Pesticides Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Pesticides Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
For us hunting wasn't a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature, that intimacy providing us with wild unprocessed food free from pesticides and hormones and with the bonus of having been produced without the addition of great quantities of fossil fuel. In addition, hunting provided us with an ever scarcer relationship in a world of cities, factory farms, and agribusiness, direct responsibility for taking the lives that sustained us. Lives that even vegans indirectly take as the growing and harvesting of organic produce kills deer, birds, snakes, rodents, and insects. We lived close to the animals we ate. We knew their habits and that knowledge deepened our thanks to them and the land that made them.— Ted Kerasote
One of the signs of the imminent Apocalypse is the "bitterness of all waters," and anyone traveling through eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and its satellites-everywhere that the command economy operated, with its callous disregard for anything but narrow-focused abstract principle-could be forgiven for thinking that the Apocalypse was no longer imminent but in full cry. There's hardly a river, stream, or brook that isn't contaminated with the runoff from human misuse, whether industrial effluents, agricultural pesticides and herbicides, or worse.— Marq De Villiers
Healthy, sustainable food production methods give us food that is nutritionally better and with fewer pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.— Marion Nestle
If we weren't so dirt-conscious, we would obtain adequate vitamin B12 from soil, air, water, and bacteria, but we meticulously wash and peel our vegetables now - and with good reason, as we can't be sure our soil is not contaminated with pesticides and herbicides.— Sharon Gannon
The average lawn is an interesting beast: people plant it, then douse it with artificial fertilizers and dangerous pesticides to make it grow and to keep it uniform-all so that they can hack and mow what they encouraged to grow. And woe to the small yellow flower that rears its head!— Michael Braungart
One thing is all things. To resolve one matter, one must resolve all matters. Changing one thing changes all things. Once I made the decision to sow rice in the fall, I found that I could also stop transplanting, and plowing, and applying chemical fertilizers, and preparing compost, and spraying pesticides.— Masanobu Fukuoka
My understanding has always been that if there is any indication that pesticides are harmful, that they would not be allowed to be used.— George Deukmejian
In Marin County, north of San Francisco, the search for a safe haven resulted in a new apartment complex - the first, and only, such government-sponsored project aimed at MCS.— Peter Radetsky
Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit.— William Alexander
reduce the amount of pesticides you ingest by 90 percent if you buy organic for these 12 fruits and vegetables: apples, celery, cherries, imported grapes, lettuce, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, spinach, strawberries, and sweet bell peppers. Because milk fat can harbor traces of hormones (including rBGH) given to cows, it's also crucial to choose organic dairy products.— Whole Living Magazine
Carson was persuaded that many experts either failed to recognize or chose to ignore the potential hazards of pesticides. She was convinced that the weight of her scientific evidence would defeat the skeptics among them. And once the public had the necessary information, citizens could make informed decisions about what Carson believed was a matter of life and death.— Mark Hamilton Lytle
Globalization, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenizing locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system-centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export-designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.— Helena Norberg-Hodge
Adopt and rescue a pet from a local shelter. Support local and no-kill animal shelters. Plant a tree to honor someone you love. Be a developer - put up some birdhouses. Buy live, potted Christmas trees and replant them. Make sure you spend time with your animals each day. Save natural resources by recycling and buying recycled products. Drink tap water, or filter your own water at home. Whenever possible, limit your use of or do not use pesticides. If you eat seafood, make sustainable choices. Support your local farmers market. Get outside. Visit a park, volunteer, walk your dog, or ride your bike.— Atlantic Publishing Group Inc.
Our actions today will protect children from the adverse effects of exposure to pesticides commonly used on foods. The agency also is on schedule to meet all deadlines for ensuring safer pesticides use under the new Food Quality Protection Act.— Carol Browner
When we do harm to one thing we are essentially harming ourselves. For example when we use poisonous toxins and pesticides to grow our food, we pollute the soil, kill the life of the surrounding ecosystems, decrease the quality of the food supply, which then decreases our health and the level of energy we operate on. When we do this every day on a global scale for several decades we end up with soil infertility, habitat loss, environmental pollution, low quality food, poor health, malnutrition, and a lack of productivity, which is so apparent in today's society.— Joseph P. Kauffman
Certainly people in empty places feel they have the right to do what they want to their property and don't necessarily see the effect of their pollution or pesticides on others. But Texans have an appreciation for water problems and are very aware of the droughts.— Gail Collins
When the farmer can sell directly to the consumer, it is a more active process. There's more contact. The consumer can know, who am I buying this from? What's their name? Do they have a face? Is the food they are selling coming out of Mexico with pesticides?— Jerry Brown
I eliminated coffee and fish from my diet. The pesticides in coffee and fish, as well as the mercury in the latter, are considered possible contributors to birth defects in fetal tissue.— Constance Marie
Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the Housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to one or more pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds.— Francisco J. Ayala
Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water.— Thomas Friedman
Some days he walked along the banks of the river that smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans.— Arundhati Roy
I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.— Patti Smith
The final principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. Nature is in perfect balance when left alone.— Masanobu Fukuoka
Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people.— Paul R. Ehrlich
The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place.— David R. Brower
If three hundred years of chainsaws, CFCs, depleted uranium, automobiles, genetic engineering, airplanes, routine international trade, computers, plastics, endocrine disruptors, pesticides, vivisection, internal combustion engines, feller bunchers, dragline excavators, televisions, cell phones, and nuclear (and conventional) bombs are not enough to convey the picture, then that picture will never be conveyed.— Derrick Jensen
An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and— Michelle Schoffro Cook
preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today's apple contains residue of eleven different neurotoxins - azinphos, methyl chloripyrifos, diazinon, dimethoate, ethion, omthoate, parathion, parathion methyl, phosalone, and phosmet - and the USDA was testing for only one category of chemicals known as organophosphate insecticides. That doesn't sound too appetizing does it? The average apple is sprayed with pesticides seventeen times before it is harvested.
In fifth grade, I remember my best friend, Vicki DeMattia, opening her lunch box and finding a note from her mother. I love you, Vicki! Sometimes Mrs. DeMattia included more, like what they would do together after school or how many kisses Vicki owed her from their Monopoly game the previous night. I got notes from Anjoli, too. They were typed and left on the dining room table. They went something like this: Lucy: I'm at the theatre tonight and won't be home till after you're asleep. On the table, please find ten dollars for dinner. Be sure to include a vegetable and a green salad. Rinse lettuce thoroughly. Pesticides can kill you. Anjoli.— Jennifer Coburn
Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery.— John Burnside
We have some very suggestive evidence that the use of pesticides and herbicides affects our mental function and brain physiology, including increasing the incidence of Parkinson's disease up to seven times in those most heavily exposed to them. This is not exactly a surprise when we realize that pesticides are designed to be neurotoxic to the pests.— Gabriel Cousens M.D.
Our generation has taken to the cosmetic use of pesticides and I think, perhaps unwittingly, not fully understanding the dangers it represents to ourselves and, most importantly, to our children.— Dalton McGuinty
She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects!— John Brunner
We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.— Thomas Berry
However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost the ability to communicate above or below ground-you could say they are deaf and dumb-and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests. That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future.— Peter Wohlleben
Exposure to some pesticides during infancy, even at very low levels, can lead to serious life-long consequences if the pesticides disrupt hormone-driven developmental processes.— Charles Benbrook
Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974 (in the US), crop losses due to pests have ... remained at an estimated 33%. Losses due to insects alone have nearly doubled, ... from 7% in the 1942-1951 period to about 13% in 1974.— Frances Moore Lappe
We are eating hybridized and genetically modified (GMO) foods full of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, and additives that were unknown to our immune systems just a generation or two ago. The result? Our immune system becomes unable to recognize friend or foe - to distinguish between foreign molecular invaders we truly need to protect against and the foods we eat or, in some cases, our own cells. In Third World countries where hygiene is poor and infections are common, allergy and autoimmunity are rare.— Mark Hyman, M.D.
