Why are pesticides so bad for people and planet?

Why do we use pesticides? 

The current farming system relies on huge chemical inputs to protect crops from insects and pests. But due to the massive scale of industrial farming, this has resulted in extremely high amounts of chemicals accumulating in the soil and running off into waterways.  

This is trapping farmers in a loop of degrading soil and chemical dependency, as growing crops in soil that has already been damaged by chemicals requires further chemicals to ensure success. 

What are the negative effects of pesticides?

There are a number of negative effects of pesticides. The main ones are:

1. They cause major chemical pollution. Every year, pesticide concentrations exceed thresholds of concern in up to a quarter of monitoring sites in European rivers and lakes, and they contaminate over 80% of the EU’s agricultural soils, according to the European Environment Agency.   
2. As such, they cause harm to people’s health, including farmers, who are on the front-lines. According to the European Environment Agency, human exposure to chemical pesticides is linked to a range of serious chronic diseases, such as cancer and heart, respiratory and neurological diseases, as well as developmental delays in children.
3. They drive biodiversity loss. Bees, birds, and other organisms suffer from the pesticides and biocides that end up on and in the plants, in the air, in water and soil. Decades of pesticide use is a major factor in the substantial decline in insect populations in Europe and in the related decline in insect-feeding birds.
4. Pesticide chemicals also damage the health of the soil itself used in farming. Soil health is essential to preserving ecosystems, and therefore vital to many outcomes in agriculture. More on the importance of soil here. 

What is glyphosate? 

One of the most commonly-used pesticides in farming is glyphosate. It’s the world’s top-selling herbicide and the symbol of chemical agriculture. It is used by farmers in their day-to-day activity and homeowners in domestic gardening. 

Yet, glyphosate is harmful to the environment, likely to be carcinogenic and neurotoxic to humans. It harms soil health, pollutes water and damages biodiversity. Recent studies have linked glyphosate to the development of Parkinson’s disease.  

Farmers are the ones on the front-line of these negative impacts, as their health suffers from overexposure to pesticides, glyphosate in particular. The rest of the population is also indirectly exposed to pesticides like glyphosate, primarily through eating store-bought food. 

How can we farm without pesticides? 

Farming has to be a sustainable profession in every sense of the word – and that includes the livelihoods of those working in the industry. Exhausting the soil and exposing workers and wildlife to toxic chemicals is not a sustainable long-term plan, and it will make food production impossible. In just 15 years, the EU has lost almost 40% of its farmers, as they went out of business or were bought up by their increasingly huge competitors, and their health is seriously suffering from pesticide exposure. 

Contrary to claims made by the agrochemical industry, viable alternatives, including agroecological farming methods, exist. Organic farmers have successfully employed non-chemical methods for over 70 years. Even in conventional agriculture, a reduction in the use of pesticides is possible.       

For successful farming, we need to restore and protect nature. And to do that, we need green rules, like the Nature Restoration Law and Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive. Regulations on the sustainable use of pesticides would provide financial and structural support for farmers to reduce dependence on agrochemicals, as well as circular, regenerative farming practices that prioritise soil health.

What is ClientEarth doing about pesticides? 

We have worked on and are still working on a number of actions targeting pesticide use: