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Buying and eating apples seems a pretty healthy thing to do. But a new study has found that every 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) of conventionally grown apples creates health effects costing 21 cents due to the effects of pesticides and fungicides, resulting in sick leave and eventually shorter life expectancies.
The study, from the Dutch organization Soil & More Impacts, to be published at the end of May, highlights a key problem: The price you pay for apples in the store doesn’t cover the hidden costs of producing them. Instead, these are paid for by society — through the ever-increasing costs of health care and health insurance.
The apple example is not an outlier; it’s indicative of the bigger picture. Agriculture is the world’s largest industry, with 1 billion people engaged in farming worldwide. Pasture and cropland use about 50 percent of the earth’s habitable […]
I’m just an ordinary person who has eyes to see and I see a dramatic decline in the insects and birds in our very wooded neighborhood in central NC. This year I find it heartbreaking to see so many flowering plants with little to no insects of any kind on them. Even the little black ants that roam the kitchen always in the past are almost totally absent. No bug splatters on the windshield and what will the birds and bats eat, what will we eat. Oh, yeah MickeyD’s and it must be ms-13…and on it goes.
This collapse of the insect populations is happening worldwide on the order of 80%+ here and Europe. We have sprayed the world with poisons and now we are having a Silent Spring. I’m doubting this can or will be stopped. I think too many disconnected Americans would say good “I hate bugs and who cares”.
I think Rachel Carson’s book SILENT SPRING should be required reading in our high schools. I agree with Will. Why don’t people care?
I believe we will all have to turn to organic vegetarianism in the future if we are going to survive, unless we can better control overpopulation; otherwise we will go the way of the dinosaurs. Oh, and Will, I think all the ants, bees, birds, rodents, rabbits are here in my yard. I even saw a deer in my yard last week. I am one of the few organic gardeners in the small city I live in here in Pa., and grow most of the food I eat even though I live right in the middle of the city. I also have to be aware of the many two legged thieves that try to steal my life by taking my only means of eating: by growing my own food. The police are absolutely no help either because people come at night to steal my food.