Modern technology has its uses and cannot be broadly condemned, but there have been many mistakes. The dramatic turnaround from scarcity to plenty over the past century has been achieved at the expense of a massive and ever-increasing input of chemicals and with little thought for tomorrow.
Where corn has proven more profitable than cows, the practice of replacing organic matter on the land has died out. The result is that soils are becoming lifeless and, in many instances, simply disappearing into the sea. Larger agricultural machines have demanded larger fields and, as a result, trees and shrubbery have disappeared taking their dependent wildlife with them.
Plants need a certain level of nutrients for healthy growth so, in order to maintain these levels, more and more chemical fertilizers are poured on to the land year after year, filling the plants we eat with alien chemicals and polluting our waterways. The traditional practice of mixing and rotating crops has been abandoned for short-term profit with the result that pests and diseases build up to uncontrollable proportions. Killing them with poison sprays becomes essential and, as resistant strains of both pests and diseases develop, more powerful chemicals have to be used. It is this aspect that is most troubling to us, the consumers of food produced in this way.
Every year, some chemical previously thought to have been safe is banned somewhere in the world. One of the early cases was the insecticide DDT. There is no doubt that it saved many thousands of lives by killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes, but it was also found to build up in the bodies of animals and birds, causing untold losses of wildlife; it was banned in most Western countries before it caused any deaths in humans. This was followed by the soil insecticide dieldrin, the selective weedkiller loxynil, suspected of causing birth defects, and, in most Western countries, the herbicide, trichlorophenoxy-acetic acid, or 2,4,5-T, which has been linked with cancer.
Not only have these chemicals been shown to cause untold damage to wildlife, but some have also been found in alarming quantities in food, even after processing and cooking.
