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The War on Bugs
Will Allen is an organic farming visionary. A true activist, entrepreneur, and expert, he understands the complexities of farming first hand and the impact that commercialization has had. In the early nineteenth century as the American population grew rapidly, demands on crop output increased. Seeing an opportunity to play upon fears from market demand, chemical companies declared war on the vile, profit-sucking, output-wreaking, arch-nemesis of the average American farmer - bugs. With precision, pesticide manufacturers delivered a "shock and awe" media campaign, that can only be paralleled to the current blitzkrieg from today's pharmaceutical companies. Bugs were the threat to the American dream - and there was a cure available to every farmer available in spray, granule, dust, or systemic form that could be applied to your crops. Will Allen's War on Bugs reveals how advertisers, editors, scientists, large scale farmers, government agencies, and even Dr. Seuss, colluded to convince farmers to use deadly chemicals, hormones, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in an effort to pad their wallets and control the American farm enterprise. Utilizing dozens of original advertisements and promotions to illustrate the story, Allen details how consumers and activists have struggled against toxic food. Echoing the warnings of seminal works on the topic like, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, 100,000 Guinea Pigs by Arthur Kallet and F.J. Schlink, and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, The War on Bugs shouts that the time to stop poisoning our food, water, air, and ourselves is now!
- GenresNonfiction
336 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2007
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89 people want to read
About the author
Will Allen
1 book1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Will Allen grew up on a small farm in southern California and served in the Marine Corps between the Korean and Vietnam wars. He received a PhD in Anthropology (focused on Peruvian tropical forest agriculture) and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, before being fired and sentenced to a year in jail for civil rights and antiwar activism. He returned to farming and farm labor full time in 1972 and has been farming organically ever since in Oregon, California, and Vermont, where he now comanages Cedar Circle Farm. He founded the Sustainable Cotton Project in 1991 and served as its executive director for thirteen years. He is currently a cochair of Farms Not Arms, is a policy advisory board member of the Organic Consumers Association, and serves on the board of Rural Vermont.
Will Allen grew up on a small farm in southern California and served in the Marine Corps between the Korean and Vietnam wars. He received a PhD in Anthropology (focused on Peruvian tropical forest agriculture) and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, before being fired and sentenced to a year in jail for civil rights and antiwar activism. He returned to farming and farm labor full time in 1972 and has been farming organically ever since in Oregon, California, and Vermont, where he now comanages Cedar Circle Farm. He founded the Sustainable Cotton Project in 1991 and served as its executive director for thirteen years. He is currently a cochair of Farms Not Arms, is a policy advisory board member of the Organic Consumers Association, and serves on the board of Rural Vermont.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 8, 2012
Fascinating story of American industrial pesticides, advertising, spin doctoring, and the rationalizations people used after the chemicals’ dangers became obvious. Illustrated advertisements from farm journals, dating from 1867 onward, show how scientists, farm journal editors, advertisers, and universities collaborated with industry to promote and defend these chemicals, which now poison our air, water, soil, and bodies. The text, by farmer turned anthropologist Allen, is thoughtful and well documented. Is there consolation here? Um, if it's any relief to know that corporations and advertisers have been spoiling American farming for a century and a half.
May 28, 2008
To be honest I didn't finish this book, the library wanted it back, but I will! Besides the interesting and informative text the book was also very visually appealing.
November 4, 2008
“Many of us carry around a bucolic view of farming, ranching, and rural America. We think of farming as being toxic only after the introduction of DDT at the close of World War II. Such presumptions are wrong,” Will Allen writes. According to Allen, the government, the scientific community, and the press have been promoting the use of farm chemicals for 160 years.
Allen grew up on a farm in southern California, and served in the Marine Corps between Korea and Vietnam. After teaching anthropology at University of Illinois and U.C.-Santa Barbara, he was sentenced to a year in jail for civil rights and antiwar activism. (This information actually appears on the back cover of the book.) Since 1972 he’s been farming organically and full-time. For the last twenty years he has also been running a tour service for government, university, consumer, environment, press, and industry representatives. The tours include farms in California, Texas, and the mid-South where industrial agriculture is the most visible and devastating. According to Allen, one of the number one questions on the tours is, “Don’t the farmers know these chemicals are toxic?”
Of course, says Allen. Growing up, farmers were cautious to the point of paranoia about the storage and possible mishandling of farm chemicals. But there’s not much of a choice to use or not to use when banks require the use of chemicals to guarantee their loans.
Allen begins his story of synthetic fertilizers in depopulated post-Great Plague Europe, when common lands were appropriated by landowners for commercial farming and grazing. These were the first factory farms, and the practice continued in colonial America. There, large land tracts were held in trust by kings or investment groups that wanted a return. Although innovators like Jethro Tull warned about soil depletion in large-scale and intensive farming, landowners preferred to abandon a field rather than till it: there was always more land to be had.
The advent of commercial printing was the next nail in the coffin of sustainable farming, for advertising corrupts absolutely. Ben Franklin’s character takes a direct blow as he accepted ad dollars “no matter how odious its nature [like runaway slaves] or questionable its value.”
