The statement by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics ...



JAGE-A485

THE PHILOSOPHY, ECONOMICS AND ETHICS BEHIND PESTICIDE USE IN AGRICULTURE

ABSTRACT

The paper describes knowledge dynamics, posits arguments and lists major ethical concerns regarding pesticide use in agriculture. The dominant traditional argument which claims that the ‘invention of pesticides outweighs its costs’ ought to be ousted by the new emerging interdisciplinary argument that says ‘pesticide use in agriculture results in overall lower returns’. Also ethical issues on pesticide use arise because different actors have different values and beliefs. The producers, government and scientific communities have underestimated the pesticide-induced hazards that society at large face. These institutions ought to be held accountable for the adverse impacts of pesticides, and thus they should internalize responsibility for minimizing pesticides hazards by effective collaboration to improve user’s knowledge and also to enhance understanding of pesticides knowledge systems. Such collaboration among different institutions should be in such a way that one’s own survival is viewed in relation to others and vice-versa.

Keywords: Pesticides, paradigm, philosophy, ethics, cost-benefits, interdisciplinary, Nepal

1. INTRODUCTION

The World Development Report 2008, a publication of the World Bank (WB, 2007) provides, right at the outset, a thought provoking image of the agrarian society of developing nations. The report presents the livelihood conditions of African farmers as follows:

An African woman bent under the sun, weeding sorghum in an arid field with a hoe, a child strapped on her back—a vivid image of rural poverty. For her large family and millions like her, the meager bounty of subsistence farming is the only chance to survive.

To this striking image of rural struggle for survival, we wish to incorporate additional points that elaborate the harsh reality and threats faced by members of such farming communities.

……What are the odds of survival of these subsistence farmers in the face of increasing chemical pesticide use without adequate safety measures, as is happening in many developing countries? Indeed, what chances do they have of increasing production and overcoming poverty?

The answer is, to some extent, addressed in the Silent Spring (Carson, 1962) and the Our Stolen Future (Colborn et al., 1996) and other additional aspects of the answer could be deduced from Degradation and Marginalization theory, and other available literature. Pesticides are toxic chemicals that pose considerable hazards to ecosystem and human health. The rationality of pesticide use is that the women try to defend the potential health hazards of pesticides so long as perceived benefit exceeds the costs of use. But when the health and environmental costs of pesticide use are considerable, they eventually begin selling their property, such as land, livestock, etc., to defend the impacts (Sauerborn et al., 1996; McIntyre et al., 2006) and they finally become forced into deeper poverty through the “degradation and marginalization” process (Robbins, 2004). The ultimate outcome of pesticide use without adequate safety precautions is nothing other than human tragedy. In addition, pesticides insult our nature through pollution that needs careful attention and also raised ethical concerns. In this paper, we describe the philosophical view of pesticide knowledge dynamics, posit different arguments behind pesticide use, and raise ethical issues on pesticide use, and finally conclude with some guidelines for future direction with respect to the safe use of pesticides. We are postulating our vision and arguing our hypothesis based on the concerns having significant impacts on developing nations, and to do so we are likely to bias towards field of economics.

