The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

by Zoë Schlanger

The world uses about two million tons of conventional pesticides to control weeds and bugs each year. (The United States alone says it uses one billion pounds a year.) And these aren’t onetime applications; most crops need to be doused in pesticide several times a growing season to keep the pests away. As a matter of course, pests evolve to become resistant to pesticides, requiring higher and higher doses, until entirely new formulas must be developed. The consequences of all this to human health can be severe. In the United States alone, as many as 11,000 farmworkers are fatally poisoned by pesticides each year, and another 385 million are severely poisoned but don’t die, to say nothing of the birth defects, breathing disorders, and other long-term health impacts of constant exposure to regular doses of the stuff.* Meanwhile rainwater that runs over sprayed fields takes the pesticides off farms and into streams and rivers, which taint water supplies, extending the health impacts to the general population of humans along with fish and aquatic wildlife.