Coronavirus Makes It Hard for Farmers to Get Masks… So Farm with Fewer Chemicals!

The coronavirus collapse has exposed a lot of problems in how we produce food. Another coronavirus-generated problem that will hurt farmers due to the inherent flaws of Butzian Big Ag is the shortage of face masks and other personal protective equipment, which will leave farmers and their hired hands more susceptible to the toxic chemicals necessary to prop up factory farming:

Hundreds of thousands of farmworkers in the United States routinely encounter pesticides on the job And some of the most widely used pesticides in the U.S. pose serious health risks, ranging from causing occupational asthma and respiratory irritation to death.

…Masks can be vital to minimizing the risk. The current shortage of masks comes on top of other risks related to the current health emergency. For example, farm workers often have preexisting conditions, such as those affecting respiratory health, that are risk factors for coronavirus. Many live and work in crowded conditions, and have difficulty accessing medical care.

…Many farmers and farm workers, especially those who work with pesticides, carry N95 masks. These devices are made of non-woven polypropylene fiber and meet strict government standards for filtering out particles and droplets as small as 0.3 microns, or three one-thousandths of a millimeter. These are often part of a broader PPE kit that can include respiratory protection, gloves, headgear and body, foot and eye protection [Melanie Bateman, “A Global Mask Shortage May Leave Farmers and Farm Workers Exposed to Toxic Pesticides,” The Conversation, 2020.04.27].

Hmmm… maybe instead of bowing to the exhortations of Monsanto/Bayer bamboozlers, farmers could adopt less toxic farming methods:

“It is striking,” said Nicolas Munier-Jolain, at France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research, and one of the team who conducted the new study. He said the results show that pesticide reduction is possible today for most arable farmers, without losing money: “Our results are quite consistent with the UN [myth] report.”

“But [the research] does not mean pesticides are useless or inefficient,” he said. The farmers using low levels of chemicals employ other methods to control pests, he said, such as rotating crops, mechanical weeding, using resistant varieties and carefully managing sowing dates and fertiliser use. “It’s a big change, but not a revolution,” he said.

“If you want real reduction in pesticide use, give the farmers the information about how to replace them,” said Munier-Jolain. “This is absolutely not the case at the moment. A large proportion of advice is provided by organisations that are both selling the pesticides and collecting the crops. I am not sure the main concern of these organisations is to reduce the amount of pesticide used” [Damian Carrington, “Farms Could Slash Pesticide Use Without Losses, Research Reveals,” The Guardian, 2017.04.06].

Using less pesticide means more bees, more pollination, and less chemical exposure for farm workers. Spare the masks for coronavirus response; reduce chemical usage in farming.