The Pesticide Question

The Pesticide Question: Environment, Economics and Ethics is a 1993 book edited by David Pimentel and Hugh Lehman.^[1] The book explains that modern agriculture cannot completely do without synthetic chemicals, but that it is technologically possible to reduce the amount of pesticides used in the United States by 35-50 per cent without reducing crop yields.

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The Pesticide Question builds on the 1962 best-seller Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Carson by no means rejected the use of pesticides, but argued that their use was often indiscriminate and resulted in harm to people and the environment. She also highlighted the problem of pests becoming resistant to pesticides.

Carson's work is referred to many times in The Pesticide Question, which critically explores many non-technical issues associated with pesticide use, mainly in the United States. The book has 40 contributors, mainly academics from a wide range of disciplines. The Pesticide Question is divided into five main parts:

• social and environmental effects of petsicides;
• methods and effects of reducing pesticide use;
• government policy and pesticide use;
• history, public attitudes, and ethics in regard to pesticide use; and
• the benefits and risks of pesticides.

References

1. ^ Cornell Entomology -- David Pimental

Bibliography

• Carson, R. (1962). Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, ISBN 0-618-24906-0

• Pimentel, D. and Lehman, H. (eds.) (1993). The Pesticide Question: Environment, Economics and Ethics, Chapman & Hall, New York, 441 pages.