The discovery in Peru of guano at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the final beginning of the end of natural fertilizers, and in many ways was the foundation of modern chemistry. Guano harvesters and distributors knew that the natural product was limited, and chemists scurried to replace it with a synthetic substitute. Scientific experts contributed to the demise of the natural by touting the inferiority of local resources, like farmyard manure. The truly remarkable qualities of guano however, created an illusion of truthfulness in advertising. If Peruvian guano actually worked, why wouldn’t “Ichaboe,” “Pelican,” or “Fish” work as well? The age of snake oil for farmers was born.
The invention of pesticides follows from entirely different human need: medicine and public health. Allen weaves a fascinating picture of the connections between medicine, rat control, chemistry, and labor practices to arrive at the door of DDT, Roundup, and genetically engineered staple crops. While the “heroic” practice of medicine under Marcus Aurelius—basically triage, brutal and often fatal with its use of purging with toxic substances—was the beginning of chemical exploration, interestingly it was the Great Plague, again, and the use arsenic and heavy metals to poison rats, that pinpoints the beginning of the trajectory.
When the book moves into the war on bugs, the two-color, oversized images and text become ominous. “Paris Green” was an arsenic paint pigment used to kill the Colorado Potato Beetle (and this reviewer is reminded of the “Fire Retardant Green” paint used on her own childhood farm), and while the supersized images of old and new ads are mostly orange, perhaps it’s that color’s position opposite green on the color wheel that evokes a sickening feeling towards the final chapters.
“My goal is to provoke readers with some often overlooked historical perspectives about food and farming,” writes Allen in his introduction, “and to suggest what they can do to ensure that food is produced safely on land that is properly cared for, so that our children and grandchildren will be able to enjoy its bounty and continue to make it productive.” How could we not wish him well. (ForeWord Magazine)
Allen grew up on a farm in southern California, and served in the Marine Corps between Korea and Vietnam. After teaching anthropology at University of Illinois and U.C.-Santa Barbara, he was sentenced to a year in jail for civil rights and antiwar activism. (This information actually appears on the back cover of the book.) Since 1972 he’s been farming organically and full-time. For the last twenty years he has also been running a tour service for government, university, consumer, environment, press, and industry representatives. The tours include farms in California, Texas, and the mid-South where industrial agriculture is the most visible and devastating. According to Allen, one of the number one questions on the tours is, “Don’t the farmers know these chemicals are toxic?”
Of course, says Allen. Growing up, farmers were cautious to the point of paranoia about the storage and possible mishandling of farm chemicals. But there’s not much of a choice to use or not to use when banks require the use of chemicals to guarantee their loans.
Allen begins his story of synthetic fertilizers in depopulated post-Great Plague Europe, when common lands were appropriated by landowners for commercial farming and grazing. These were the first factory farms, and the practice continued in colonial America. There, large land tracts were held in trust by kings or investment groups that wanted a return. Although innovators like Jethro Tull warned about soil depletion in large-scale and intensive farming, landowners preferred to abandon a field rather than till it: there was always more land to be had.
The advent of commercial printing was the next nail in the coffin of sustainable farming, for advertising corrupts absolutely. Ben Franklin’s character takes a direct blow as he accepted ad dollars “no matter how odious its nature [like runaway slaves] or questionable its value.”
The discovery in Peru of guano at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the final beginning of the end of natural fertilizers, and in many ways was the foundation of modern chemistry. Guano harvesters and distributors knew that the natural product was limited, and chemists scurried to replace it with a synthetic substitute. Scientific experts contributed to the demise of the natural by touting the inferiority of local resources, like farmyard manure. The truly remarkable qualities of guano however, created an illusion of truthfulness in advertising. If Peruvian guano actually worked, why wouldn’t “Ichaboe,” “Pelican,” or “Fish” work as well? The age of snake oil for farmers was born.
The invention of pesticides follows from entirely different human need: medicine and public health. Allen weaves a fascinating picture of the connections between medicine, rat control, chemistry, and labor practices to arrive at the door of DDT, Roundup, and genetically engineered staple crops. While the “heroic” practice of medicine under Marcus Aurelius—basically triage, brutal and often fatal with its use of purging with toxic substances—was the beginning of chemical exploration, interestingly it was the Great Plague, again, and the use arsenic and heavy metals to poison rats, that pinpoints the beginning of the trajectory.
When the book moves into the war on bugs, the two-color, oversized images and text become ominous. “Paris Green” was an arsenic paint pigment used to kill the Colorado Potato Beetle (and this reviewer is reminded of the “Fire Retardant Green” paint used on her own childhood farm), and while the supersized images of old and new ads are mostly orange, perhaps it’s that color’s position opposite green on the color wheel that evokes a sickening feeling towards the final chapters.
“My goal is to provoke readers with some often overlooked historical perspectives about food and farming,” writes Allen in his introduction, “and to suggest what they can do to ensure that food is produced safely on land that is properly cared for, so that our children and grandchildren will be able to enjoy its bounty and continue to make it productive.” How could we not wish him well. (ForeWord Magazine)
January 14, 2020
Very interesting history on the use of pesticides. Written in an engaging way. Excellent information. Would like more history and science books not to gloss over this information. Would read again to glean more.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews