this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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F’real. I’d like to know what alternate timeline has more deaths: the one where, going forward, we continue our modern farming practices as-is; the other, we ban them and revert to only organic farming.
I’d bet cancer deaths per calorie of food produced would be roughly the same…organic farming being both less efficient and not a guarantee in itself that pesticides/herbicides are safer for humans. And l, being less efficient, I’d wager we’d hit famine simply by not having enough good farming land to meet dietary needs.
And who is getting cancer? Mostly farmers that are too lazy/proud to don PPE, and migrant workers who aren’t provided it. In either case it takes a lot of intentional, repeated, unprotected direct exposure. Joe Public isn’t gonna get cancer spraying his poison ivy or even his tomato’s.