Environmental and Economic Benefits of Sustainable Agriculture

of the entomology graduate student organization I'd like to introduce dr. David Pimentel first I want to thank all the organizations that helped co-sponsor dr. Pimentel visit including the ISU lectures program the graduate college the pesticide management and the Environment Program the Leopold Center for sustainable agriculture within the Leopold Center the IPM that's integrated pest management issued team the bioethics program and the Center for agricultural and rural development lots of organizations we couldn't have done it without all of them and this wide range of organizations reflects dr. Pimentel his wide range of interests to describe dr. Pimentel to you I have to start by describing his scientific credentials which are pretty extensive he's currently a professor of entomology which is the study of insects at Cornell University 50% of his appointment is in the department of entomology to accommodate his wide range of interests the other 50% of his appointment is as a professor at large of Agricultural Sciences including such things as energy use soil erosion this is the only such appointment at Cornell so someone with a unusually wide breadth of interests he served as the chairman of the animala G department at Cornell for six years he has authored over 400 scientific and technical papers including having written two books and having helped edit another 14 books so in other words this is someone who is really excelled in pretty much all the ways in which scientists measure success but that's not the main reason why the entomology graduate student organization invited him to speak tonight what really distinguishes dr. Pimentel is his willingness to take risks and what I mean by that is his willingness to take public stands on controversial issues this is something that not a lot of scientists will do it's it's not necessarily the safest road to professional recognition but it's something that dr. Pimentel has done consistently by his example dr. Pimentel shows us that scientists have a special responsibility to educate the public because it's you the public that's going to have to make the decisions about where the balance lies between the costs and the benefits of pesticide use and we're very pleased to have dr. Pimentel here tonight to give you some of the information that you're going to need to make those decisions this topic tonight will be economic and ecological benefits of sustainable agriculture thank you again for a very kind introduction I hope I'll live up to it I'm going to take one aspect of sustainable agriculture for emphasis and that's on the subject of pest control and I will have a few other things in there but I think it well illustrates some of the problems we have the challenges and also some of the opportunities we have to change the system and make agriculture environmentally sound and I'm going to try to keep this to about 45 minutes so that we can have some time for questions I will be using slides to illustrate the points that I hope to make if you could turn those on then I put these this first slide on to emphasize one point that we have I think we can make out with I think the side lights on it but anyway it's that we one major problem and challenge that we have is trying to provide food for a rapidly growing population and is that the one this doesn't seem to work can you either we're disconnected or did you change it or I did okay anyway the world population is 5.5 billion and where we add a quarter of a million people to the earth every 24 hours a quarter of a million that have to be fed and we already have a problem in feeding the numbers that we already have 1.6 billion humans are malnourished on Earth today with 2 billion living in poverty but even the u.s. did I do that a you did you did all right thank you I'll rely on you now the United States in 1850 had 23 million people or less than the population of New York State today in 1990 we went to 250 million and my must admit that my number of 20 year 2070 is incorrect that ought to be because the world population says I made this the u.s. population so I made this slide during the last three years has increased its well do both due to immigration and rate of reproduction in the u.s. is now 1.1 percent per year and so that should read now year 2050 that we will have a half a billion humans in the United States assuming they don't increase further next slide now our goal accosted in is to produce high-quality food in the US and elsewhere to feed people and the next slide a few people appreciate the fact that the average American consumes 1,500 pounds of food per year and I've got the calories in the so for three-quarters of a ton of food per person per year in the US and the next slide we should be eating only about a thousand pounds of food per year and this shows you where that excess is going that's part of our national strategic petroleum reserve next slide now to focus a little bit on on some of the pests and they do cause an enormous loss to our food system not only in the US but worldwide next slide although they're attractive I suppose sitting in your corn it's not a great benefit if you want to save that corn next slide worldwide there are about 67,000 pests that tried that che share our food and that doesn't include the rodents or the mammals and the birds and the plant pathogens obviously dominate the system next slide now to try to control these pests and limit their destruction of our food enormous amounts of pesticide are used next slide 2.5 million tons worldwide and the u.s. uses about a half a million tons pesticide in one way that we waste pesticide is the way we apply the material for example by aircraft if you're spraying and I want to emphasize now this is under ideal conditions and very seldom do they apply pesticides from aircraft fly under ideal conditions