The Political Economy of Pesticides: How to Subsidize a Poison

the political economy of pesticides,

how to subsidize a poison.

By Timothy D. Terrell,

the Make America Healthy Again movement is well known

for its skepticism of chemical additives and foods

and of large-scale pesticide-intensive agriculture.

With environmentalists and current U.S. Secretary of Health

and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy.

Now leading the movement, many of the long-held concerns

of environmentalists about toxins and food quality

have found a curious place in the Trump administration.

Recent political contests over pesticides

have redrawn some of the battle lines.

International agrochemical companies,

which for many years have promoted policies

requiring the use of more of their products,

have discovered that Republican support is not a certainty.

Recently, Maha advocates and some Democrats had reason

to celebrate when a provision on pesticide labeling,

section 453, was dropped from a federal funding bill.

Section 453 would have granted pesticide manufacturers

a federal preemption of state and local restrictions

or labeling requirements on pesticides,

ensuring that only federal rules apply

and shielding pesticide manufacturers

from lawsuits alleging harm from their products.

Some Republicans who favored the provision

had argued that it would avoid a patchwork

of state labeling requirements

and prevent anyone state from establishing the label

for the rest of the states

as representative Mike Simpson contended.

For-profit regulation.

This argument for federal preemption is an old one

as pesticide use, including the controversial DDT,

expanded in the 1940s, large pesticide manufacturers

sought federal regulation,

but not out of a concern for environmental quality.

For them, federal regulation would override

the hundreds of state-level regulations

that complicated their business.

It would also position the federal government

to act as gatekeeper and screen out those fly-by-night operators

who might sell the industry's reputation.

In other words, federal regulation

would reduce competition improving profits.

Federal intervention would also reduce exposure

to common law-tort liability,

which could be useful for pesticide manufacturers or users.

Just as these firms were pressing for regulation,

the federal government was using deeply flawed arguments

based on economists' theories of public goods

to justify massive aerial bombardment of DDT.

Bombardment seems especially appropriate to term

since some of the first aerial applications of DDT

were from modified World War II bombers.

If the government is applying pesticides and can say

that it is doing so for a valuable public purpose,

the usual common law-tort arguments

tend to be shoved aside.

It is understandable, then, why large agricultural companies

supported the 1947 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide,

and Redenticide Act, F-I-F-R-A.

Concentrating power in the federal government

was a win for them.

In the USDA, they had a sympathetic regulator

that would suppress other, more troublesome, regulators.

And the federal government was also a large customer

that would buy countless tons of their product directly

and subsidize purchases by others.

The excellent powder.

In the mid-1940s, DDT or Decloro-Diffinialtric chloroethane

was big news in the agrochemical world.

As the first synthetic insecticide, DDT replaced more toxic

chemicals such as arsenic, and it appeared

to have only mild side effects in humans.

As a bug fighter, DDT seemed to have no equal,

and the allies used it during World War II

to help protect troops from insect-borne malaria and typhus.

After the war, it was highly effective in preventing malaria

and other diseases around the world.

India went from almost 1 million deaths

from malaria in 1945 to only a few thousand by 1960.

Indeed, in the first two decades of widespread use,

DDT may have saved something like 10 million lives globally.

One resident of Serenam was so pleased with the application

of DDT that he named his son Day Day Tay.

In the mid-20th century, such a cheap and highly effective

insecticide was regarded as something of a miracle chemical,

described by Winston Churchill as an excellent powder.

The Swiss scientist, who in 1939 discovered

its insecticidal properties, Paul Muller,

was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

The idea of banning such a substance

as the EPA did in 1972 would have bewildered

most 1940s Americans who faced a real risk of malaria,

as well as many others worldwide.

Farmers, too, were happy to have a broad spectrum insecticide

to deal with many pests other than mosquitoes.

In the period from World War II through the 1960s, however,

government took this useful chemical and applied it recklessly

and without regard for individual rights.

How to subsidize a poison?

The malaria control in more areas program

of the Public Health Service had begun applying DDT

in the American southeast in 1944.

The year before DDT became available for public sale

in the United States.

Two years later, the MCWA became the Communicable Disease

Center, later to become the Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC's National Malaria Eradication Program,

which began in 1947, promoted the use of DDT

through subsidies and widespread spraying.

Government spraying programs administered

through the Department of Agriculture

and local governments coded millions of acres

in campaigns against pests like gypsy moss,

spruce budworm, and fire ants.

The Tennessee Valley Authority sprayed DDT

for mosquitoes in the 1940s.

A problem which the TVA had a hand in creating

since the project created lakes conducive to mosquito breeding.

But the government's enthusiastic use

raised concerns even in its early years.

Paul Muller, when invited by the US Army in 1945

to visit the US for discussions on DDT,

opined that far too much DDT was being used for aerial spraying.

Later in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech,

he emphasized how much remained to be learned

about how DDT worked and its effects.

At that point, government was undeterred

by such scientific reservations.

Government spraying provided job security

for federal employees, and chemical companies were happy

to have the government endorse, encourage,

and buy large quantities of their products.

More broadly, agricultural policy that paid farmers

to take crop land out production was encouraging farmers

to farm the remaining land more intensively,

which entailed the profligate use of insecticides

and other chemicals.

State and federal government support for DDT

was inconsistent across and even within

sea pages 262 to 295 agencies.

State and local officials tended to be more conservative

in their pesticide use than the federal government

and sometimes protested federal spraying.

Spraying programs also faced growing opposition

from the public.

Aerial spraying overrode the property rights of landowners

and once broad local support waned.

In Georgia, farmer Dorothy Colson worried about harm to humans

as well as chicks and honey bees and campaigned

against the chemical after it began to be used

for agricultural purposes in 1945.

Colson and her sister, Mamie Plyler,

wrote a state official at the Georgia Division

of Industrial Hygiene, Lester Petrie, asking for help.

It wasn't right to kill one man's bees

to make another man's peanuts, Colson's sister wrote.

But please, for state assistance, we're of little help.

Colson and Plyler continued to experience health problems,

though the arsenic-based insecticide also being used

in the area was implicated in Plyler's illnesses.

Meanwhile, the state continued spraying DDT

including over Colson's property.

On Long Island, New York, the USDA insisted

on spraying DDT as part of a gypsy moth eradication program,

though there was no infestation on Long Island.

Residents complained about the oily film of DDT

on their cars and houses,

and organic farmers complained that their crops

had been rendered non-organic.

Marjorie Spock, who had repeatedly asked the USDA

not to spray her two-acre plot in Brookville,

coordinated a lawsuit against the USDA in 1957.

Plaintiffs included JP Morgan's daughter Jane Nichols,

Teddy Roosevelt's son Archibald Roosevelt,

and other prominent locals.

The suit charged that DDT spraying deprived the plaintiffs

of property and possibly lives without due process of laws

and took their private property for public use

without just compensation.

The plaintiffs lost.

In his decision, the judge took it upon himself

to weigh the costs and benefits of the use of DDT,

though there was no way he could have compared

the subjective evaluations.

The plaintiffs, he said, failed to show

that there was a threat of irreparable damage to them

in excess of that which would probably be visited

upon the community in general.

In an appeal, the court again placed itself

in the untenable position of weighing costs

to the plaintiffs and benefits to the general public.

The appeal too failed.

But as Roger Miners and Andrew Morris have pointed out,

this was inconsistent with how courts treated

private applications of pesticides.

Cases from the 1950s indicate that people

who sprayed pesticides were liable for damage caused

by pesticide drift.

Completely contrary to what happened

to the organic growers on Long Island,

farmers won cases when pesticides

sprays from neighboring farmers made them

ineligible for organic certification.

Government, however, could spray pesticides

with little reason to worry about legal consequences

even as evidence mounted that indiscriminate

and excessive pesticide usage was causing significant harm.

When a USDA carpet bombing of dildrin

and organic pesticides similar to DDT,

both are organic chlorides,

killed over 100 cattle in Georgia in 1958,

farmers became reluctant to pay even part

of the cost of spraying.

Undeterred, the USDA began offering the pesticides for free.

State governments began withdrawing their support,

but for a time, the federal government persisted.

USDA employees, after all, had incomes

tied to the perpetuation of these programs.

Silent spring.

Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring

was a landmark in the opposition to DDT

and indeed modern environmentalism.

Most memorable is its argument that DDT

was interfering with bird reproduction.

The book elevated pesticide concerns

among the general public

and the challenges to the agrochemical industry

became better coordinated.

At first, regulatory responses seemed slight.

