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From: hammond@faline.bellcore.com (Rich A. Hammond)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: pesticides
Message-ID: <1054@faline.bellcore.com>
Date: Mon, 17-Aug-87 14:11:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: faline.1054
Posted: Mon Aug 17 14:11:39 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Aug-87 05:22:00 EDT
References: <4960@ihlpa.ATT.COM> <1039@faline.bellcore.com>
Reply-To: hammond@faline.UUCP (Rich A. Hammond)
Organization: Bellcore MRE
Lines: 15

In article <> ken@argus.UUCP (Kenneth Ng) writes:
>Sure, a couple farmers can forgoe use of pesticides without problems, just
>as a couple children can forgo polio and other vacinations without problems.
>But for the general population to not use pesticides and/or vacininations
>would be suicidial.

The alternative to killing everything is to keep the pest
population in check.  The farmer in question did this by crop rotation,
e.g. corn one year, wheat the next, soybeans the year after.
So, corn eating pests only eat well once every three years, not enough
for their population to get out of hand.  Same for the other pests.
Also mentioned that birds and other good insects helped.
I suspect he did benefit from his neighbors spraying pesticides,
probably had a much larger bird population on his farm than he would have
otherwise.