Pesticides are a hotly debated topic: if you’ve spent five minutes on social media, you’ve probably heard someone say that conventional fruits and vegetables are toxic and ‘killing us,’ that Cheerios are ‘drenched in glyphosate,’ and that we should use the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists to guide our produce purchases.
On the other hand, you have people like me. For this post, I’ve partnered with CropLife Canada to give you the straight story about pesticides.
I’ve posted unsponsored social content for years about the claims around organic food, glyphosate and other pesticides, and the Environmental Working Group. I also recently did national media here in Canada about a study that seemed to ‘prove’ that organic fruit is superior because the pesticides on conventionally grown fruit aren’t removed by washing (they are).
I think you can safely say that I’m a big fan of spreading the truth about farming and pesticides! Also: the photos you’ll see in this post were all taken by me on farm tours. There’s nothing like meeting farmers in person, seeing how farms operate, and being able to ask questions face-to-face.
I want to whisk you away from the mass hysteria over pesticides and bring you down to earth with some actual facts. You have every right to decide what food is right for you and your family, but I want you to make that decision using accurate information.
What are pesticides?
We’re going to be talking today about agricultural pesticides, which is an umbrella term for herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides.
Herbicides control weeds that would otherwise overtake crops, competing with them for the nutrients in the soil, water, sunlight, and space.
Without herbicides, a field of crops could be a field full of weeds. If that happens, farmers can’t grow food in the amounts we need.
Fungicides help to prevent organisms that cause diseases in plants, including mildews, rusts, and blights. These can all destroy crops, which is how the Irish potato famine happened. Without the invention of fungicides, farmers today would lose approximately 60% of their potato crops.
Along the same lines, you may have heard from certain nutrition ‘gurus’ *ahem* Dave Asprey *ahem* that we should avoid coffee and peanuts because they contain molds called ‘mycotoxins.’
Mycotoxins are prevalent in some countries, and they are harmful to human health. It’s super rare for Canadian (and American) crops to have issues with mycotoxins though, because our farmers use fungicides to keep them from infecting food crops. How about that?
Insecticides are what they sound like – pesticides that keep insects from destroying food crops by spreading disease and by feeding on the crop itself.
While the thought of chemicals on our food may sound scary, we need to resist the urge to recoil when faced with the word ‘chemical.’ Instead, we should be asking what the chemical is, how it’s regulated and monitored, how it’s applied, how much is on our food, and how much we need to consume to reach a level that will cause negative health effects.
Nutrition requires nuance. Nuance requires asking those questions. Fear-based knee-jerk proclamations such as ‘strawberries have a lot of pesticides’ or ‘cereal is full of glyphosate’ don’t give us any useful information. They’re meant to sensationalize what’s actually the very science-based, precise processes that are pesticide development, testing, application, and monitoring.
Here are three myths about pesticides.
Myth #1: Farmers drench their crops with pesticides.
There seems to be this pervasive idea that conventionally grown produce is just drenched in pesticides. I’ve actually had many, many comments on my social feeds making this claim, but nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, when we repeat this myth, we’re painting farmers as greedy, unintelligent people who are intentionally pouring poison all over our food in order to make themselves money. That’s an extremely insulting and inaccurate thing to say.
To be a farmer means making a living off uncertainty, hard work, and a true love of growing things that feed communities, all while doing their best to preserve the environment. Without farmers, we wouldn’t have food. Let’s respect them and the work they do.
It’s neither financially advantageous for farmers, nor is it legal, to overspray crops. Pesticides are expensive, so farmers aren’t going out into their fields and orchards and having a free-for-all with the sprayer. Not even close. Pesticides are also heavily regulated. Crops are monitored by authorities for pesticide levels. If levels are too high, the crop won’t be sold. No farmer wants that, either.
It’s the 21st century: most commercial farmers use precision agriculture that involves software, drones, and sensors to determine precisely how much and where pesticide is needed in each row of each crop. These systems ensure that crops are as safe as possible for us and for the environment.
There’s almost zero guesswork to farming today, which I suppose destroys our romantic idea of what farming looks like. It’s not a guy with a pitchfork and a checked shirt riding on a tractor with a piece of wheat in his mouth. It’s more like a man or a woman employing the latest technology to increase yields, decrease wastage, and minimize their impact on the environment.
Myth #2: Organic food doesn’t contain pesticides.
