Organic food is often derided as being expensive, which it can be, and elitist, which it isn’t, the focus in such categorisation being on the consumer. Yet, there is little understanding of the systemic and human consequences of conventional agriculture, as chemical-centric farming is termed. For instance, there is little acknowledgement of what a farming family endures in their daily life when supplying the market with produce that is grown with a cocktail of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides and the unintended consequences of having these poisons lying around in the farm or their home.
The agrochemical stores that sell these products almost never offers safety gloves or advise the farmer on personal safety. The safe-application dosage is provided in gross — and, I would argue, negligent — approximation. As a consequence, it is common to see farm hands fill up the sprayer with water, add the chemical — often a deadly poison — with bare hands, load the tanks on their back and spray without any sort of protective covering. While some crops require less sprays, others, such as cotton, demand heavy dosages of pesticides and the outcome is expected, if depressing. Since everyone uses these chemicals with little caution, it is seen as the norm and not unusual in the least.
Young farmers taking to the profession follow suit which is particularly disheartening to see, for it is highly probable that the deleterious effects of regular usage — disruption of the endocrine system, genetic damage, alteration to the functioning of the pituitary gland, fertility and birth defects, cancers, lung ailments, autoimmune conditions, among others — will visit them in some years. The choices of chemicals available in the nearby agrochemicals shop and toxicity of “crop protection” products, as the basket of pesticides is euphemistically referred to, are utterly frightening to contemplate: weedicides such as Glyphosate, considered to be a possible carcinogen, were introduced in India a couple of decades ago and are used widely as a substitute to manual labour in weed control, broadening the number of highly dangerous chemicals farmhands will be exposed to.
The impact of these chemicals on wildlife — insects, birds, mammals, reptiles — is now known as a result of well-documented published research, yet the learnings have been ignored in the making of policy decisions, even when the effect on human food supply is likely to be acutely affected in future. As an example, it is known that neonicotinoids, a class of systemic insecticides widely used in agriculture and veterinary medicine to control pests, are dangerous neurotoxic chemicals for bees and other pollinators, yet few countries around the world are able to fend off the lobbying efforts of the pesticide industry and ban them.
Corrupting the food chain
It is now also understood that chemical fertilizers and pesticides leach into groundwater, streams, lakes and rivers, affecting the aquatic biota and the food chain all the way to mammals. A pioneering study done over 30 years ago found that organochlorine pesticide residues were determined in otter faeces from nine catchment regions in southwestern England from 1989 to 1991. Following the scientific principle of bio-accumulation (accumulation of a pollutant like a pesticide in tissues of a living organism), humans are likely to be affected, particularly in the less-developed countries where water treatment at the municipality level is shoddy or non-existent.
The environmental media and NGOs have challenged the pesticide industry and rightly asked hard questions, despite little support from the regulators. Yet, there are further troubling questions: what happens to an empty pesticide bottle or packet? The anecdotal answers are worrying. Take bottles: instances of farmers living close to streams rinsing these bottles in stream water to use the ‘last drop’ in their sprayer are well known, which, in turn, releases toxicity into the stream and ultimately into the human body, as species such as fish and crabs are consumed. There is an active plastic recycling economy, in which aggregators visit farms and buy such used bottles which are then sent to be recycled to another product. When we consider the fumes breathed in and the exposure to toxins by thousands of poor workers in the informal recycling sector as these bottles are melted or converted into plastic chips, the supply chain and its unintended consequences becomes clearer. None of this is documented or even satisfactorily understood, nor is there any ongoing study that could provide clues to the scale and insidiousness of the problem.
Buying organic food is perhaps the optimal solution, as increasing demand from consumers will encourage the transition for some farmers, either individually or as farmer producer organisations, to sustainable ways of farming. The valid question often asked is about the genuineness of the organic produce we see online or on shelves. The purchase of products with organic certification is one solution, yet a better way is to read up about organic movements and farmers and to seek out those who farm organically because of their beliefs and value systems while ensuring healthy profits; social media has enough leads to offer.
Many of us desire to make a social impact, perhaps by supporting an indigent student, a local NGO near our homes or a waste collection effort. What is perhaps not entirely evident is that becoming an organic food consumer is perhaps the most sustained contribution we could make to the environment and, on a larger and broader canvas, to society.
Published – June 08, 2025 02:07 am IST