Why aren't we looking at the causes of breast cancer? Why aren't we spending our energy on looking at what we're doing to the earth? On the pollutants we're putting into the earth? And the pesticides we're putting into the earth? What we're releasing into the air? Instead, we just cut off more organs! That's where metaphor comes into it - not even metaphor as much as reality.— Eve Ensler
When the deaths first started increasing, there were all sorts of rumors. From defective childhood vaccines to pesticides in our food - people grasped for any excuse.— Suzanne Young
Incidentally, if you really think organic means pure, then you're in for a helluva heartbreak. Organic farms do use pesticides and, as reported by Brian Palmer in Slate, organic wine needs eighty times more fertilizer than conventional vino.— Greg Gutfeld
We farm workers are closest to food production. We were the first to recognize the serious health hazards of agriculture pesticides to both consumers and ourselves.— Cesar Chavez
The cleanup costs of polluting a river, injecting pesticides into the ground water, or putting noxious gases into the air have not been figured into the cost of the manufacturing or agribusiness that put them there in the first place. Historically, the economic incentive has been to pollute.— Gloria Steinem
What, then, is the effect of pesticides? Pesticides have created a legacy of pain, and misery, and death for farm workers and consumers alike. The crop which poses the greatest danger, and the focus of our struggle, is the table grape crop. These pesticides soak the fields. Drift with the wind, pollute the water, and are eaten by unwitting consumers. These poisons are designed to kill, and pose a very real threat to consumers and farm workers alike.— Cesar Chavez
The best Chateauneuf-du-Papes are among the most natural expressions of grapes, place and vintage. Chateauneuf-du-Pape vineyards are farmed organically or biodynamically, and the region's abundant sunshine and frequent wind (called 'le mistral') practically preclude the need for treating the fields with herbicides or pesticides.— Robert M. Parker Jr.
Earth is a living entity. And if it's a living organism, then we have to have a reverence for all life. Food should be local, organic rather than grown with chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides.— Satish Kumar
Chemicals are not currently tested for their endocrine disruption potential before they are approved for use and enter our environment, and there are endocrine disruptors in a vast array of products we come into contact with every day, including organochlorine pesticides, plastics, fuels, and other industrial chemicals.— Joel Fuhrman
When we mistake what we can know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation of one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature as a machine. Once that leap has been made, one input follows another, so that when the synthetic nitrogen fed to plants makes them more attractive to insects and vulnerable to disease, as we have discovered, the farmer turns to chemical pesticides to fix his broken machine.— Michael Pollan
and produce as a result of their inundation with industrial herbicides and pesticides which, of course, make their way, again, into the Russian River. Then into the Pacific Ocean. And ultimately, into all the fish in your local supermarket. What is said about the environmental impact of vineyards in Sonoma County? Fucking nothing. It is our sacred cow." Darren raised his shot glass again, "Long live the sacred cow." Colin— Rob Loughran
There is rising concern about pesticides, used on plants for food, causing endocrine disruption, meaning that the residual pesticides appear to be changing hormone levels in our populations.— Daniel G. Amen
For the 4 percent of our population that is left on the farm does not, by any stretch of imagination, feed the rest. That 4 percent is only a small part, and the worst-paid part, of a food production network that includes purchasers, wholesalers, retailers, processors, packagers, transporters, and the manufacturers and salesmen of machines, building materials, feeds, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, medicines, and fuel. All these producers are at once in competition with each other and dependent on each other, and all are dependent on the petroleum industry. As— Wendell Berry
Pesticides came about after the first world war. Some brainy petrochemical money maker said, 'Hey, that mustard gas worked great on people, maybe we could dilute it down and spray it on our crops to deal with pests.'— Woody Harrelson
If we call insects "pests," then we can make war on them. And we have done that, developing powerful chemicals that kill all insects to eliminate the ones that are troublesome to us. To me, using broad-spectrum pesticides is like dealing with high rates of crime in a town or neighbourhood by removing or killing everyone in the area.— David Suzuki