2. PESTICIDE USE IN AGRICULTURE: THE KNOWLEDGE DYNAMICS

Any scientific enquiry on a matter is not merely for gaining knowledge of the matter, but also to transfer the knowledge into practical actions for the betterment of human life. However, while doing so, this endeavor presupposes knowledge of the appropriate conceptual framework, which, if originally defective will cause a malfunctioning of the system, impacting negatively on the science and the scientific knowledge (Chalmers, 1999). This is what has been observed for the pesticides knowledge. Until the early 1960s, the scientific community and general public operated on the belief that pesticide use revolutionized food production and human development. They had a uniform understanding of the consequences of pesticide use to humankind, focused only on the positive aspects. The human perception, understanding, and the approach to pesticide science, as well as, methods for problem solving, instruments and techniques were all framed on the positive aspects of pesticides. However, when the book Silent Spring was published in 1962, there was a revolutionary shift in human thinking from the benefits of pesticides to its negative consequences. The Silent Spring served as an agent to bring about a paradigm shift in human thinking on pesticide science emphasizing adverse impacts on the environment and human health. This new thinking on the pesticides, encompassing the negative aspects, was supposed to minimize its use in agriculture, but in reality it did not, because shortly after that period, there was also a paradigm shift in agricultural practices from ‘primitive’ to the so-called ‘green revolution’. This transformation of agricultural practices led to further increased use of pesticides, in response to increased population growth, poverty and global demand for food, without regard for its negative externalities. The technology based ‘green revolution’ demands high inputs and cash investment, and also pollutes the environment and, thus, appears unsustainable for future agricultural (Wilson and Tisdell, 2001). The original paradigm of the green revolution was intended to generate positive consequences like increased productivity, economy, and sustainability. But now many scientists have come to the conclusion that the green revolution technology, including pesticides, has negative consequences for the environment, and hence, its proper management has become a bigger challenge for maintaining ecosystem and human health, having major implications for survival and quality of life.

From the 1960s to about 1990, there were many competing theories for and against pesticide use. No single theory was widely accepted during that period, indicating a condition of turmoil, with debates about the basic principles and fundamentals of the paradigm. During the 1990s, a school of thought emerged with the widely accepted hypothesis that pesticide use in crop cultivation has mainly two explicit effects. The first is an income gain in the short term. The second is the negative impacts on human and ecosystem health. From 1990 to present, thousands of articles supporting a variety of aspects of the pesticide science according the established rules are available in the peer-reviewed journals, books and other literature. Most of the published articles have either supported beneficial effects of pesticides (Cooper and Dobson, 2007) like income gain, or highlighted its negative effects like environmental pollution and human health problems. Considerable progression of pesticide knowledge took place during this period.

In 1994 when a small group of scientists from International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines, published their empirical evidences of pesticide effects on human health (Antle and Pingali, 1994; Pingali et al., 1994) in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, a new problem emerged for the scientific community, which has yet to be solved. They, along with another small group of workers in the field of Ecological Economics, proposed a new hypothesis that pesticide use in agriculture results in overall lower returns to humans. Despite much literature in favor of this hypothesis, the larger scientific community and private sector are not in favor of accepting the hypothesis on the consequences of pesticide use in agricultural production. Currently, the scientific knowledge of pesticide use is at the ‘crisis’ resulting more inconsistencies in the scientific findings, and provoking debate on the use of pesticides for enhancing crop production. These debates are further confounded due to the as yet incomplete scientific understanding of long-term pesticide exposure and human as well as ecosystem health.

When DDT was discovered, people had a very limited understanding of pesticides. However, in recent years, developments in science and technology has expanded our knowledge and understanding of how pesticides work and to some extent its consequences as well. Moreover, it is expected that scientific research and our level of understanding will progress further in future, perhaps leading to yet another hypothesis on pesticide use. Such a new hypothesis or approach to deal with the current crisis is likely to bring about a ‘revolution’ in the pesticide knowledge systems. Thus, scientific knowledge and theories on pesticide use grow continuously as more observations are made available, new hypothesis are formed, older hypotheses are refined, and new relationships established.

INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE

The above figure shows the evolution of hypotheses made for pesticide use. The initial set of hypotheses (A1, A2, . . .) made in the past are replaced by new ones, which result in the stepwise development of the pesticide science. Although it is not possible to claim that hypothesis or theory relating to pesticide use is entirely true, it is plausible to say, for example, that the set of hypotheses (C1, C2 . . .) in Figure 1, are closer to the truth than the previous sets (B1, B2, . . .) and (A1, A2, . . .), and as yet the set C has not been disproved based on the existing knowledge and understanding, but may be replaced in the future. The hypotheses set C can be considered to be the best based on the current ‘mind’ on pesticide science, but is not the absolute truth regarding pesticide use because the ‘mind’ could interpret facts based on different framework or paradigm in the future.