only fifty percent gets into the target area I'm not talking to the target pests of the crop I'm talking in the target area and the new technology that's being adopted in aircraft application is called ulv are also low volume and in those cases only twenty five percent gets into the target area and so the rest of this goes drifting off into our environment to cause problems that I'm going to talk about in a moment next slide now the actual amount of pesticide that reaches target pests is less than one tenth of one percent which means the rest of it is again in our environment although a lot of this is in the target area but is still in our environment of course some of that will move out of the target area in addition next slide now in general pesticides do have a benefit we in the u.s. spend 4.1 billion dollars annually in pesticides and it's estimated we save about 16 billion dollars in crops thus for every dollar invested we get about four dollars in return but I I emphasize now that does not include however the public health and environmental costs of using pesticides these are the direct benefits and do not include any of the costs social or environmental that are involved in using pesticides and I'm going to get into that issue in a moment next slide now in the US we lose in other words despite the use of the 500,000 kilos the pesticide that we use we lose 37% of all potential production to insects diseases and weeds and incidentally the world figure is 35% now the reason in part we use a large quantities of pesticide but still lose on average slightly more than the world is the difference in cosmetic standards for example a lot of the fruits and vegetables that you see on the Guatemalan market or in India would not be saleable in the US so this is all based on saleable products and this is in part why our losses are slightly higher than the average in the world next slide now some interesting data that indicates some of the problems that we're having and mismanage when I term it is the crop losses due to insects and these are USDA data in 1945 before we started using the new synthetic insecticides we were losing about seven percent of our crops to insects and today am i standing in the way of this projector the law all right let me stand over a little bit you can still hear me okay all right they sighs in 1945 when we we did not use any synthetic insecticide that's when we started and we were losing 7% of our crops to insects in 1992 after insecticide use it increased tenfold crop losses according to the US Department of Agriculture now 13 percent in other words nearly a two-fold increase in crop losses due to insects with a tenfold increase in insecticide use now you might say how the hell could that happen well the reason is for the most part changes in agricultural technology some changes in cosmetic standards and their pesticide resistance and a few other problems next slide and destruction of natural enemies and and so forth the next slide also illustrates a little bit better using corn as an example related to the agricultural changes in agricultural technology in 1945 for example almost zero insecticide was used in in corn production and today corn is the largest user of insecticides in the nation VDOT cotton about 4 years ago now next slide when we started with 1945 most of the corn was grown in rotation and we didn't have a problem with the corn rootworm complex of insects and today about half the corn has grown in rotation and half is not next slide and now with corn being the largest user of insecticides there's been over a thousand fold increase in insecticide use in corn production in the US and again going back to you da next slide the data that corn losses to insects according to the USDA have gone from 3.5 percent to 12 percent with a thousandfold increase in insecticide use and it's primarily due to a change in agricultural technology that is moving away from crop rotations next slide now our land is extremely important to us and I wish I could have spent some time on the on the soil degradation and soil erosion problem but I'll leave that for a another time but land is extreme next slide if you people appreciate the fact that 99% of the world's food comes from the land less than 1% comes from the oceans and freshwater aquatic systems and so we should be very concerned about the our soils and the degradation of these soils by erosion and various other means including highway construction urbanization and so forth and you'd appreciate the problem in part that during a 30-year period from 1945 in 1975 of just agricultural land from highways and urbanization we blacktopped over the equivalent area larger than the state of Ohio that's just highways and urbanization and if you took all the areas that would blacktop over over that period it would be both Ohio and Pennsylvania but the agricultural land alone was greater than the state of Ohio next slide now when we do apply pesticides as I mentioned by aircraft and especially if they're near housing areas and so forth you do have the serious drift problem and the impact of pesticides on the public is significant next slide is world data from w-h-o the total number of human pesticide poisonings worldwide is or about a million with 20,000 deaths in the u.s. we also have a problem next slide the human pesticide poisoning sixty seven thousand it's more than sixty seven thousand each year twenty seven deaths and the estimated cancer associated with pesticides aprox list about ten thousand per year so it is a significant public health problem in the u.s. not as severe in the rest of the world but certainly it's it's it's important next slide now we also when we use pesticide in particular insecticides we do destroy some of the natural enemies and this costs us money the next slide gives an estimate of the cost to the nation that's us in the destruction of natural enemies