The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals ... Twenty percent of these approved-for-use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.— Barbara Kingsolver
The way to improve productivity is not to bring in experts to talk about inputs - seed, equipment and materials, pesticides or water supply. The way to start is to provide an assured market, a fair price, and a system through which rural producers can market their produce which is reasonably efficient and can transfer to them the maximum share of the consumers' money. If such a structure is erected, the producers will then seek the inputs and materials they need to increase their production and productivity.— Verghese Kurien
When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don't want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies - Monsanto is the most famous of them - control so many of the seeds we grow.— Michael Specter
A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.— Rachel Carson
Every time you consume factory-farmed chicken, beef, veal, pork, eggs, or dairy, you are eating antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and hormones.— Rory Freedman
First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective.— Boris Beizer
I was struck by the fact that for Joel abjuring agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals is not so much a goal of his farming, as it so often is in organic agriculture, as it is an indication that his farm is functioning well. "In nature health is the default," he pointed out. "Most of the time pests and disease are just nature's way of telling the farmer he's doing something wrong.— Michael Pollan
I always knew pesticides affected farmworkers. That's why I always tell people, "eat organic." Not just because it's better for you but because you know the people who picked your food weren't in a toxic environment.— Eva Longoria
I recently asked more than seventy eminent researchers if they would have done I their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: no. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome: the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions: improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.— Philip S. Skell
The farmer and the farm, like "the environment," are looked upon, for example, as means to offset trade deficits. The farm is a place where we can externalize costs. The cost of pesticides to the farmer and the cost of the pesticides to the soil and groundwater are regarded similarly by the public: "a serious problem that something ought to be done about." But the problem is more fundamental than this glib statement would indicate, for soil pollution is an expense of production. So are pesticides and nitrates in our farm wells. So is the loss of farmers from the land.— Wes Jackson
If manufacturers are so sure there is nothing wrong with genetically modified foods, pesticides and cloned meats, they should have no problems labeling them as such. After all, cancer will kill one in every two men and one in every three women now alive, reports Samuel Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. Like our ancestors, we act in ways that will bemuse future societies. The military-industrial complex lubricates the mass-agriculture system with fossil fuels. Tons of heavy metals and other hazardous, even radioactive, waste is sprayed on American agricultural soil.— Adam Gollner
These days, they use so much pesticide that when I feed the children, I have to soak the vegetables for at least two hours.— Liu Cixin
I had all kinds of allergy problems with certain meats, and with fruits and vegetables with pesticides. So I turned to bear, caribou, venison, hippopotamus, buffalo, elk and moose. Taste-wise, buffalo and elk are tied for first. Not gamy, and loaded with protein. And very expensive, I might add.— Billy Casper
Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.— Jared Diamond
I don't eat healthy because I'm trying to avoid death. Death does not scare me. I am, however, terrified of dying before I am dead. I have a strong desire to make the best of the time I have here.— Brooke Hampton
Living foods straight from the Earth help my body thrive, my imagination soar and my mind stay clear. It's about quality of life for me. I feel the best when I eat a diet free of pesticides, chemicals, GMOs and refined sugars.
Growing herbs and making my own medicine helps me stay connected to the Earth; hence, helping me connect with my true purpose here.
I have work to do here! I choose to leave this planet more beautiful than I found it and eating magical foods gives me the energy and inspiration I need to do my work.
