By Alysa Leier
Do you see these three humans walking through this pea field? They’re my favorites. My ride-or-die crew. Probably the only people I would sacrifice my life for. You see those peas? My three favorites and I were eating those peas straight out of the pods while we were in the field. No water to wash them off first, either. This was last week.
These peas are conventionally grown, and that means they’ve been sprayed with some sort of pesticide. We’ve done this several years in a row now, and spoiler alert: we are all still alive and healthy.
I try really, really hard not to let too many things tangle my mermaid hair, but one thing that always seems to do just that is the misinformation constantly spread about pesticide use on agricultural commodities.
You see, while we may use pesticides to kill weeds or keep insects from ruining our crops, we know those crops will eventually become food. Whether it’s food humans directly consume, like wheat that’s ground into flour and made into cookies, or these peas that we’re eating while they’re green. Or maybe it’s corn that might become your cornflakes, or the oats that are in your oatmeal or it’s a commodity that becomes food for our food, such as those same peas and corn that will dry down, be harvested and become livestock feed, we know it needs to be safe. And it is.
I definitely don’t want anything harmful in my food. And the great thing is that every so-called “chemical” we use gets highly diluted and then metabolized by the plant itself, which results in little to no pesticide residue in the final consumed product. This means that even these peas that we are eating straight out of the field leave me with absolutely no anxiety over whether or not there’s a chemical in them that could harm my kids. And no, a jury’s finding does not even come close to providing scientific proof of potential harm. (Yes, I am most definitely talking about glyphosate here, and yes, it’s safe.)
It’s also important to acknowledge that even organically grown products have been treated with some sort of pesticide.
I think it’s sometimes over looked that while farmers and ranchers are responsible for feeding the world, we have to feed ourselves and our families as well. We aren’t going to use something that will make it into our food if it’s going to be harmful.