From the above discourse, we point out that while the ‘facts’ regarding pesticide use are basically constant, our knowledge and understanding changes due to the changing ‘mind’, thus the dynamic nature of our ‘mind’ with reference to perceptions and interpretation of the facts in light of new information will enhance the pesticide knowledge. Similar to Paul Feyerabend’s (1993) argument, a new hypothesis or theory of pesticide use emerges as a consequence of various social, personal and aesthetic factors affecting the scientific community. This is clearly exemplified in the book by Pimentel and Lehman (1993). A chapter of the book entitled “The Benefits and Risks of Pesticides: Two Views” shows how a single fact is interpreted by an industrialist and environmentalist. An industrialist suggests more research on the benefits of pesticides while an environmentalist suggests just opposite!

3. THE TWO PARADIGMS OF PESTICIDES USE

In the dynamic process of interpreting and acknowledging the facts through ‘mind’, the society (and the scientific community) has established a developmental rule that our present ‘action’ must not be detrimental to future generations. We must strive to preserve continuity in the quality of our natural environment and our lives such that, just as our ancestors left behind an intact world for us, what we do today should not lead to a reduced quality of life for our children in future. This line of thinking is reflected in the Brundtland Report Our Common Future and is termed ‘sustainable development’. The report addressed the growing concern of scientists about the deteriorating human and natural environments and its potential long-term consequences to human society. The report alerted the world to the importance of economic development without depleting natural resource base and our environment and ecological integrity. The adoption of pesticides by humans for agricultural production, however, pollutes environment and depletes ecosystems, clearly challenging the sustainability of resource base. In this regard, we questions: was the use of pesticides in agriculture by humans in itself a faulty choice? Perhaps the choice made by human society was not properly understood at the time and the distinctions between right and wrong or means and end were not clear? Or the road we came through by using pesticides was attractive initially and now it appears to be dangerous? We would like to discuss these questions by two perspectives: the dominant economic and the emerging inter-disciplinary approach. In our view, these two positions represent the two different paradigms of pesticides use. The conceptual frameworks of interpreting pesticide use between paradigms vary significantly. The rationality of pesticide use in agriculture, as argued by the first is that the costs associated with its impacts are justified by its benefits. While the second, emphasizes the complexness of pesticide use and thus demands multidisciplinary rationality for pesticide use.

3.1The Dominant Economic View

This, also known as the utilitarian economic perspective, weighs the conventional costs and benefits of pesticide use. It maintains that pesticide use has revolutionized food production and the benefits of production far overweigh negative externalities caused to human beings or the environment. This argument claims that the technologies are value-laden (Meghani, 2008), with population growth, hunger, poverty and malnutrition providing the basis for the argument (FAO, 2004). Hence, benefits obtained by reducing these alarming human conditions balance the costs of pesticide use. Strictly speaking based on the data, it appears that pesticide use is beneficial. Generally, it is said that farmers save an estimated US $ 3 to $ 5 in crops for every $ 1 that they invest in pesticides (Raven et al., 2008). However, the estimate of benefits does not take into account the environmental and public health impacts of pesticides. Moreover, the reasons for hunger and malnutrition in developing countries can be explained by an interaction of many biophysical, political, economic and social factors and forces (such as, capitalistic exploitation and globalization) that are external to these countries. A recent and simple example are the ambitious ‘Millennium Development Goals’ that have been largely prepared by the advanced nations and thrust upon the developing countries without adequately addressing their interests, capacity and achievability of the goals. Goals set for the poor, goalposts set by the rich (Saith, 2008). Is it truly possible to articulate similar goals for diverse countries where the root causes of problems like population growth and malnutrition may differ and would they be achievable by the same level of actions?

