Environmental
Risks Facing Farmers
John
E. Ikerd
Presented at Tri-State Conference for Risk Management Education,
Farming is a risky business. Farmers always
have had to cope with a wide variety of risks. But, environmental risk – at
least the awareness of environmental risk -- is relatively new to most farmers.
In fact, few people had even heard the word "environment" before
Rachel Carson’s book, "Silent Spring," hit the best seller lists in
the early 1960s. Farming -- specifically, use of agricultural pesticides -- was
the primary focus of
The first national Earth Day was celebrated
in 1970, marking the formal beginning of the environmental movement in the
Prior to the mid-20th century, we
weren’t concerned about the environment because we were incapable of doing it
any real harm. We were sufficiently few in numbers and our technologies were
sufficiently benign that the environment could withstand or absorb just about
anything we could do to it. We could destroy the productivity of natural
resources, such as farmland and forests, and we could pollute the streams with
minerals and chemicals, but then, we could always move on to some new
environment and start over again. We didn’t have to stay and live in our
"fouled nests". Left alone, the environment eventually would heal and
restore itself.
But our numbers have grown and so have our
appetites for things that are either pulled from or are dumped into the natural
environment. Our extractive technologies have become more effective, and thus
more destructive, and we have seemingly lost any will to refrain from doing
whatever we are capable of doing to satisfy our greed. Yet, common sense tells
us that we are degrading and destroying our natural environment – the ecosystem
of which we ourselves are a part. Environmental risks are real – both to individuals,
farmers and others, and to the whole of human society. Our collective awareness
of environmental risks, like the environment itself, is not going to go away.
Farmers interact more closely with their
natural environment than almost any occupational group. They are among the
primary reapers of the ecological bounty of the land – of nature’s yielding
human needs and wants. But, they are also among the first to feel the impacts
of their environmental mistakes – of nature’s fighting back to protect itself
from harm. With every attempt to coax more from nature, there is an
environmental risk to the one doing the coaxing – to the farmer.
Today, health risks -- from applying
pesticides to crops or livestock, from drinking contaminated water, from breathing
polluted air, and from association with animal hormones and genetically
manipulated organisms – are ever-present factors in the day-to-day life of farm
families and farm workers. Risks resulting from damage done first to the
ecosystem – such as pollution of water and air with chemicals, sediment, and
noxious odors – also affect farmers, but mostly affect those living downstream
or downwind from the farm. They represent risks, none-the-less, to the farmer’s
ability to farm – at least to farm using methods of their choosing.
Environmental risks affecting the productivity of the land are more long-term
and less direct – but are none the less real risks to the survival of farms and
of farming.
Risk versus Uncertainty
Most environmental "risks"
actually should be called "uncertainties" rather than risks. The word
"risk" generally is reserved – at least in professional circles – for
those things that have a quantifiable chance or probability of happening. The
term risk also refers to something bad or unfavorable. For example, there is a
definite risk of losing at the game of poker while holding a specific
"hand" of cards -- losing is a bad outcome that has a specific
probability or chance of happening. First, we know how many cards of what kind
are in a deck, so we can determine the numbers of different "poker
hands" – straits, flushes, full-houses, pairs, etc. – possible when a deck
is dealt. With that information, we can determine the probability or odds of us
getting the particular hand of cards we are now holding. And if we were smart
enough, we could calculate the chance that anyone else at the table had been
dealt a hand that would beat ours. The risk of our losing with a particular
poker hand may not be easy to calculate but it has a definite probability of
happening.
We often estimate risks for situations where
the range of possibilities is not actually known, but where we believe we have
reasonable estimates of what the probabilities may be. The risk of rain is one
such estimate. The weatherman doesn’t actually know the probability of rain for
any given day in the future, because a day in the future is not dealt from some
known deck of all possible days. Each day is brand new. But, forecasters may
have observed a sufficient number of similar patterns in the past, and be
sufficiently confident in the repeatability of those patterns, that they feel
they can make quantitative predictions about weather in the future. The
forecast of a sixty-percent chance of rain is such a prediction. Under similar
conditions in the past, they estimate that in sixty-percent of those cases, it
has rained the following day. So they say the chance, or risk, of rain is sixty
percent.
Many risks in farming are of the same nature
as the risk of rain. A farmer remembers, or collects information concerning,
conditions under which bad things – crop failures, animal health problems, low
prices, inability to get credit, accidents, etc. – have happened in the past.
The future is never like the past, but past patterns may have an observable tendency
to be repeated in the future. So farmers can calculate risk of a crop failure,
for example, at the beginning of the season, based on past history of yields
with similar soil moisture, weather patterns, etc. Risk estimates may change
during the season as more information about this particular crop, such as
planting date, germination, early weed pressures, etc., become known. The
actual yield is never known with certainty until the crop is in the bin, but
the risk or chance of a poor yield can be calculated at any point along the
way.
Professional economic forecasters, market
analysts, use this same basic approach. They use whatever information is
currently available to identify past trends and current conditions that may
affect production and prices in the future. They then estimate what they think
is the most likely or most probable future price or production level – or range
of prices and production levels. Some even estimate the chances that prices or
production will fall below some specific levels, and thus, provide estimates of
price or production risks. But, their estimates of risks are based on estimates
of possibilities – they have no means of knowing what is actually
"possible," let alone what is actually going to happen.
The premiums or costs for all types of
insurance – including health insurance, crop-insurance, hedging and options –
are based on similar calculations of risks. Whether the specific hazard covered
by insurance will or will not happen is not known with certainty, otherwise
there would be either no need or no ability to insure against it. In addition,
the actual range or distribution of future possibilities cannot be known with
certainty, because the future has never happened before. But, there is
sufficient history of what has happened under similar conditions in the past –
ill health, crop failure, and low prices – to allow the insurer to estimate the
probability or chances of being required to pay claims of varying amounts. The
insurance company’s risks of having to pay claims are actually risks that
policyholders have shifted to the insurance company in return for the payment
of premiums. Of course, insurance premiums include costs of operation and
profits for the insurance company in addition to their expected claim payments.
Uncertainty is fundamentally different from
risk. Uncertainty means that not only are future outcomes unknown, but even the
distributions of possible future outcomes are unknown. Not only do we not know
for sure whether our poker hand is good enough to win, we can’t even calculate
the odds or chances of losing. Not only do we not know whether we are going to
have a crop failure, we can’t even calculate the probability of having a crop
failure. We simply cannot forecast an uncertain future outcome with
"any" degree of confidence. We cannot calculate a logical insurance
premium, because we can’t calculate the probability or size of possible claims.
When an outcome is uncertain, the risks are
unknown. We may have to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, but we
cannot logically calculate the risks of a wrong decision. Such decisions may be
based on past experiences in similar situations, or on hunches or intuition,
but they cannot be based on either known distributions of possibilities or
empirical estimates of risks. Most decisions concerning the environment are of
this basic nature.
Environmental Health Uncertainties
So called environmental risks are
almost always environmental uncertainties. We simply do not know, nor
can we know, the risks of future adverse consequences of our current encounters
with nature. Not only do we not know the specific outcomes; we don’t even know
the distribution or range of possibilities. There is no way that we can
accurately assess the risk that something we do to the environment today will
create, or not create, future harm. Thus, there is no way that we can obtain
objective, unbiased estimates of whether current benefits obtained from our
tinkering with the environment outweigh the risks of future negative
consequences. Supposed objective cost/benefit estimates are mostly just guesses
disguised by complex models and methodologies. Demands that we make decisions
based only on such estimates – decisions based on "good science" –
are demands that we accept the biased guesses of one particular group of
scientists and not those of others.
Environmental uncertainties in farming
include exposure of farmers and farm workers to commercial chemicals during
application and exposure of others to air and water polluted by agricultural
chemicals. Each of these cases embody significant possibilities that the
actions of farmers today may do significant future harm to themselves, their
families, their neighbors, society in general -- even to the future of
humanity. Thus, decisions affecting the natural environment are critically
important, in spite of the fact that neither farmers nor policymakers have
unbiased, objective information upon which to base their decisions. There
simply is no "good science" to guide them.
Pesticides are poisons designed to kill
living things – bacteria, weeds, insects and fungus. Humans share a great deal
of genetic material in common with other living things – including plants and
insects as well as animals. So it should be no surprise that pesticides can
have adverse impacts on human health, including death. Potential adverse health
effects on farmers, farm workers and others living close to farms include
cancer, respiratory disease, birth defects, and damage to the immune and
endocrine systems of the body.
The active ingredients in many agricultural
pesticides have been linked with cancer in humans and other animals. However
proof of direct causality needed to accurately quantify human health risk
simply does not exist. It took more than thirty years to link tobacco smoking
to lung cancer – one use of one product linked to one type of cancer.
Environmental risks were hardly on the human health "radar screen"
thirty years ago. Decades more of scientific inquiry may be required to disentangle
linkages of the thousands of different combinations of agricultural pesticides
to their consequences. Each chemical combination may be, or may not be, linked
to one or more of a whole host of different types of cancer and other diseases.
The whole linking process for agricultural chemicals is complicated even
further by chemicals in the environment from a host of non-agricultural
sources.
Disruption of immunity and endocrine systems
can take so many forms and be characterized by so many different symptoms that
it is mind-boggling to even to think about how linkages of disruptions with
multiple possible causes might be disentangled. Potential problems with human
reproduction may take several generations to even become apparent. Health
problems linked to odors may be linked to any combination of dozens of
different chemical elements in a single "smell." The problem of
analysis seems so complex as to have no solution in
the foreseeable future. However, there is a growing body of empirical evidence
suggesting that farmers are less healthy than are otherwise similar members of
the general population, regardless of the source of their maladies.
Health threats to the non-farm population
are similar to threats to farmers and farm workers – the linkages are just less
direct. When agricultural chemicals get into the ground water or streams they
may well show up in drinking water for someone at some point in time. But, it
is difficult to predict precisely where and when. The chemical concentration
may be less in a city’s water supply than in a farmer’s own well, or on a
farmer’s hands, but the health of far more people may be affected. And, it may
be far more difficult to link cause and effect.
The EPA has established health advisory
levels for concentration of chemicals in drinking water supplies. The goal is
to err on the side of human health and safety in establishing these levels. But
the fact of the matter is that advisory levels are little more than educated
guesses. No one can say with any degree of certainty what levels of risks are
associated with various levels of concentration of chemicals in drinking water
– i.e. what probability of illness is associated with ingesting various amounts
of water containing various concentrations of chemicals. They just "think,"
and hope, that the advisory levels are low enough to keep anyone from getting
sick from drinking the water – or at least low enough so that drinking the
water cannot be "linked to" any resulting illness.
Agricultural chemicals that escape into
streams and rivers may travel for hundreds of miles before they enter the
drinking water supply of some town or city. Long stretches of the
It is even more difficult to link specific
illnesses to groundwater pollution and air pollution. Chemicals may migrate for
miles through underground streams before they even surface in a stream or
drinking water well. This process can take months if not years or decades.
Particles of pesticides and other chemicals that dissipate into the air during
application may attach to dust particles and be carried for miles before
settling to the ground or falling as contaminated rain. In the process of migration,
agricultural chemicals may become mixed with pollution from a host of other
potential sources. It is virtually impossible to link any resulting human
illness with a specific cause and its source.
Other Environmental Uncertainties
Agriculture presents additional risks, or
rather uncertainties, to the environment beyond those reflected in health
risks. The natural environment is a productive system. Agriculture utilizes
natural systems to convert solar energy to human useful forms -- the
fundamental purpose of agriculture. A healthy, functioning agroecosystem
is an efficient, productive ecosystem. If the ecosystem is damaged – its
mineral resources degraded or depleted, it biological systems impaired – the
efficiency of the system is diminished and its productivity declines.
Agroecosystems rely on interactions among soil, water, and
biological organisms -- including plants and animals -- to convert solar energy
into food and fiber. Anything that threatens the integrity of this agroecosystem threatens the productivity of the farm.
Examples of such threats include soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, and loss
of biological diversity – loss of diversity among organisms in soils, in the
surface environment, or among plants and animals on the farm. The natural
productivity of soils can be degraded through inappropriate use of agricultural
chemicals as well as through use of inappropriate tillage and cropping
practices. Either of these activities can cause loss of biological diversity of
microorganisms in the soils, may change soil structure, reduce its inherent
fertility, and impair its overall ability to function as a growing medium for
plants.
Loss of biological diversity in insect and
weed populations, brought about through continual reliance on commercial pesticides,
may lead to continual increases in quantities and variety of pesticides needed
to keep pest populations under control. Beneficial insects, insects that feed
on pest insects, may be destroyed along with pest insects leaving commercial
pesticides as the only defense against crop loss. Weeds that compete
effectively with other weeds, but not with the crop, may be destroyed, leaving
weeds that compete very effectively with the crop, but not with other weeds, to
be controlled by commercial herbicides. If pests then become resistant to
commercial pesticides, the natural controls of a biologically diverse ecosystem
will no longer be in place to keep pests in check. The natural productivity of
the system will have been degraded through its loss of diversity.
Crop rotations utilizing fundamentally
different types of crops – grasses, legumes, cool season, warm season, etc. –
help maintain soil quality and biological diversity both within and above the
soil. Effective integration of crop and livestock systems may also enhance the
natural productivity of farming systems. For example, most of the plant
nutrients removed from the soil may be returned to the soil, in the form of
animal manure, when animals, feed grains, and forage crops are all grown on the
same farms. Planned rotation grazing of grasses may be used to manage pests and
maintain biological diversity among plant species in pastures. In short,
diversified farms are more "naturally" productive systems – requiring
fewer commercial, off-farm inputs to maintain production levels.
Anything that diminishes the productivity of
soils or reduces biological diversity represents a threat to the long run
productivity of the farming operation. The actual consequences of such threats
may take years, decades, or centuries to become readily apparent. Resistance to
pesticides, particular insecticides, may take only a few growing seasons to
develop. Loss of soil health and fertility may take longer, but is none the
less a readily apparent consequence of past farming practices in all
agricultural regions of the world. The negative impacts of specialized crop and
livestock systems are even more indirect or subtle and more long term in
nature. However, there is little doubt that specialized systems degrade the
agricultural natural resource base – only the nature and magnitude of the
degradation remains to be documented.
Modern industrial farming systems,
characterized by specialization, standardization, and mechanization, are
inherently reliant upon commercial inputs – pesticides and fertilizers – and
upon cultural practices that threaten the natural environment. However, the
multitude of complex linkages between industrial farming methods and
environmental degradation make them very difficult to identify and quantify. In
addition, those with strong vested interests in maintaining the industrial
approach to farming discourage efforts to document and validate negative
linkages between industrial agriculture and the natural environment. Thus, for
the foreseeable future, the ecological threats to agricultural productivity
will remain largely undocumented, unmeasured, unverified and thus uncertain.
Perhaps the most uncertain of all farm
related environmental risks today are the risks associated with biotechnology.
Quoting from an address by Peter R. Wills, Professor of Physics,
"How this works cannot be understood
solely in terms of material structure, whether we are talking about the
proteins and DNA molecules in a cell, or the individual organisms existing in
an ecosystem. The effects of a gene cannot be assessed by looking at the static
relationship between its sequences, the letters of the DNA message it
represents, and, the characteristics of the organism to which it is related.
The meaning of a gene is determined by the context in which it is expressed. It
also contributes to that context. So, when we swap a gene from one organism to
another, we cannot know in advance what all the effects will be. We cannot know
even in principle."
"The type, speed and scale of genetic
change now being undertaken will affect the dynamics of biological systems,
ecology and evolution, at their very basis. Changes that cannot be assessed in
advance will progressively propagate through the biosphere. The pattern of
those changes cannot be expected to fit in with what we already know. The only
thing we can know with certainty is that we do not know, and cannot in
principle know, what the character of the ultimate outcome will be, except that
it will be different from anything that we are familiar with." In
biological engineering, we don’t know, and can’t know, not even in principle,
what we are doing to the natural environment and what the environment will do
in response – yet we seem committed to doing it. What better example of
environmental uncertainty could one possibly devise?
A while back, the head of Monsanto’s biotech
division gave a seminar on the
The old Monsanto didn’t know, and couldn’t
have known, what problems it would create through its development and promotion
of agricultural chemicals. The ecological system is simply too complex to have
allowed them to anticipate, with any degree of accuracy, the environmental
impacts of using agricultural chemicals over a 50-year span of time. Monsanto and
the biotech enterprises know far less today about the future impacts of
biotechnology than they knew about agricultural chemicals fifty years ago. The
only thing we can know for certain is that we don’t know, and can’t know, the
nature or magnitude of environmental risks associated with biotechnology.
Common sense tells us that these threats are potentially monumental, but are
uncertain.
The bottom line is that most, if not all,
environmental "risks" are actually not risks, but uncertainties. They
cannot be quantified with any degree of accuracy, cannot be ensured against
with any degree of confidence, and cannot be programmed into any risk-based
process of decision making. Environmental uncertainties require a fundamentally
different approach to decision-making.
The Precautionary Principle
So how should farmers, and others, make
decisions in the face of growing ecological uncertainties? They should make
decisions using the "Precautionary Principle" for guidance.
"When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human
health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect
relationships are not fully established scientifically (ToxicAlert)."
In common sense terms, "it’s better to be safe than to be sorry."
The Precautionary Principle, as stated by a
group of scientists and scholars, is as follows:
"The release and use of toxic
substances, the exploitation of resources, and physical alterations of the environment
have had substantial unintended consequences affecting human health and the
environment. Some of these concerns are high rates of learning deficiency,
asthma, cancer, birth defects, and species extinction; along with global
climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and worldwide contamination with
toxic substances and nuclear materials.
We believe existing environmental
regulations and other decisions, particularly those based on risk assessment,
have failed to protect adequately human health and the environment – the larger
system of which humans are but a part.
We believe there is compelling evidence that
damage to humans and the worldwide environment is of such magnitude and
seriousness that new principles for conducting human activities are necessary.
We realize that human activities may involve
hazards, but people must proceed more carefully than has been the case in
recent history. Corporations, government entities, organizations, communities,
scientists, and other individuals must adopt a precautionary approach to all
human endeavors.
Therefore, it is necessary to implement the
Precautionary Principle: When an activity raises threats of harm to human
health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some
cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.
In this contest the proponent of an
activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.
The process of applying the Precautionary
Principle must be open, informed, and democratic and must include potentially
affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of
alternatives, including no action."
Farmers using the Precautionary Principle
would select livestock and cropping systems giving as much or more consideration
to their potential impacts on the environment as their impacts on production
and profits. Certainly a farming operation must be profitable or the farmer
will lose the ability to continue farming, and thus, lose the authority to make
resource management decisions. But, for the farm to remain profitable in the
long run it must also be ecologically sound and socially responsible. A farm
that degrades or destroys the productivity of its resource base or pollutes its
natural environment is not sustainable. Since threats to the environment are
uncertain, the farmer should take great precautions to protect the environment
and natural resources, as long as there is a reasonable chance to do so while
maintaining profitability.
In cases where farmers feel compelled to put
the environment at risk to maintain economic competitiveness, they should
resort to the public policy process – at the local, state, or federal levels.
The environment has public as well as private value dimensions. Thus, public
policies should be devised to make it economically feasible for farmers to be
precautionary in protecting the environment. Such policies may take the form of
incentives for farmers to follow production practices that minimize
environmental threats and uncertainties. In many cases, however, the
environment will have to be protected by out right prohibitions on practices
that threaten the natural environment. If all farmers face the same
environmental regulations, no one is necessarily put at a competitive
disadvantage to the others, and prospects for profits are not necessarily
diminished. In these cases, society pays for environmental protection through
higher market prices.
Voluntary restraints are the product of
cultural or community norms and values. Decent people just don’t do some
things, and decent farmers don’t willfully and deliberately destroy the natural
environment. In most cases, however, there is no clear consensus concerning
whether particular farming practices do or do not threaten the environment –
their impact on the environment is uncertain. In these cases, farmers and
policy makers alike should purposely err in favor of protecting the
environment. Neither farmers nor policy makers can rely on risk/benefit
assessments to make such decisions. Risks cannot be accurately assesses because
the outcomes are uncertain. The potential threats to human health and the
natural environment are potentially large, often irreversible, and inherently
uncertain. Under conditions of environmental uncertainty, it makes common sense
to proceed only after taking appropriate precautions.
References
Wells, Peter R.,
Wellington Forum on Genetically Modified Food, University of Auckland,
Auckland, New Zealand, March 25, 1999.
Wingspread
Participants (listed by name in reference), "New Principles to Protect
Human Health and the Environment," ToxicAlert,
www.cqs.com/wing.htm, CQS,