Federal funding of pest management research should be doubled over the next five years as part of an effort to move away from reliance on chemical pesticides, according to a report issued October 15 by Consumers Union.
In its report, Pest Management at the Crossroads, Consumers Union asserted that, in spite of the billions of dollars spent on regulation, the overall risks posed by pesticides are no less than they were 25 years ago.
Millions of americans drink water tainted with pesticides, people are exposed to several pesticides in food each day, and pesticide use around homes and gardens occasionally delivers larger doses, according to the report.
"Science cannot say precisely how large the risks from these exposures are for an individual," the report said. "But a longstanding consensus holds that the collective risks to public health are substantial."
Consumers Union, a nonprofit memebership group that publishes Consumers Reports magazine, outlined a program for reducing the publichealth and environmental risks from pesticides by at least 75 percent by 2020. The way to redue risks is to convert to integrated pest management -- an array of preventaive tactics and biological controls that include disrupting the mating cycles of pests.
In a prepared statement, Charles Benbrook, lead author of the report, said, "We're on a 'pesticide treadmill'... While pesticide use has risen since the early 1970s, crop losses to pests have not declined."
Benbrook, a former exeutive director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture, said, "Not only don't chemical methods of epst control work as well as they should, they pose substantial ecological and economic risks. What's needed to get off this treadmill is a quicker shift to safer, ecologically sounder and more cost-effective IPM methods."
The report described IPM as a "continuum" ranging from low IPM to high IPM, depending on the extent to which ecological and biolgical controls replace chemical pesticides. High IPM, also called biointensive IPM, is defined as reliance on reduced-risk pesticides only when other, non-chemicalpest control measures fail.
Benbrook told BNA Oct. 16 that biointensive IPM includes cultural practices, disruption of the mating cycles of pests and augmentation of beneficial organisms with the use of chemical pesticides "only as a last resort."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture currently spends about $130 million per year as part of its IPM Initiative, Benbrook said. Of the $130 million, about $32 million is spent on IPM research and education that can be called biointensive IPM, he said. CU is calling for an increase in the IPM funding to $260 million per year, while shifting a greater proportion of the IPM funds to biointensive activity, Benbrook added.
CU called for bringing 75 percent of all crop acreage under medium IPM and high IPM by 2010, and 100 percent of acreage under high IPM by 2020.
Benbrook told BNA that government approvals of crops that have been genetically engineered to resist insect pests represent a "negative" trend.
The Environmental Protection Agency has approved for use cotton, corn, and potato crops that contain the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium, know as Bt. Benbrook said there have been failures of Bt cotton, either because the insects developed resistance or the Bt toxin was not achieving control of the pests. Due to the performance failures of Bt cotton, farmers have had to use chemical insecticides to save their crops, Benbrook said.
Benbrook said EPA should "pull back these approvals" and issue no more Bt crop authorizations until credible resistance managemnt programs are in place. Without resistance management, here is a "very troubling" possibility that fruit and vegetable farmers who already use Bt will lose that pest-management tool because of resistance of insects caused by widespread planting of the Bt corn, cotton and potatoes, Benbrook said.
Copies of Pest Management at the Crossroads are available for $35.95 from Pest Management at the Crossroads, P.O. Box 2013, Annapolis Junction, Md., 20701; (301)617-7815