I don't prefer to fill my body with antibiotics, pesticides, steroids, and growth hormones - my body is my temple, and I treat it as such.— Suzanne Whang
Don't Make Your Life A Barren Land Where The Crops Of Happiness Cannot Be Cultivated , Use Some Pesticides Like HOPE , CONFIDENCE And Make Your Life A Fertile Land Where Happiness Can Be Cultivated— Nithin Kumar
The great virtue of a diversified food economy, like a diverse pasture or farm, is its ability to withstand any shock. The important thing is that there be multiple food chains, so that when any one of them fails-when the oil runs out, when mad cow or other food-borne diseases become epidemic, when the pesticides no longer work, when drought strikes and plagues come and soils blow away-we'll still have a way to feed ourselves.— Michael Pollan
In the wild a plant and its pests are continually coevolving, in a dance of resistance and conquest that can have no ultimate victor. But coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees, since they are genetically identical from generation to generation. The problem very simply is that the apple trees no longer reproduce sexually, as they do when they're grown from seed, and sex is nature's way of creating fresh genetic combinations. At the same time the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects keep very much at it, reproducing sexually and continuing to evolve until eventually they hit on the precise genetic combination that allows them to overcome whatever resistance the apples may have once possessed. Suddenly total victory is in the pests' sight - unless, that is, people come to the tree's rescue, wielding the tools of modern chemistry.— Michael Pollan
If you care about the animals, actually, organic might not be the best answer because now we have organic feedlots, organic factory farms. If you care about the environment - pesticides, especially - organic is the answer.— Michael Pollan
New challenges beyond navigation have spawned new conventions and institutions in the Rhine and Danube basins. A separate International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) was set up in 1950 as a permanent intergovernmental body among the co-riparian states. But the ICPR began fighting pollution of the Rhine in earnest only after a 1986 accident at a Basel plant. For a long time, industrial and domestic wastewater flowed untreated into the Rhine, earning it the sobriquet, "the Sewer of Europe." The Basel accident spewed thirty tons of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and dyes into the river, turning a large stretch of it red and destroying some fish species.— Brahma Chellaney
Ames applied this technique to any number of compounds, but one of the most interesting pieces of work was his 1990 paper on "Dietary Pesticides."5 Ames recognized that most plants produced their own pesticides and compared their prevalence to the residues of synthetic pesticides. Surprisingly, they found that 99.99% of the pesticides in the American diet were from plants, and only .01% were from synthetic sources. They noted that only 52 of those naturally occurring pesticides had been tested for carcinogenicity, and that 27 of those were indeed carcinogenic. So, if more than half of the tested natural pesticides were carcinogenic and in far greater concentration than those applied by man, they then concluded that the hazards from synthetic pesticides were probably insignificant.— James W. Cooper
Besides, the sense of safety offered by bottled water is a mirage. It turns out that breathing, not drinking, constitutes our main route of exposure to volatile pollutants in tap water, such as solvents, pesticides, and byproducts of water chlorination. As soon as the toilet is flushed or the faucet turned on-or the bathtub, the shower, the humidifier, the washing machine-these contaminants leave the water and enter the air. A recent study shows that the most efficient way of exposing yourself to chemical contaminants in tap water is to turn on a dishwasher.— Sandra Steingraber
In the symbiotic community of the forest, not only trees but also shrubs and grasses - and possibly all plant species - exchange information this way. However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost their ability to communicate above or below ground - you could say they are deaf and dumb - and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests.12 That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future. Communication— Peter Wohlleben
Desrochers and Shimizu (Chapter 5) identify several shortcomings in Carson's Silent Spring that stem from major omissions. These include her silence on the benefits of chemical pesticides, such as higher agricultural production - which reduced hunger in a world of chronic starvation and limited the loss of wildlife habitat. Another flaw is her reliance on anecdotes rather than systematic analysis of available information. But perhaps the book's biggest failing is its discussion of cancer.— Roger E. Meiners
Here in the United States, a study of nearly 700 women in California showed an increased risk of fetal death among babies whose mothers lived near crops when certain pesticides were sprayed. The largest risks were found among pregnant women exposed during the critical first trimester and among those who lived in the same square mile where pesticides were used.— Sandra Steingraber
Alkaloids are natural fungicides, insecticides, and pesticides. It has been estimated that, on average, each of us ingests about a gram and a half of natural pesticide every day, from the plants and plant products in our diet. The estimate for residues from synthetic pesticides is around 0.15 milligrams daily - about ten thousand times less than the natural dose!— Penny Le Couteur
Carson's thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment may seem like common currency now, but in 1962 Silent Spring contained the kernel of social revolution.— Rachel Carson
