Pesticides and Social Inequality in Nontraditional Agriculture

1. Pesticides and Social Inequality in Nontraditional Agriculture From Cultivating Crisis by Douglas L. Murray

2. What is Nontraditional Agriculture? • Oriental vegetables • Fuzzy squash, long beans, Japanese eggplant, bitter melon, etc… • Specialty crops grown for Asian population in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere • Grown as a cash crop, sold to many exporters, and in exchange would provide credits, inputs, or technical assistance

3. Why Central America? • Cotton crisis in the 1970s caused a peak in social inequality and political instability • Want to stabilize economic region, and encourage new agricultural techniques • Kissinger Commission Act recommended nontraditional agriculture to solve the economic problems

4. The Great Promise of Nontraditional Agriculture • Labor intensive • Reducing unemployment • Grown on small parcels of land • Available to small land owners • Highly valued • Improve flow of hard currency into region

5. Case Study 1: Dominican Republic & Oriental Vegetables • In the beginning, nontraditional agriculture was very successful • Satellite/Outgrower farming systems predominant • Two to three thousand small-scale producers would sell to exporters offering best price • Exporters would have little knowledge of or control over producer cultivation practices • Farmers bore much of the financial risk because they dealt with weather, pests and transportation

6. Pesticide Use by Producers • “Cocktails” were a mixture of several chemicals (illegal in the U.S.) purchased from local merchants • Applied frequently on a calendar schedule • Often used in excess for protection, and to insure an exportable crop • In 1987 and 1988, Dominican Republic was known as having the highest rate of illegal pesticide residue in crops shipped to the U.S.

7. Cons of Pesticide Use • Illegal pesticide residue on the exportation of crops cause rejections and the FDA closely monitoring all food coming to the U.S. • Pesticide Treadmill: pest resistance increases and so does pesticide use • Helpful insects die, causing resistant secondary pest outbreak which leads to quarantine of produce

8. Case Study 2: Honduran Melons • Melons, like cantaloupe and honey dew, could provide local economic growth. • Small producers were either under contracted arrangements or a plantation system

9. Same Pesticide Problem… • Pesticides were used excessively to meet the standards of the U.S. • Extreme application causes secondary pest outburst • Lack of resources and knowledge was blamed on the small-scalefarmersfor problem

10. Response to Control Pesticide Use • Technical Package Contracts provided • Seed, fertilizer, pesticides and regular visits by company technicians • Exporters refuse to purchase produce not under contract • Private agricultural technicians were employed to fight against pests • Independent melon producers were eventually squeezed out of the market

11. The End of the Small-ScaleFarmer • Not capable of earning enough from crops • Didn’t have resources like large companies did • Pest control • Large companies didn’t want to buy from them • Banks limited credit because debts were not being paid back • Switching crops would do no good because of small profit margin

12. Case Study 3: Guatemalan Industry • To fix pesticide problem • USAID worked with primary exporters and large-scale producers • Workshops, meetings and field visits from FDA • Private specialist knowledge used in pest control • FDA stresses the importance of quality control and causes producer consolidation

13. Conclusion • Intensive pesticide use creates a huge ecological crisis that fuels economic and social problems • Although the true intensions of nontraditional agriculture was to create more jobs thus reducing unemployment mainly, it seemed to add to the social inequality because of the consolidation of small-scale farms into large companies. • Large producers will often leave or abandon a site and find “disease-free” land • ‘Comparative advantage’: an economic region collapses, reduces land and operating costs at the expense of the locals