Initially, state and local governments responded

and then the various interest groups

gravitated toward federal intervention.

There were modest revisions to FIFRA in 1964,

removing manufacturer's ability to sell pesticides

that the federal government had rejected.

But as Jonathan Adler noted,

this was a privilege that manufacturers rarely invoked anyway.

It was a small sacrifice

for which manufacturers obtained even greater preemption

of state regulation and another avenue

for challenging government denial

of a product registration.

Ultimately, the push by national chemical companies

for one-size-fits-all regulation

and the accompanying competitive advantages

led to federalization of pesticide regulation.

Perhaps more importantly,

silent spring had an impact on the growth

of environmentalist interest groups,

organizations which would steer the course

of later environmental legislation and litigation

were formed in its wake.

In 1967, a group of scientists and others

formed the Environmental Defense Fund

and sued the Suffolk County New York Mosquito Control Commission

after a 5,000 gallon dump of DDT was linked to a fish kill.

The case did not succeed in getting an injunction

since it was based on a novel legal argument

without foundation in common law or statutory law.

But it provided valuable attention for the EDF,

which fought DDT until its final ban

in 1972.

It may seem odd, but the chemical industry may have had

reason to look back fondly on silent spring.

Environmentalist opposition to DDT

might have concerned firms worried about a broad attack

on their industry, but there was also an opportunity.

DDT was cheap and displaced sales of other insecticides

that had been developed.

As three scientists pointed out in the prominent medical journal,

the Lancet, the insistence of environmental advocacy

seems to have won approval of powerful pesticide companies,

because it allows them to sell their more expensive insecticides.

The replacement of DDT by organophosphate,

carbomate, or pyrethroid insecticides

is commonly proposed, even though price, efficacy,

duration, or effectiveness, and side effects, for example,

and unpleasant smell, are major barriers to use in poor countries.

Some organophosphates, which are related

to chemical warfare nerve agents like sarin or VX,

are arguably worse for human health than DDT.

As the FDA lowered DDT limits on food products in 1968,

organophosphate poisoning rose.

And in some countries, the abandonment of DDT

corresponded to a resurgence of malaria.

But a bootleggers and baptists, convergence of interest

between the chemical industry and activist environmentalist

organizations, could benefit both groups.

Just as sellers of illegal alcohol benefited

from morally motivated campaigns to restrict legal liquor

sales, the chemical industry might have enjoyed overall gains

from those concerned about DDT.

What DDT teaches us about intervention?

Environmental and public health concerns

have long provided moral cover for government intervention.

But a clear-eyed view of government also

shows that it frequently works against environmental quality

and public health.

Which direction will the Maha movement go?

So far, it has been a mixed bag as far as its approach

to government.

As Robert Malone has pointed out, at his core,

Maha is predominantly pro-regulation.

For example, regardless of what one may think of the effects

of food dies on health,

a ban on certain dies is a regulatory approach to a solution.

But, Malone says, there's also a deregulatory aspect

to the Maha movement, as with the acceptance

of unpasteurized milk or the opposition to vaccine mandates.

There is some understanding in the movement

that bureaucracies may be part of the problem.

The DDT story shows us that government intervention

to limit toxins or improve environmental quality

does not fit a public interest view of government.

In this view, government acts in good faith

to competently protect people and the environment.

Though we should ask questions about the science of pesticides,

we can have little confidence that good scientific inquiries

driving policy.

And whatever the chemists tell us,

that information cannot determine what human preferences are

or what they should be.

Government, in any case, responds to interest groups

according to how well these groups can mobilize politically,

not according to what best promotes human well-being,

which, as Ludwig von Meises pointed out,

government planners are not able to determine anyway.

The rights of individuals are of little concern to governments

that have bureaucracy budgets to protect or industries

to subsidize.

Harms committed by governments will tend

to be immune from the threat of tort liability

that would restrain private parties.

And decentralization, such as preferring state authority

to federal authority, can enhance political competition

and slow the erosion of liberty.

Dropping section 453 means that smaller,

more local governments were, for now,

able to stave off federal monopolization of regulation

and that lawsuits a liberty-friendly approach

to disputes over damages remain useful to compensate victims.

It may be a win to celebrate,

but the interest groups that created Fifra in 1947

that bombarded cities and fields with DDT

and that steered agricultural policy

to benefit bureaucracies and boardrooms have not gone away.

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