INPUTS DANGER

24.02.2016

by Mathilde A, Aziliz, Estelle et Mathilde F

INPUTS DANGER

The intensive farming

The intensive farming is develop by monoculture which uses a lot of chemicals inputs just as pesticides, fertilizers, amendments which are elements improving physical and chemical properties of the grown as sand, whitewash, peat… and activating or growth
retardants and finally a lot of mechanization. But we have to know that the employment of pesticides use to protect cultures against insects and mushrooms. Pesticides are used to other thing like contend with competitor vegetation which shoots faster than cultivated plants.

France is a country which invests a lot in farming for efficient farming because it has a very advanced technology. This country is the first European user of phytosanitary products and the third in the world just behind United States of America and Brazil. This usage enables a fast augmentation of the agricultural productivity and the yields (between 2 to 10 metric ton by hectare) but it becomes a danger on the health and the environment because it’s accountable for the big pollution because of the usage of chemicals and phytosanitary products.

Advantages of inputs

Farmers use inputs, because they enable a mass production. Indeed, they can produce more, because inputs increase the plant’s production. This mass production brings them more production, and allows them to have more and more sales.

Inputs improve the ground’s quality. In this way, farmers can apply intensive farming. Intensive farming is characterized by a higher use of inputs such as capital and labor per unit land area. It’s the opposite of traditional agriculture, which uses fewer inputs. Inputs maximize qualities and yield.

INPUTS DANGER

Inputs can also eliminate bad plants, or invasive plants, which represent less work for farmers. In fact, invasive plants sometimes can destroy a part of the crops.

But they have a cost, and present lots of dangers.

Progression of pesticides/inputs use

Since the second part of 20^th century, use of inputs greatly increases because of a modern agriculture which favors mass productions. At the beginning, no one noted chemicals’ consequences on health, it’s only recently men began to organize plans and strategies in order to reduce inputs’ use.

The consequences on the health

In the field of farming, the pesticides named phytosanitary products exist principally in three categories :

· Herbicides to contend with weed

· Fungicides to contend with mushrooms

· Insecticides to contend with insects

· And others products against rodents, snails and slugs…

The chemical inputs are molecules which don’t follow the organic process and leave some residues in the environment.

Farmers are closest risks and they are the group who has a lot of risks.

The usage repeated of pesticides has for consequences poisoning, ills of skin, breathing problems, infertility, cancers, asthma, consequences on nervous system and reproductive system. The effects are either immediate or appear several years after.

In south countries, farmers don’t have any protections or just a little so they mix pesticides with their bare hands, they use deficient tools which are old, full of bacterium, harmful… and farmers preserve chemical products with food in stocks.

Some harmful pesticides are forbidden for 30 years, but they have always effects and consequences today because they persist in the environment and in the body. This pesticides are famous for their efficacy but also for their toxicity and their persistence in the environment. They act on hormonal system, transmit generations by generations for people who are expose to this substances which declare symptoms just as the Parkinson’s disease, the cancer of prostate, reduction of male fertility, cryptorchidism, behavior disorder…

Pesticides can contaminate the reserves of drinkable water and underground water. The poisoning symptoms are diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, weakness, eyesight disorder, head pains, temporary paralysis and convulsions…

Insecticides are the most dangerous and they have 2 different families :

- Organophosphate which are lymphomas (cancers) in a family of farmers, weak weight at the birth of their children, or behavior problems
- “phyréthrinoïde” which are consequence of neurotoxicity as the Parkinson’s disease, cognitive deficit or the Alzheimer’s disease.

The phenomenon effect “cocktail” is several molecules which are present in a gift products or human fabrics, effect often superior at the amount of effects of each substance taken separately. But this effect isn’t taken into account in toxicological studies.

In South countries, pesticides are less check, and less strict, but 200 000 people die every year about the consequences of pesticides and one million about poisoning, because the dangerous products in industrialized countries, so they are forbidden, it’s different in South countries because their products are still exported…

Consequences on grounds

A too large use of inputs ends up depleting soils. So, to replace missing minerals, farmers spread even more chemical products on their seeds.

The consequences on environment and biodiversity

The utilization of inputs have two main consequences :

- The impoverishment of grounds with organic matter and problems of erosion. The reasons are the worst agricultural practice with too deep ploughings, substitution of synthesis, fertilizers…

- The pollution of grounds, aquatic surroundings and air surroundings because pesticides, which are made on a plant, act on it but another part infiltrate in the ground to finish in grounds water. The biggest part is evaporated in the air and fall again in grounds when it rain and have wind. When the temperature rise, pesticides are evaporated again and they move all around the world. It’s why we can rediscover some of this residues in Arctic where they stay “combined”, because the temperature is too cold to permit their evaporation. This concentration of inputs creates a big density of nitrates.

THE PATH OF PESTICIDES

he food chain is also in danger because insects subsist on plants which contain pesticides, birds eat insects and predators subsist on birds.

THE FOOD CHAIN IN DANGER

In summary, the consequences on environment and biodiversity are the deterioration of ecosystems by the proliferation of aquatics plants, the diminution of pollinating insects by the utilization of intensive inputs, the loss of general biodiversity by the utilization of hybrids seeds or GMO, the phenomenon of resistance with the use of pesticides…

Farmers who use inputs don’t care about quantity they spread on their cultivated lands, and chemicals products are often not consume in their entirety by plants. The problem is rests can be absorbed in layers of water or brought in rivers and lakes.

For example, too much nitrate could cause eutrophications, and kill some animals.

To avoid this phenomenon we should adjust the dose of inputs or even to stop their use, and we should never leave a bare ground. This last operation would permit to limit the loss of some minerals.

Green revolution in South countries ?

In India, green revolution is applicated in a big part of the agriculture. Green revolution is an agriculture based on seeds bound with phytosanitary system, farmers do monoculture and multiply the utilization of inputs.

Farmers, who use their technicals, have seen a real augmentation of their cultures but several problems arise as :

- New seeds have to be renovated every year;
- An augmentation of a consummation in water;
- Monoculture which is a system more delicate than polyculture and this type of agriculture associate plants which can give some services mutually;
- A modification of the ground so farmers use pesticides to regulate;
- An impoverishment of the ground with a loss of organic matter and the erosion of grounds because they always use more and more fertilizers. It’s a vicious circle.

So the agricultural revolution have a supplementary cost for farmers, a loss of organic matter in grounds, a disappearing of cattle, a reduction of agricultural biodiversity and a reduction of the productivity, so a lot of problems in the durable, economic and ecological development.

The result is that farmers who embarked on this practical also embarked on a vicious circle. Indeed, more they spread inputs, more they have to spread it!

Another problem is that farmers couldn’t pay for this new system. Therefore, they borrow money and go into debt. Some of them even kill their selves. Another cause of farmers’ deaths is toxicity of inputs. Currently, there are more than 25,000 farmers deceased in India for those reasons.

So, this type of husbandry creates social, economic and environmental problems and is dangerous for men who work in fields.

Conclusion : Chemicals inputs have for consequences the pollution of the grounds water, the scattering of carcinogenic substances, the sanitary risks for farmers and also consumers, the important costs, the impoverishment of grounds, the pollution of water, the overthrow and the impoverishment of landscapes and biodiversity, humans are exposed every day about inputs which have some consequences on their heath, running into debt the poor farmers and sometimes this farmers commit suicide…

But you can choose if you want to say NO about pesticides and you can struggle against !!!

INPUTS DANGER