The economic view has overlooked the need for complete accounting of costs and benefits of pesticide use. The problem of accounting is that pesticide use not only increases production, but also affects human health and a multitude of interlinked factors within the natural environment (Pimentel, 2005), thus the conventional approach to accounting is inadequate. The utilitarian paradigm, which claims that the invention of pesticide outweighs its costs can be discounted by the recent interdisciplinary approach. With the advancement of science and technology, the level of our understanding has increased since the inception of pesticides, and nearly full costs and benefits of its use may now be determined by including environmental, ecological and social externalities of pesticide use. As stated by Pierre Duhem that either the theory under test may be at fault or alternatively the auxiliary assumption may be at fault, which in turn is responsible for the erroneous outputs (Chalmers, 1999). The economic paradigm underestimates the range of negative externalities that pesticides cause; i.e., it undermines the assumption that pesticides have negative consequences. This position overwhelmingly considers food production, the primary benefit of pesticide use, and underestimates the negative impacts of pesticide use on human and ecosystem health. Actually, not only in the field of economics, but also in the field of agricultural science and ecology and even medicine, scientists and scholars were working with its own defined field not interested or willing to see how things interacted. The use of pesticide in agriculture was one example where exogenous effects forced some scientists to begin to look beyond boundaries of their own disciplines to try to understand what they were seeing and experiencing. These people were faced with trying to find new ways of thinking and new methodological approaches to gain a better understanding of the world they had come to see. As a result, much literature emerged in favor of multidisciplinary science for dealing pesticide dilemma.

3.2 The Emerging Interdisciplinary View

The interdisciplinary try to incorporate a wide range of externalities in the issue and is also open to include all possible aspects arising from developments in the scientific knowledge base. Against the conventional economics approach, this perspective considers ‘almost all’ positive and negative consequences in the analysis of pesticide dilemma. This view intends to identify optimum levels of pesticide usage with respect to human society as a whole. The way of dealing pesticide issues are much more complex, however, because it considers large range of environmental, ecological and human health effects and putting monetary value to these effects may be more complicated (Bowles and Webster, 1995) because of limited valuation methods for complicated ecosystems. However, this approach would only be the right choice dealing pesticide dilemma. The different fields of economics, for example agricultural economics, resource economics, environmental economics, ecological economics and institutional economics, perceived the issue in its own way, however the advancement of economics field has emerged more on interdisciplinary and complexities. For example, the ecological economics perceived pesticides use as an endogenous factors affecting physical and natural ecosystems, while agricultural economics view only as a production input. We favor interdisciplinary approach for tackling pesticides issues and argue that, in view of the current advancement of scientific knowledge in the field of agriculture and pesticides and with current pace of globalization and market liberalization, due precaution and deliberation should be exercised in the production and proliferation of toxic chemical in order to protect the dignity, rights and well-being of consumers and the natural environment upon which all living beings ultimately depend.

The final remark is that interdisciplinary approach is able to take account of a number of issues of pesticides as being a new paradigm. It not only accounts positive but also the negative effects of pesticide use on human health (short- and long-run) and the multiple interacting factors in the environment, including the soil, crops, surface and ground water, and, micro- as well as macro-flora and fauna. On the other hand, the conventional economic paradigm has not accounted for the effects of pesticides on the large numbers of interacting factors, thus it projections would be inaccurate. Nonetheless, the latter has dominated the production and use of pesticides until recently, leading to many adverse health and ecological consequences, and many unethical decisions by the key actors and governments.

4. THE ETHICAL CONCERNS ON PESTICIDE USE

We also emphasize the conduct and moral responsibility of the actors involved in pesticide manufacture and use. We would like to raise ethical concerns about the injudicious use of such chemicals and the inadequate attention paid to the long-term adverse consequences. The 21th Century is proud of its advancement in science and technology over the past few centuries leading to improvement in the health status and life expectancy, however, indiscriminate use of highly toxic and persistent chemical pesticides could undermine past achievements in the health sector. Comparatively, the world has better technology, better knowledge and greater wealth; however nations seem to be against the collective concrete action. Also profit motive individualism and different values and beliefs of such individuals may arises ethical concerns of pesticide use.