It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.— Cesar Chavez
One animal or plant species may become extinct every hour. All species are doomed to extinction, but man through worldwide development/killing animals for food/profit/using toxic chemicals such as pesticides/industrial wastes, will accelerate the extinction of plants/animals and the result will be a more hostile environment for man.— Erik P. Eckholm
We are bombarded with reasons to stay inside: we're afraid of mosquitoes because of West Nile and grass because of pesticides and sun because of cancer and sunscreen because of vitamin-D deficiency.— Nancy Gibbs
Astronomy is so easy to love ... Fairly or not, physics is associated with nuclear bombs and nuclear waste, chemistry with pesticides, biology with Frankenfood and designer-gene superbabies. But astronomers are like responsible ecotourists, squinting at the scenery through high-quality optical devices, taking nothing but images that may be computer-enhanced for public distribution, leaving nothing but a few Land Rover footprints on faraway Martian soil, and OK, OK, maybe the Land Rover, too.— Natalie Angier
I love judging food by its smell and feel and taste. The healthiest tomato isn't always the perfect one that's been covered in pesticides.— Sheherazade Goldsmith
Swallows have disappeared, bees are dying out because of pesticides that should have been banned long ago - it's a scandal.— Brigitte Bardot
When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce. Maybe one thousandth of this aerial insecticide actually prevents the infestation. The balance goes to the leaves, into the soil, into the water, into all forms of wildlife, into ourselves. What is good for the balance sheet is wasteful of resources and harmful to life.— Paul Hawken
As of now, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of food energy for humans - somewhere between four and ten calories of fossil fuel for a calorie of food. The fossil fuel is in both the fertilizer and the pesticides, and it's essential to the machinery needed to plant, harvest, process, and transport grain. All told, an acre of corn drinks about fifty gallons of oil.— Lierre Keith
We have to draw the line someplace with all the pesticides being used by the farmers.— John Catsimatidis
A good laugh is the best pesticide.— Vladimir Nabokov
The effort to eliminate synthetic pesticides because of unsubstantiated fears about residues in food will make fruits and vegetables more expensive, decrease consumption, and thus increase cancer rates. The levels of synthetic pesticide residues are trivial in comparison to natural chemicals, and thus their potential for cancer causation is extremely low. [Ames believes that "to eat your veggies" is the best way to prevent cancer.]— Bruce Ames
The more a pesticide is used, the greater the chance that the insects targeted will develop immunity to the chemical. Pesticide resistance is not only very common, but it also usually happens rather quickly. Sometimes all it takes is a single generation. Imagine that a group of insects survives the pesticide and is able to reproduce. More likely than not, the offspring will be resistant to the pesticide from birth. Those that are not immune will die, while the strongest will survive. Since many insects reproduce quickly, several generations can be born within months or even weeks. By the time a few generations have passed, all insects are likely to be resistant to the pesticide. This has resulted in stronger pesticides, and new ways of producing pesticides.— Joseph P. Kauffman
One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit ice cream, General Tso's dog shit. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to some other foods, you might figure out that dog shit really doesn't taste good. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories (or if your enculturation is so strong that dog shit actually does taste good to you), the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example a little less silly, substitute the word pesticides for dog shit. Or, for that matter, substitute Big Mac, Whopper, or Coca Cola.— Derrick Jensen
Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues— Jim Hightower
I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.— Alice Waters
Most of the plants grown to be fed to farm animals are heavily saturated with pesticides and herbicides and have been genetically modified, all of which contributes to the pollution and destruction of our environment, which harms us all.— Sharon Gannon
Those externalized costs have always included labor. It is only the decline over time of the minimum wage in real dollars that's made the fast food industry possible, along with feedlot agriculture, pharmaceuticals on the farm, pesticides and regulatory forbearance. All these things are part of the answer to the question: Why is that crap so cheap? Our food is dishonestly priced. One of the ways in which it's dishonestly priced is the fact that people are not paid a living wage to process it, to serve it, to grow it, to slaughter it.— Michael Pollan
There have been various pesticides that have been properly tested, that have been registered and then have been used and later on they've been discoveredthat they can create harm, like in the case of this Oftanol that was being used here (in Sacramento, against the Japanese beetle). Now they find that it can cause problems at least to animals. So we stopped using it.— George Deukmejian
Consider, for example, the tomato. If the soil it grows in is depleted, then the tomato has measurably low mineral content, less natural sugar, and more acids, which means it will be tough, tasteless, and nutritionally inferior. If it is sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, it will carry instructional messages to your body that are carcinogenic,— Marc David
In general, I try to eat food without added hormones and pesticides, but I'm not so strict that I won't have a Big Mac once in a while.— Missy Peregrym