estimated to be five hundred and twenty million or about a half a billion dollars next slide and then pesticide resistance these are world figures about five hundred and four species of insects that are resistant and well close to 900 total species pests that have become resistant and this is a very important problem in the US as elsewhere in the world next slide nope I guess I didn't have that number but anyway the estimated cost of resistance in the United States is 1.4 billion dollars annually John and this is due to the extra pesticides as to treatments increased crop losses due to the resistance problem it's certainly a major environmental problem and then of course pesticides do get into streams and lakes and destroy fish and this is totally an under estimate but it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty million the realistic figure is probably three or four times that next slide and then when we do use insecticides in particular honey bees and wild bees are killed and that is a cost to the April culturalist and it's also a cost to agriculture from the point of view of reduced pollination wild bees and honey bees are important to pollinating about thirty billion dollars worth of agricultural crops annually and a conservative estimate is that the impact of pesticides on tame or honeybees and wild bees is about over three hundred million dollars annually next slide and then some other interesting effects that you can get when you're using pesticides is using if you use an herbicide for example 2 4 D on a crop such as corn that it creates other pest problems that is it may help control the weeds but you do create some other pest problems and these are data on corn showing that with 2 4 d it recommended dosages that the corn leaf aphid population was nearly three times on the treated corn that is treated with herbicide than on the untreated and another next slide the corn borers for example were significantly more abundant on the treated corn that is with 2 4 d then the untreated and furthermore these corn borers grew 33% larger on the 2 4 d corn and produced 33% more eggs than the corn borers the untreated corn and we also checked it out on to diseases corn leaf blight and corn smut disease and both was significantly increased well actually the corn lost its resistance the southern corn leaf blight when we exposed it to 240 and the corn smut disease was 5 times larger on the treated corn those are the only organisms we looked at but it does show you the significance of the interaction of some of these pesticides in the impact on pests next slide I'll skip that's in part some of the changes that we observe and then birds Osprey and various other birds that do become exposed to pesticides next slide the estimate is that pesticides are causing about two billion dollars worth of damage to birds using a very conservative estimate that I explained to if you liked it some time next slide and then groundwater and well water contamination and I understand that it's a serious problem here in Iowa also it's estimated that if we did an adequate job of monitoring well water and groundwater for pesticides that it would cost a nation 1.3 billion dollars annually I remember that's strictly monitoring it's not doing anything about the problem next slide and then of course pesticides do reduce species diversity and it's estimated worldwide that it's not used just due to pesticides but due to all the factors such as removal of forests that we're losing about 150 species per day due to our various changes that humans are causing next slide now the total environmental cost of using pesticides back to the United States we estimate to be at least eight billion or another way to put it more than eight billion dollars annually so it is a significant cost now pesticides still are benefi benefits in terms of economics if you factor that in on the cost benefit originally I told you that you get $4 returned for dollar invested well if you would factor even this 8 billion now I realize that this is a conservative figure this 8 billion but if you factor it in it still turns out that pesticides are a net benefit for the nation now I'd learn a turn next slide to what we can do in managing our pest control technology to improve it and hopefully make it more profitable next slide and the basic principles that I have it related to sustainable agriculture is that we make maximum use of our biological resources and to minimize our energy inputs in the system in other words actually minimizing our management of these resources next slide and related to sustainable agriculture in a study that one study that we made it does take more labor especially if you're going to make use of livestock manure and the recycling in the system and that is one major problem in the u.s. is that we're not making effective use of that manure is polluting our water polluting our surface waters and wasting a very valuable resource next slide and we can confuse consumers particular model situation related to corn we were able to buy some a being selective of the tractors and the equipment that we had reduced the total fuel input from 115 litres per hectare to 70 major well about 40% reduction in fuel inputs next slide and then our actual corn yield in this particular system we are actually able to increase the yield in the sustainable system we were using a crop rotation system here and so that we were able to get a higher yield and with no insecticide being used in this particular system next slide now as far as energy goes we were able to in fact reduce the total energy inputs by 1/2 that is from seven point eight million kilocalories per hectare to 3.7 million Killa Killa calories per hectare reduce soil erosion from 20 tons per hectare to one and obviously reduce the water runoff and reduce the amount of pesticide being used in this particular system next slide now dollar-wise