No one disputes the fact that human and ecosystem health are adversely affected by persistent chemical pesticide. How then, can we condone the export of chemicals banned in western countries to developing countries without adequate warnings and precautions? Is the assumption that these banned chemicals would have less severe consequences in developing nations defensible? Indeed, developed nations have, in the past, deliberately or otherwise, ‘dumped’ highly toxic and expired chemicals into less developed countries as ‘aid’. For instance, more than 70 metric tons of highly toxic and persistent chemical pesticides were donated by multinational companies for Nepal (Anonymous, 2001), essentially becoming an ‘ecological time bomb’ that could go off in the near future. The ingredients of this ‘ecological time bomb’ include DDT, dieldrin, and chlorinated organo-mercury compounds. The use of these compounds have been either banned or restricted in many developed country, however, still many industries from these countries market these product into developing world. For example, from 1997 to 2000, the US pesticide companies exported over 30,500 metric tons of pesticides forbidden from use in the United States (Raven et al., 2008).

Another ethical issue arises due to the fact that while there is ready access to information about these toxic chemicals in the developed world, very few farmers in developing countries are properly informed or made aware of the risks. The community of ‘actors’ ought to be bound by a code of conduct preventing such disparities. It is a well documented fact that farmers in developing countries adopt significantly less safety precautions while using pesticides. In spite of this, there are innumerable companies advertising chemical pesticides through the media in the developing countries, but very few advocating safety precautions while handing and applying pesticides. Whether this is deliberate or unintentional, we argue that the advertisement of pesticides in mass media in developing countries with no awareness campaigns is unethical. However, here, not only are the multinational companies or mass media at fault, but so too are the national policies of the governments involved.

A brief examination of policy is appropriate here as it is the principle action by which governments connect developed world actors to developing world or farmers. The World Development Report of the World Bank, which is regarded as a key document of global action for development, proposes a new vision to ‘revolutionize’ agricultural production at household level through subsidies to inputs like chemical pesticides. The report recommends subsidies for agricultural inputs in the developing world, which had been removed earlier, for example in 1996 for Nepal. Such a policy move is likely to increase use of pesticides in future, causing yet more adverse consequences. Furthermore, many governments of developing nations do not follow policies that offer opportunities for farmers to experiment with different aspects of the technologies; rather, they still follow the top-down approach, increasing the chances of introducing environmentally unsustainable and socio-economically unjustifiable technologies. At present, a few countries have adopted participatory research in technology development, but this is very limited in view of the populations that are at risk from pesticides. The Community Integrated Pest Management, which is well documented and found to benefit farmers in Indonesia and Vietnam, are still unimplemented in the rest of the developing world. The reasons for this are varied, but clearly a major factor is the ‘lack of or existence of unethical policies of the government’.

We belief in harmonious policies and development that ought to conserve pristine ecosystems, require cooperation and result mutual benefits, which are also supposed to be the common values of people throughout the world for happy and prosperous life. Now having raised the unethical issues associated with pesticides, we are not against the Beijing Olympic 2008 wishes of people from all over the world to strive for a bright future of Mankind – “One World One Dream”. We are hopeful that whatsoever the disciplines we belong to, togetherness for being the one world increase the success of our dream.

5. PESTICIDE USE AND THE FARMERS

Although, at the outset, the invention of pesticides was believed to be beneficial for human society, it has now become amply evident that this technology may be more of a curse than a boon. The road we passed through was initially attractive (income gain for example) but it appears to be disaster in a long run. It can, some ways, be compared with the invention of nuclear weapons. Despite the many positive uses of nuclear power, the two atom bombs detonated in Japan, at the end of the World War II, resulted in the immediate deaths of around 120 thousand people and eventually countless others, had been developed using the same as researched for nuclear energy production. The point here is neither to equate pesticides with nuclear weapons, nor to discount the value of nuclear power, but to illustrate that just as humans still suffer from the long-term effects of radiation, agrarian societies that applied persistent chemical pesticides like DDT and BHC in the past, will continue to face health problems from exposure through contaminated soil, water and air.

