America Needs to Use Less Chemicals :: Farming Agriculture Environmental Essays

America Needs to Use Less Chemicals How would you like going to the grocery store and finding out that prices on your regular food items have increased sharply? How would society react to a giant inflation on goods that are needed most? Would poverty and starvation increase with such inflation? These are all questions that would have to be answered if farm chemicals were to be banned throughout the world. Banning farm chemicals, such as herbicides and pesticides, would in turn lower the yields farmers would receive from their crops. It would also increase the demand for food, along with the price the consumer would have to pay. But, are there alternative ways of controlling weeds and insects, using a more natural way society will find more acceptable? This debate has been growing more and more each year, but no answer has availed itself. When farmers and society cooperate, education and limits can help slow down pollution and still keep yields to a maximum. Under the current circumstances, farm chemicals are needed for both the farmer and society. With education, chemicals can be used efficiently by everyone. In the debate over chemicals, many people in society believe that more organic fertilizers and weed killers should be used to eliminate pollution due to chemicals. This is a great hypothesis, but when you examine the problem this is nearly impossible. Manure is just one of the examples on how the pollution of fertilizers and weed killers could be reduced. Manure is an organic substance that can substitute many other forms of fertilizers. In reality, it would be impossible to cover every acre of farm ground with manure. Society today is led to believe that manure is safe for water and is free of pollution when actually it is not. Manure potentially carries many funguses and bacteria that can pollute our water supply. Recently it was discovered that a natural fertilizer has the potential of killing many types of noxious weeds. Nick Christians, an Iowa State University researcher, has discovered corn gluten to be the first "natural" weed killer and fertilizer. Corn gluten is a protein s ubstance extracted from corn during processing. Researchers have found that the corn gluten extract has the potential to interfere with germination in crabgrass and other noxious weeds. On the other hand, "the natural corn byproduct is less effective and more expensive than synthetic weed killers," noted Christians (28). America Needs to Use Less Chemicals :: Farming Agriculture Environmental Essays America Needs to Use Less Chemicals How would you like going to the grocery store and finding out that prices on your regular food items have increased sharply? How would society react to a giant inflation on goods that are needed most? Would poverty and starvation increase with such inflation? These are all questions that would have to be answered if farm chemicals were to be banned throughout the world. Banning farm chemicals, such as herbicides and pesticides, would in turn lower the yields farmers would receive from their crops. It would also increase the demand for food, along with the price the consumer would have to pay. But, are there alternative ways of controlling weeds and insects, using a more natural way society will find more acceptable? This debate has been growing more and more each year, but no answer has availed itself. When farmers and society cooperate, education and limits can help slow down pollution and still keep yields to a maximum. Under the current circumstances, farm chemicals are needed for both the farmer and society. With education, chemicals can be used efficiently by everyone. In the debate over chemicals, many people in society believe that more organic fertilizers and weed killers should be used to eliminate pollution due to chemicals. This is a great hypothesis, but when you examine the problem this is nearly impossible. Manure is just one of the examples on how the pollution of fertilizers and weed killers could be reduced. Manure is an organic substance that can substitute many other forms of fertilizers. In reality, it would be impossible to cover every acre of farm ground with manure. Society today is led to believe that manure is safe for water and is free of pollution when actually it is not. Manure potentially carries many funguses and bacteria that can pollute our water supply. Recently it was discovered that a natural fertilizer has the potential of killing many types of noxious weeds. Nick Christians, an Iowa State University researcher, has discovered corn gluten to be the first "natural" weed killer and fertilizer. Corn gluten is a protein s ubstance extracted from corn during processing. Researchers have found that the corn gluten extract has the potential to interfere with germination in crabgrass and other noxious weeds. On the other hand, "the natural corn byproduct is less effective and more expensive than synthetic weed killers," noted Christians (28).