Abstract

White-Stevens, Robert. 1979. The year of the pest. Agrichemical Age 23(1): 6, 8, 30.

After a quarter of a century of virtually total freedom from locust and grasshopper plagues in North America, prodigious flights of hoppers this year have ravaged the Southwest from Colorado across the Plains States into Nebraska and south into Texas, devouring millions of acres of rangeland, forage crops, vegetables and orchard fruits. What will the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club and the Redwoods Association say when the gypsy moth inexorably penetrates the great Sequoia forests of northern California? The gypsy moth, an omnivorous pest that feeds on at least 350 different species of plants, may well emerge as the most formidable, destructive and costly forest and ornamental insect pest on the continent. Aldrin, dieldrin and chlordane have all now been banned. More recently mirex has become entangled in the morass of frivolous litigation promoted with arrogant mendacity by the EDF. Unquestionably, however, the most disgraceful and inhuman result of the current unconscionable “war on chemical pesticides” has been the recrudescence of arbor or insect-vectored human diseases not only in the United States but around the world, particularly among developing people who are largely incapable of protecting themselves. The worst and by far the most threatening of these is malaria, which is steadily mounting in 63 different countries embracing over 1.5 billion people. The enormity of the inexcusable campaign to ban DDT and its related organo-chloride pesticides is now beginning to become clearly apparent. Regulatory constraints and restraints are being laid upon industry, the farmer, food processor, the distributor and, of course, the consumer. Constraints placed on industry in America in the name of the environment merely drive the process, the business and the profits overseas to other countries.

• © 1979, International Society of Arboriculture. All rights reserved.