The World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations has estimated that use of pesticides cause 3 million poisonings and 220 thousand deaths and about 750 thousand chronic illnesses every year worldwide (WHO, 2006). The majority of these are reported in developing countries because of inadequate occupational safety standards, protective clothing, and washing facilities along with insufficient enforcement of safety regulations; poor labeling of pesticides, illiteracy, and insufficient knowledge of pesticide hazards (Paoletti and Pimentel, 2000). Moreover, it is said that these developing nations utilize only about 20% of all the pesticides applied in the world and the numbers of casualties due to pesticides are believed to be underestimated as many such cases are not reported in developing world. Millions of farmers, and additionally, millions of other people living in agrarian communities and the innumerable consumers are exposed to the chemical pesticides through various pathways such as inhaling contaminated air, drinking contaminated water, consuming contaminated food, etc. It is, however, strange to know that there are very few studies that precisely link agricultural transformation, environmental degradation and farmers’ health (Hawkes and Ruel, 2006).

There are probable linkages between long-term pesticide exposure and human health problems like neurological effects, endocrine disruption, reproductive health and cancer (EPA, 1999). Similarly, use of pesticides can have unintended effects on the environment like air, water, and soil contamination, and threats to plants, animals and aquatic life (Pimentel, 2005). Further, pesticide use also impacts on the ecological balance, for example, bioaccumulation, biomagnifications, pest resistance and resurgence (Raven et al., 2008). Thousands of scientific studies have been conducted on the consequences of pesticide use, and virtually all recent publications are in agreement that pesticides harm human health and the ecosystem. It seems that farmers will go against the reality and likely to increase pesticides. The African women and like her many other farmers are hungry and needs production for their survival, also for population of rest of the world. They are illiterate, ill trained, unaware, and lack alternatives.

Despite the application of tons of pesticides worldwide, more than 40% of all potential food production and another 20% of the harvested crop is lost to pests (Paoletti and Pimentel, 2000). Further, despite a 33-fold increase in pesticide use in the United States since the 1940s, percentages of crop lost to pest have not changed (Raven et al., 2008). These examples are enough to raise hands on the effectiveness and continuation of pesticide technology into agriculture. Pimentel (1995) estimated that less than one percent of pesticides applied to the agriculture reach their target pests, and more than 99 percent of it adversely affects unintended targets including the public and environmental health. Use of pesticides, thus, does have direct and indirect costs of pollution. Very few studies have attempted to value the effects of pesticide use to human society as a whole. The annual losses due to the application of pesticides in the United States of America, for example, estimated to be US $ 10 billion, or for every US $ 3.2 millions in pesticide benefits, one person victimize to cancer (Pimentel, 2005). In developing country like Nepal, the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture has led to an estimated US $ 74 millions loss at maximum per year (Atreya, 2006). These costs are very significant for the nations and could be saved if proper measures are adopted. A small portion of the pollution costs resulting from pesticides are borne by manufacturing companies. The most affected population is the farming community, who bear almost all costs of pesticide use.

In spite of the prevailing reality, farmers continue to use pesticides at an increasing rate. The scientific community has, thus far, not been able to develop a substitute for chemical pesticides. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has been recommended by scientists as a means of producing high yields while minimizing pesticide use and reducing health, environmental and social costs of pesticide pollution. It does this through optimum rates and timing of pesticide along with adequate safety as well as incorporation of other cultural and biological pest control means. However, the adoption of IPM approach is limited, due in part to the fact that it is knowledge intensive and ideally designed for developing world where farmers are literate (Raven et al., 2008). Although genetic engineering of crops to resist pests is another strategy to minimize pesticide use (Hossain et al., 2004), it does not completely replace pesticides and the safety of genetically modified food products is still a hotly debated and uncertain topic. Clearly, then, for maximum effectiveness, the development of any alternatives to pesticides ought to be synchronized with the farmers’ experiences and perceptions, and indeed the alternatives are very urgently needed.

Scientists or scholars who tried to value pollution costs of pesticide use have also underestimated costs of pollution because of incomplete accounting of the range of negative externalities. Further methodological difficulties for accounting trans-boundary effects of long-range transport of persistent chemicals are also observed. This leads to an underestimate of the potential impacts, and farmers are likely to misjudge the existing low level of costs estimated by scientists. For instance, Devi (2007) calculated the costs of pesticide pollution in India to be US $ 37 per person per year. Similarly, Atreya (2007) estimated a value of only $ 2 per individual per year for the same effects in Nepal. Further, studies in Africa have also yielded similar range of costs. This cost appears very small compared to the increase in farm production costs, thus when a farmer is faced with a choice between the pollution costs and increases in farm production, s/he underestimates pesticide’s effects and continues to use pesticides without proper safety precautions (Atreya, 2008). The costs of pesticide pollution for the society is likely to be significantly higher than the costs estimated in many studies because most of them consider only a fraction of the full impacts of pesticide use. It seems that the scientific community has overlooked this underestimation of the effects, and not fully accounted for all externalities, thereby, neglecting its responsibility to the public and towards nature, upon which all organisms depend.

Also pesticides are some of the most stringently regulated chemicals in the world. But developing countries may not necessarily have laws and regulations that properly regulates pesticide imports/exports and use (Ecobichon, 2001). The countries having such mechanism may still lack strict enforcement; for example, Nepal, despite having the necessary legislation (Pesticides Act 1991 and Regulation 1994; Environmental Protection Act 1997 and Regulation 1998), farmers have no choice but to buy highly toxic expired banned pesticides due to weak regulation and enforcement (Dahal, 1995).

Our observation is that farmers are encouraged to use pesticides because of the unethical practices of the ‘actors’, lack of proper institutions governing the systems, and also because of underestimating its impacts by the scientific community. As yet, we have incomplete knowledge and understanding of the impacts of pesticides to human society and the natural environment. This is worrisome because almost all pesticide ‘actors’ target farmer at the end and most of these end users are not fully aware of the harm that is supposed to cause by pesticides. These innocent farmers are under increasing pressure to rise own subsistence economy for their survival as well as to increase production to feed the expanding population of the world. At last, we would like to have your attention in our hypothesis that says is chemical intensive farming the best way to meet food demand and to protect our environment? Or could and should more be done to protect small independent farmers?

6. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The existing knowledge and understanding of pesticides is limited and is changing over time, thus old hypotheses/theories are gradually replaced by newer more comprehensive ones. The argument that invention of pesticides outweighs its costs, could be discounted by the interdisciplinary paradigm that says pesticide uses results in overall lower returns to human society. The health and ecological costs of pesticide pollution are borne mainly by farmers. Thus, we maintain that the ‘action’ of pesticide manufacturers, governments and the scientific community ought to be morally responsible for the negative consequences of pesticide use. We believe that proper measures and action to increase awareness of the adverse impacts of pesticides, ensuring the adopting precautionary measures, and development of alternatives to pesticides is long overdue. For these, effective collaboration among manufacturers, users, consumers, governments and scientific community mediated by international institutions like World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labor Organization is essential in order to enhance users’ own knowledge, and also to improve the understanding of other capacity. Such collaboration among the different actors and institutions ought to emphasize understanding one’s own survival in relation to others and vice-versa, so as to avoid impending threats to the quality of life for future generations.

7. REFERENCES

Anonymous. (2001). Pesticides Sent as Aid to Nepal Now Toxic Waste. Retrieved December 06, 2007 from .

Antle, J.M., and P.L. Pingali. (1994). Pesticides, productivity, and farmer health: a Philippine case study. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 76, 418-430.

Atreya, K. (2006). Health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution in Nepal. (In: Proc. International Seminar on Environmental and Social Impacts of Agricultural Intensification in Himalayan Watersheds. (pp 65-73). (Kathmandu, Nepal: Kathmandu University and Ministry of Environment, Science & Technology).

Atreya, K. (2007). Pesticide use in Nepal: understanding health costs from short-term exposure SANDEE Working Paper No. 28. (Kathmandu, Nepal: South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics).

Atreya, K. (2008). Health costs from short-term exposure to pesticides in Nepal. Social Science & Medicine, 67, 522-519.

Bowles, R. G., and Webster, J. P. G. (1995). Some problems associated with the analysis of the costs and benefits of pesticides. Crop Protection, 14, 593-600.

Carson, R. (1962). Silent Spring. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company).

Chalmers, A.F. (1999). What is this thing called science? Third Edition. (United Kingdom: Open University Press).

