Krish Ashok is at it again. He admits that food and agriculture are complex topics; yet he continues to make reels that over-simplify.
Krish Ashok’s recently uploaded a video on Instagram reels “Pesticides in spices : Do we need to worry?”. The conclusion he wants hs to draw is that “We don’t”. His understanding of organic farming seems laughable, at best, and extremely poor, at worst. He thinks organic farming simply replaces synthetic pesticides with natural pesticides. He couldn’t be more wrong.
There are many more strategies used by several, if not all, organic farmers to keep pests, all of which are species specific, at bay : crop rotation, inter-cropping, multi layer diverse agro-forestry, soil health improvement, fungi – plant – animal based pesticides. Most of modern industrial agriculture is focussed on identifying, manufacturing and applying poisons which kill specific species / family / genus / order of insects.
The impact of pesticides is unknown because the research in the developed world is nascent. In the developing world, the research is even more lacking. Most of what is being researched is the impact of specific pesticidies on human health. But, whatever we are having is a complex combination of pesticides manufactured by different companies possibly in different countries with varying regulations. It would be unrealistic to expect anyone to carry out such a wide ranging research on this concoction of substances we are consuming.
The problem with synthetic pesticides isn’t merely their residues in our food. Synthetic pesticides have several knock off effects, the most important of which is killing non-target species : pollinators. We depend on wild pollinators for growing a lot of our food. Misuse and overuse of pesticides puts in jeopardy the future of settled agriculture, as we know it.
The problem of Ethylene Oxide was not even about pesticides. Ethylene Oxide isn’t used as a pesticide in India apparently – spice producing companies use it as a sterilizing agent to neutralize E. Coli and Salmonella. This was clearly about MDH and Everest; but he made it to be about farmers. But Krish used this news to generate some clickbaity short form content to gain some views and followers by misrepresenting news and what the issue was actually about.
The modern food system relies on resource, water, energy intensive processes to sustain globalized world order where power is concentrated among the few rather than distributed among the many. Spice companies aren’t simply tiny companies responsible to “buy, grind and package spices” – they are massive conglomerates who have to ensure that the product has enough shelf life to sell all across the globe and make enough profit to pay its shareholders.
What is most worrying about the recent video is that he believes Economic Growth will reduce the pesticides levels in food. Economic growth in the last few decades has ensured more and more availability of ultra processed food, which has been a net negative for human society. Economic growth has mostly enabled only economies of large scale – in the case of agriculture, large scale = monocultures. Monocultures in farms are now the norm across the globe which increase the need for pesticides. He hasn’t offerred any explanation of how he believes economic growth will reduce use pesticides.
Krish would like to call this scare mongering. Instead of saying “We don’t have enough information”, he actually is a proponent of the famous “Ignorance is bliss”. He says he is a proponent of critical thinking but he has conveniently ignored all the research about the impact of modern agriculture & economic systems on ecosystems, ground water depletion, soil health deterioration algorithm. He doesn’t want to talk about these things because it is sad news and he would rather chill and not worry.
Worrying is a good thing if done rationally, Krish. Worrying and critical thinking go hand in hand. We don’t know everything about food and agriculture systems, and we might never know. It is okay to be cynical. I understand that a lot of people are misguided by silly information propagated by social media. But you seem to be oversimplifying complex matters to fit the 60 / 90 second limit set by these platforms. You are falling into the same trap that these scaremongering influencers have fallen into. Climb back up before it is too late.
Regards
Sudhakar
