The MAHA Commission Won’t Fix Public Health or Our Food System

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. started talking about pesticides, a lot of people got their hopes up that someone might finally fix the broken food system. But instead he bowed to corporate oligarchy when he listened to Big Ag rather than recommending that we stop exposing ourselves to toxic pesticides. This toxic food system wasn’t always our reality, and it doesn’t have to be our future.

In the United States, it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) job to regulate pesticides. Pesticide manufacturers apply for registration of active ingredients by submitting research (often industry funded) claiming they are safe and effective when used as directed. EPA determines its registration decisions based on a risk assessment and other supporting documents, then a public comment period follows. However, EPA relies on industry-funded research for these decisions, when time and again we have seen the pesticide industry hide evidence that its products cause harm.

Take the herbicide paraquat for instance: Paraquat is a highly toxic pesticide; one teaspoon is enough to kill an adult. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. This herbicide is commonly used in the United States as weeds become increasingly resistant to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Bayer’s industrial formulation of Roundup™). Paraquat is banned for use in 72 countries. Exposure to paraquat has been increasingly associated with Parkinson’s disease and other chronic conditions like cancer, but Big Ag has successfully pushed back against calls to ban this pesticide in the US for decades.

But this issue is bigger than one chemical; there are hundreds of pesticides in use in this country, and all of them have the potential to cause harm. Be it weeds, bugs, rodents, or fungi, the purpose of these chemicals is to kill what they come in contact with. Our consolidated food system encourages farmers to prioritize quantity over crop diversity—meaning that the largest farms in this country are monoculture operations (farms growing one crop on massive swaths of land). One problem with monoculture is that the pest pressures are significant. It requires high inputs of agrichemicals; you either need a huge amount of labor to pull weeds and hand-pick pests, or you apply increasing quantities of synthetic pesticides to manage pests. Year over year, as farms use more and more pesticides, weeds and pests develop resistance, requiring more frequent application or resorting to stronger, more toxic formulations. This is a vicious cycle that traps farmers by keeping them on a “pesticide treadmill.”

Agorecology is an economically and ecologically viable alternative to our current food system’s foundation of extraction.

This monoculture, ultra-processed food system that relies heavily on toxic chemicals is also making us sick, with microplastics being found in our brains (plastic usage in agriculture is also a growing concern and a major contributor to microplastics in soil); PFAS contaminating our water (many pesticide formulations contain or are themselves PFAS); and children being exposed to pesticides in their backyards, at parks and schools, and in utero. At the same time, farmers are being squeezed by a system that makes it harder for small and medium-sized farms to make a living, with no protections in place except for the corporate players.

It wasn’t one thing that set us on the path to this reality where our food, water, soil, air, and bodies are contaminated with fossil fuel derived agrichemicals and microplastics; there were decisions and policies that over the course of only a few decades cornered us into this reality. The good news is that we can course correct if as a society we reprioritize health and start making decisions that benefit people over corporate greed.

A food system built on agroecology is one that doesn’t rely on agrichemicals to function and is therefore not captured by corporations. An agroecological food system in America looks like thriving and decentralized community food systems, where the people growing and consuming food have control over what goes into and comes out of their food system; grow food without reliance on agrichemical inputs or patented seeds; work with the environment rather than against it; and prioritize health, safety, and collective well-being.

Agorecology is an economically and ecologically viable alternative to our current food system’s foundation of extraction. It is actively practiced around the world, and it existed in what we now call the United States of America long before pesticides were introduced. Our job today is to shift our extractive mindsets to ones that prioritize health, in line with Indigenous wisdom.