Colborn, T., Dumanoski, D., and Myers, J. P. (1996). Our Stolen Future: Are we threatening our fertility, intelligence and survival - A scientific detective story. (London, UK: Abacus).

Cooper, J. and H. Dobson. (2007). The benefits of pesticides to mankind and the environment. Crop Protection, 26, 1337-1348.

Dahal, L. (1995). A study on pesticide pollution in Nepal. (Kathmandu, Nepal: National Conservation Strategy Implementation Project, IUCN/Nepal.)

Devi, I.P. (2007). Pesticide use in the rice bowl of Kerala: health costs and policy options SANDEE Working Paper No. 21. (Kathmandu, Nepal: South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics).

Ecobichon, D. J. (2001). Pesticide use in developing countries. Toxicology, 160, 27-33.

EPA. (1999). Recognition and management of pesticide poisoning. Fifth Edition. (Washington DC, USA: Office of Pesticide Programs, United States Environmental Protection Agency).

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Feyerabend, P. (1993). Against Methods. Third Editions. (London:Verso).

Hawkes, C., and Ruel, M. T. (2006). Understanding the links between agriculture and health: overview. (In C. Hawkes and M. T. Ruel (Eds.). Understanding the links between agriculture and health) pp. 1-2). Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Hossain, F., Pray, C. E., Lu, Y., Huang, J., Fan, C., and Hu, R. (2004). Genetically modified cotton and farmers' health in China. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 10, 296-303.

McIntyre, D., M. Thiede, G. Dahlgren, and M. Whitehead. (2006). What are the economic consequences for households of illness and paying for health care in low-and middle-income country contexts? Social Science & Medicine, 62, 858-865.

Meghani, Z. (2008). Values, technologies, and epistemology. Agriculture and Human Values, 25, 25-34.

Paoletti, M., and Pimentel, D. (2000). Environmental risks of pesticides versus genetic engineering for agricultural pest control. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 12, 279-303.

Pimentel, D. (1995). Amounts of pesticides reaching target pests: environmental impacts and ethics. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 8, 17-29.

Pimentel, D. (2005). Environmental and economic costs of the application of pesticides primarily in the United States. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 7, 229-252.

Pimentel, D., and Lehman, H. (Eds.) (1993). The pesticide question: environment, economics, and ethics. (New York: Rautledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc).

Pingali, P.L., C.B. Marquez, and F.G. Palis. (1994). Pesticides and Philippine rice farmer health: a medical and economic analysis. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 76, 587-592.

Raven, P.H., Berg, L.R., and Hassenzahl, D.M. (2008). Environment. Sixth Edition. (USA: John Wiley & Sons Inc.).

Robbins, P. (2004). Political ecology: a critical introduction. (India: Blackwell Publishing).

Saith, A. (2007).Goals set for the poor, goalposts set by the rich: Millennium Developmental Goals and the dumping-down of development. International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, 45, 12-13

Sauerborn, R., A. Adams, and M. Hien. (1996). Household strategies to cope with the economic costs of illness. Social Science & Medicine, 43, 291-301.

WHO. (2006). Preventing disease through healthy environments: Towards an estimate of the environmental burden of disease. (Paris: World Health Organization of the United Nations (WHO).

Wilson, C and Tisdell, C. (2001). Why farmers continue to use pesticides despite environmental, health and sustainability costs. Ecological Economics, 39, 449-462.

World Bank (WB). (2007). The World Development Report 2008. (Washington DC: The World Bank).

Lists of Figure

[pic]

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Past

Future

Time

Pesticide Use

The ’Mind’

The perception of a fact may vary from one scientist to another. Interpretation of the fact is biased towards the past knowledge that a scientist had. A group of scientists with similar ‘mind’ would come up with the same hypothesis.

Figure 1: How pesticide use is interpreted with time depends on the analytical framework of the scientific communities

C1, C2, C3, .... Cn

B1, B2, B3, .....Bn

A1, A2, A3, ... An

??

Different Hypothesis

Analytical Framework

The Fact

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