A balanced approach

1972 will no doubt be remembered as the year of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm. It is hardly surprising that the word "environmental" occurs either actually or implicitly in the titles of no fewer than three of the papers in the present issue of Outlook on Agriculture. It is right that there should be public concern about the conservation of the environment provided, as an earlier Editorialhas pointed out, an effective course is steered between complacency and panic. Two booklets recently published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nationspresent a commendably balanced approach. Of fertilizers, it is concluded that "the effects of intensive fertilizer use on the environment are mainly positive" and attention is focused on FAD's invaluable work of "promoting the efficient (and correct) usc of fertilizers, to help combat malnutrition by the increased production of high-quality, nutritious foodstuffs, and so help raise standards of living throughout the world". While available evidence indicates that when fertilizers are applied correctly contribution to the nutrient content of surface and ground waters is small in proportion to nutrients derived from other sources, it is nevertheless recommended that more research should be devoted to this subject and in particular to establishing complete balance sheets for nitrogen in soils, including losses by denitrification and by volatilization of ammonia as well as by leaching. More research is also recommended on developing systems which allow the recycling on farms of the nutrients present in animal wastes. Of pesticides, FAD acknowledges that they "have made very substantial contributions to the expansion in agricultural productivity that has occurred throughout the world in recent years and that if drastic curtailment of productivity with its consequences on human welfare is to be avoided, then it is inevitable that pesticides will continue to be widely used for many years to come". While the possibility is accepted that specific or otherwise valuable products or methods of application may have to be restricted or forbidden on grounds of unacceptab'e contamination of the environment, it is pointed out that likely gains and losses must be carefully evaluated, bearing in mind that agriculture and the developing world should not be unnecessarily denied the tools known to be required to develop productivity and improve human welfare. FAD's conclusion is that "further support be given to the policy of increasing the technical and scientific supervision of the initial introduction, marketing and use of pesticides and that this should include continued studies on the integrated, safe and effective use of all available biological and chemical pest control methods". The pesticide industry itself, in another bookletj prepared in advance of the Stockholm Conference, has assembled a useful and readable compendium of information on the effect of pesticides on the environment, the part they play in the economy of the developing regions of the world and introductions to the main groups of pesticides. The authors have deliberately and with success tried to adopt a factual, unemotional approach and to avoid too highly scientific and technical jargon. They remind us of the enormous advances in human hygiene, in the eradication of malaria from many parts of the world and the reduced incidence of typhus, plague, river