it was also the cost of production were reduced from five hundred and twenty three dollars per hectare to three hundred and fifty two dollars per hectare and that does include the additional labor xx sorry 20 percent more labor that we had in that system next slide now related to pesticides for countries if you include on a character Ontario in Canada as a country I have made the decision to reduce pesticide use by 50 percent and Denmark was the first country to do that and sweden ii and sweden in 1992 or last year it already achieved their 50 percent reduction in pesticide use and this year they've implemented another program to another 50% reduction in pesticide use well what we did at Cornell was to make a study I think there's 40 different crops and all of the non chemical technologies that exist and then examine aren't asked well two questions could we in the United States implement a program to reduce pesticide use by 50 percent and how much would it cost and that's what technologies we already have available similar to course that Sweden or Denmark or Netherlands are implementing next slide well skip next one now what one of the things we want to do a course in your trying to reduce pesticide use is make better use of your natural enemies such as this a fat lion that you see here next slide and that makes making judicious use of pesticides this is the potato beetle and using crop rotations and short season potatoes anyway there are a lot of different technologies that we can use to deal with some of these serious pests next slide and I'm not talking about total elimination of pesticides I'm talking about reducing the amounts that are that have to be used through implementation of non chemical controls through the judicious use of pesticides and crop rotations are a benefit not only to insect control but diseases and weeds and obviously help reduce soil erosion and soil degradation next slide and then because one weapon that we have in pest control against insects is using some of the diseases that affect them on the slide here you see the the one on your left the caterpillar on your left is a healthy cabbage looper the cabbage looper on your right is one of the whitish one is full of virus crystals and these virus crystals have looked like pure crystals under the microscope and that animal is totally packed with virus crystals and it's a highly pathogenic virus if you take two caterpillars well such as the next slide 24 hours later this is the cat l and if you just take two caterpillars like that and you mix them in a hundred gallons of water and spread it over an acre of land you can kill 98% of the cabbage loopers that are present there so it's a very effective highly pathogenic organism unfortunately even though every one of us in this room was eaten the virus in our coleslaw or lettuce and so forth and not affected us or at least not that we know APA is still not approved the use of this virus yet next slide now there are a lot of and I'm not going to go through all the loads that's just a list of some of the non chemical controls that are available to us that we can use and implement to reduce pesticide use and you can't there isn't any one of them that is perfect and what we should be doing is being very selective and using those that are most appropriate and I guess that what Professor Pedigo said is very appropriate there is no silver bullet for pest control and we ought to be using a combinations depending on the particular situation the pest and the environment the crop and and so forth next slide but it does illustrate the complexity that we're dealing with and this is a shot in Kansas that the lake professor painter provided me showing you wheat on the right here the susceptible to the hessian fly and we on your left that is resistant to the hessian fly and so this is one more technology that is available to us and can be used effectively depending on the crop depending on the pests and so forth next slide now I'll skip that one the next one that's well anyway I know what the what I hope to be my last slide is that that we could achieve a 50% reduction in pesticide use in the United States you can turn the lights on and without a reduction in yield without a change in cosmetic standards and that we could do this with an increase in food prices of only 0.6% now what I also emphasize that this calculation of a point six percent increase in food costs implementing a 50% reduction in pesticide use does not include the benefits of public health of reducing pesticides on public health or reducing pesticides on the environment if you take into consideration those benefits Aventa costs I in general there should be a net benefit to society by reducing pesticide use by 50 percent and it can be done as a one country has already achieved their 50% reduction in three others are unwell on their way to achieving this 50% reduction so this is not something that is pie in the sky I'd be happy to answer questions very well I guess we got quite a bit of time no way good any comments a question I what are two bits of information in Central America where we were working on cotton because the I was going to say the workers were careless I should really put it the other way around that is that the managers of these firms were very careless they sprayed these workers while they were in there in the field they allowed to fit their field workers to go into the field to pick cotton or weed right after the fields have been treated and so that they were getting wet with the pesticide in there that of course we don't do in the US but even in the US right after DDT was banned and there was an increase in paradigm and several of these other more toxic materials there was about a three-fold increase in the number of deaths in the u.s. now one has to say if we were careful there shouldn't be these deaths because we know how to handle it safely and