Spring 2022 ORGANIC REPORT 30 Agrochemicals’ Harm on Social Justice Jayson Porter THE HISTORY of pesticide manufacturing and use in the United States reveals an enduring legacy of environmental racism against communities of color and their collective action for environmental justice. Humans have harnessed the toxicity of chemicals to kill agricultural insects for millennia. However, the rapid proliferation of conventional synthetic agrochemicals increased how much agriculture itself could hurt places and people. The burden of protecting people and places has always fallen on communities rather than governments and institutions. HISTORY OF AGROCHEMICALS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Insecticides and fertilizers gained new popularity as labor-saving technologies after the abolition of slavery in 1862. Without enslaved Black field hands to pluck insects from crops and clear new lands, cotton planters invested in agrochemicals to kill insects and revitalize the land. However, agrochemicals did not simply replace Black labor, they also placed the burden of harm on Black laborers who had to use them with little to no educational support. On the West Coast, the formation of California’s vast agricultural infrastructure also relied on environmental racism and modern agrochemicals. White settlers weaponized ideas about efficiency and proper land use to seize lands from dozens of Indigenous communities, and passed legislation (such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, among others) preventing farmers of color from participating in the agricultural boom as landowners. New technologies did not replace migrant laborers but encouraged investment in modern, capital-intensive agriculture that further discredited their traditional knowledge and access to land. The overlapping nature of technology and labor continued to make pesticides an occupational hazard for farmers of color. ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM AND AGROCHEMICALS Environmental racism intersects with sites of agrochemicals production in urban areas and use in rural areas. Agrochemical production shaped urban industrial centers in urban waterfront communities like the South Bronx and South Baltimore. In South Baltimore, in particular, the history of agrochemical production in Curtis Bay is one factor that resulted in that community having some of the nation’s highest asthma rates in the country. Even though Curtis Bay is no longer a principal producer of agrochemicals, a wide range of chemical manufacturers continue to plague the health of residents. Agrochemicals production also left a similar stain on the strip of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, known as Cancer Alley. Due to pollution from nearly 30 chemical manufacturers, cancer rates for the historically Black communities in this industrial corridor are 50 times higher than the national average. AGROCHEMICAL RACISM IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION Agrochemicals also have a direct impact on poor health outcomes in sites of agricultural production. This is especially true in California, where nearly one-third of the nation’s farmworkers live. Combined with a legacy of racial segregation, California is also a site of environmental racism. Over half of California pesticides are used in five majorities Latinx and low-income counties. This parallels the patterns in the U.S. South, where the government spends nearly eight times more money on pesticides in counties with populations over 40% people of color than in counties with less than 6%. In the case of California, counties with Latinx majority populations use 906% more pesticides than counties with fewer than 24% Latinx residents. A high percentage of residents encounter pesticides in the fields, and entire communities experience effects of pesticide drift and pesticide runoff, which contaminate the air and water shared by communities and cropland. School children are especially vulnerable where planners nestled schools between fields. Latinx students are 91% more likely to attend schools with the highest exposure to agrochemicals. Studies of the impact of prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides on lowincome Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers are numerous, complex, and troubling. They generally highlight how unequal protection from pesticides causes several respiratory, stress-related, and developmental illnesses. Despite California’s regulatory system for The Organic Center has been highlighting these issues through webinars and a written report. Visit organic-center.org to learn more. •
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