Organic farmers use pesticides, and they use them for the exact same reasons that conventional farmers do: to minimize pests and crop damage and increase yields.
While organic farmers aren’t allowed to use most synthetic pesticides, they are permitted to use ‘natural’ pesticides, some of which are more toxic than their synthetic counterparts. Organic crops may also need more pesticide per acre than conventional ones, due to the lower efficacy of the permitted pesticides.
This means that some foods that are certified organic may still contain traces of synthetic pesticides. What it doesn’t mean is that either type of food is unsafe to eat.
The Appeal to Nature fallacy is often used to market organic food. This manifests in a perception that organic food is more ‘natural,’ and therefore ‘better’ or ‘healthier.’
None of that is true. By the time we purchase and consume organic or conventional food, the amount of pesticide residue on either is literally minute. It’s measured in parts per billion.
What kills me is that there are plenty of people who bang on about how our food is drenched in toxic pesticides, and who also drink alcohol – an actual toxin – in amounts that can actually be toxic.
As a dietitian, my problem with people vilifying conventionally grown food – besides the fact that they’re using poor or non-existent data – is that it discourages others from buying and eating produce that they can afford.
Only one in ten of us gets enough fruits and vegetables to begin with. If we’re being told that non-organic produce is poisoning us, but we can’t afford to buy organic, we end up eating less or no produce at all.
This is unacceptable.
Myth #3: The Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen show which foods have dangerous levels of pesticides on them.
I feel sad that as a new dietitian, I used to recommend the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen to my clients. I guess when we know better, we do better.
I’ve talked a lot about the EWG since then, and none of what I’ve said about it has been complimentary.
The EWG is an activist organization. It is supported in large part by the organic food industry, whose products, rather coincidentally, the EWG appears to recommend over their conventional counterparts.
Their ‘research’ entails setting their own ‘safe limits’ for pesticides on foods, which are many times smaller than the government’s scientifically proven safe limits. It’s virtually impossible to consume the volume of food necessary to even reach an unsafe level of pesticides according to government standards.
For example, you would have to eat about 280 apples every day, for your whole life, for there to be a health concern related to pesticide residues. That many apples can almost fill a shopping cart. Good luck with that!
You can use this pesticide residue calculator to determine how many servings of your favorite fruits and vegetables you’d have to eat to approach the safe limit for pesticides.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) tests and monitors both imported and domestic foods for pesticide residue and compares their results against the Maximum Residue Level, or MRL. MRLs are set far below the documented safe levels for each pesticide, which ensures that consumers can consume food without any sort of risk.
That being said, just because pesticide residue is detected on a food doesn’t mean that the food is ‘poison’ or ‘toxic.’ The residues, if they’re present at all, are in tiny amounts. The dose makes the poison.
Some ‘studies’ use urine samples to prove that the pesticides we are consuming are harming us. Just because a pesticide is detected in a person’s urine does not mean they’re being poisoned or that the pesticide was consumed in harmful amounts.
What we eat and drink is excreted in urine – finding pesticides in urine means the body is getting rid of them in the normal way. Prescription medications, vitamins, hormones, Tylenol, red colour from beets, and the byproducts of food and alcohol metabolism can all be found in the urine.
It’s also important to understand that the MRLs also take into account how much of each pesticide we may consume in our lifetime.
The CFIA also carries out the Children’s Food Project annually, which tests foods targeted at infants, toddlers and children under 15 years of age for pesticide residues.
Recent reports have shown that 99% of Canadian food, and 94% of food imported to Canada, is well under the MRLs for pesticides and for contaminants including lead and mercury.
Organic food is not safer than conventional food. A 2011 study found that consuming organic produce does not decrease risk for pesticide exposure.
Pesticides help lower food prices and increase food access. They help farmers to grow larger yields on smaller plots of land, reserving more land for animals and birds.
The amounts of pesticide that farmers use on food crops isn’t getting larger, just the opposite. The way we apply and monitor agricultural pesticides has evolved over time, which has led to smaller amounts being used than ever before.
Putting a health halo on the organic food industry while treating conventional farmers and pesticide makers as evil is an extremely misguided and privileged view. To learn more about how pesticides are helping farmers grow safe, healthy, and affordable food, check out CropLife Canada’s resource, “What’s the deal with pesticides?” This comprehensive guide dives deeper into the science behind pesticides, their role in sustainable agriculture, and how they help farmers protect crops while ensuring food remains safe for consumers.