Poisoned agriculture, The long struggle of pesticide victimsFirst edition, by Jean‐NoëlJouzel, GiovanniPrete. Paris: SciencesPo Les Presses, 2024, pp 283. €24.00 (pbk). ISBN: 978‐2‐7246‐4145‐5.
本书基于调查和访谈，研究了2011年一群法国中老年农场主如何发起斗争，寻求对农药中毒这一“隐形流行病”的公正，并揭示了他们作为“意外受害者”的悖论。
Accounts of the health, safety and environmental struggles of those exposed to pollutants including pesticides marketed and used across the world have burgeoned in recent years in journals.Few books have explored the topic, and they usually focus on how science and medicine grappled with pesticide risks and disease recognition when the manufacturing industry frequently tried and usually succeeded for decades in covering them up.No European academic books until now have explored so originally, clearly and carefully how an atypical and surprising group of middle-aged relatively large-scale farmers, who used pesticides themselves, in 2011 started a struggle to address the 'invisible epidemic' of pesticide poisoning that affected them.This significant book, using surveys, interviews and records, effectively and rigorously delves into some of the paradoxes thrown up by these farmers and their struggle to get justice.The farmers first met on a cereal farm to discuss how to seek justice for the damage done to their health by various pesticides, some already banned in France by that time.The result was the establishment of the 'Phyto-victims' group and included farmers who had used pesticides in Bordeaux vineyards, on Limousin apples and Beauce cereals.They were 'victims by circumstance' and, as the authors state, 'victims by law'.A key aim was to gain recognition of the diseases caused by pesticides including the herbicides alachlor and various glyphosate formulations that they had used.Pesticide production workers, farm workers, farmers and the communities near crops all face similar but not necessarily identical toxic risks from contact with hazardous chemicals.They may deal with those risks in different ways, with different resources and outcomes.This has proved the case, for example, with the herbicide glyphosate, an unusual organophosphate chemical with a number of formulations, that is covered extensively in the book.These formulations have been widely used both in farming and in local authority weed control.Environmental nongovernmental and trade union organisations not farmers have been most active in campaigning against the use of roundup because of concerns about its adverse human health effects and possible environmental damage.