Fertility
Beyond Pesticides January 22, 2024
https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2024/01/comment-period-ends-today-advocates-say-usda-needs-certifier-information-on-soil-fertility/