so forth but of course accidents do do happen and in Central America we also would know how to handle it but it's not being done and I'm not just blaming Central America there is the curse that's where I mentioned Central America only because we worked there for a while yes and of course you know that has problems because I know I'm sweet in some of these other countries some of these toxic materials and so that's there's no good way for we were using the same materials or reducing the materials to achieve really amount of the frequency and so forth is still there it's just that yeah materials more active with appeared oh that there was a reduction when in corn we haven't talked to the pyrethroids so really you know it's not sure yeah yeah that's a that's a good point and by rejoyce have their problems in viola yes to make the shift yeah you couldn't do it overnight well I'd say in general sustainable agriculture is more knowledge intensive so it takes more knowledge now to do that of course it means that you've got the training people to use this new knowledge in new approaches and that would take time to achieve a sweet knitted in five years some of the other countries are have plans to do it in about 10 years but it's not substituting alternative technologies but chemicals will take training ten dollars yes there would be no increase fertilizer use know we didn't decrease to fertilize the use in that sustainable system that we had there through use uh well first of all keeping the soil in place that is preventing 20 tons of soil being lost from the land you know each ton of soil has about four kilos of nitrogen plus other nutrients but making use of livestock manure in that particular system not did cost us in labor of course to do that but as far as reducing the pesticide no there was no impact on the fertilizer I would say we on corn there was decreased energy but I wouldn't want to say that for all the other crops because we now know we have to really look at that crop by crop in general I would guess that it it wouldn't increase the amount of energy but I wouldn't want to say that a decrease in either at this at this moment yes the question here is Sweden and Denmark appear to be progressive and will we ever in the United States achieve this type of a change I think we will but if I look for the DD banning DD T is the model decision then I would say it takes us 10 years after Sweden to get to the point where we will make a similar decision but I think the climate is certainly coming and remember this change in Sweden and Denmark did not come from agriculture or entomologist it came from the politicians listening to the people now already in the United States and the survey by Food and Drug Administration I didn't know there was 97 and 96 percent some of that vicinity all the public are concerned about pesticides in their food today growing concern in the credibility of EPA has dropped significantly yes and so there is this climate and pressure to trying to do something about it in and certainly once we see the success of Sweden and Denmark and Norway - although they haven't passed legislation that they certainly well on their way and the Netherlands and the province of Ontario incidentally in Ontario the specialist who's in charge of reducing as implementing the program to reduce pesticide use I thought the farmers would be resistant to this and he talked about opposite he said the Pirates are highly supportive of this whole program to reduce pesticide use and he said the three reasons one pesticides cost of money - they're the ones that are applying these toxic materials and they're being exposed their families being exposed and three they also have a concern about the environment I must admit I didn't expect this talk about all three not just the last one but they're really highly supportive of this program out there I don't know about Sweden and Denmark well it never asked a question there someone else had a question yes sir herbicides insecticides and punishment right and then the actual reduction that we look at paper in achieving this reduction we could achieve the greatest reduction in herbicides second and insecticides and lease fungicides and you know price supports is playing a very important role in reducing crop rotation and it's also played a very important role in separating livestock production from integrated with grain production and so there's a whole array and the marketing orders as far as changing cosmetic standards not that that's important in the brain so much but there's been a whole array of factors that the government I'm talking about federal government has played a very important role in encouraging soil erosion and cryogen fertilizer use and encouraging pesticide use and so one first step would be to get the damn government straightened out and supportive of sustainable agriculture in reducing our reliance on chemicals and that would be the very first step and let me yellow and indicate in I think we could go beyond a 50% reduction if you will allow changes in the price supports and deficiency payments and marketing orders and you'll also allow this to use pesticides at dosages that are effective instead of using the label dosages on the pan and I indicated mentioned this afternoon I have one of my past students in Galway he's working with true and he is demonstrated clearly that in using certain insecticides that using one-fifth or one-tenth the dosage is on the label he can get more effective control and I want to imply more effective control because he's a lot he can save the natural enemies and make use of them in the pest control system so now if you'll let me do some research and determine the appropriate dosages we could go further than that reduction if you will allow me all those changes combat extent his marketing price apart and getting the proper dosage I think we could go to a seven-year