The same day I came to terms with the realization our barn swallows, once so numerous, weren’t showing up at the farm this year, I saw a guy driving his ride-em lawnmower down a backroad towing an improvised spray-wagon.
Even as our continental ecosystems wither away in the face of industrial pesticide use, we still spray our lawns for no reason whatsoever.
An increasingly popular product is the morbidly-named Killex, a concoction of three problematic herbicides, including one of the ingredients of Agent Orange (2,4-d), and Dicamba, a highly volatile herbicide devastating forests, public land, and farmland.
Killex is designed to kill clovers, dandelions, and many other flowering plants insects thrive on. It proudly claims it controls “50 types of weeds”, while leaving the grass intact.
A while back I had a friendly conversation with a guy out spraying his lawn with this product. I could smell its chemical stench as I drove by. I told him Health Canada relied on the pesticide manufacturers’ own claims in reassuring the public of their safety. I told him about the film Into the Weeds, free to watch on CBC Gem, that shows how the regulatory process has been corrupted by the pesticide industry.
As we talked, I watched a bumblebee touch down on his stinking lawn and quickly fly away. Even if this product is supposed to not harm bees, an unlikely claim, soon enough there won’t be a clover or dandelion for the bee to eat anyway.
We can educate each other about the harms of pesticides, but it seems the bigger challenge is to change our notion of what makes a good lawn. To some the lawn has become a highly charged symbol of good and evil. I call them the lawn Nazis. Unkempt, “weedy” lawns are a sign of sloth, filth, and degeneracy. Very bad for “investment.” A sprayed carpet of turf that may as well be plastic, on the other hand, is ironically the symbol of purity, cleanliness, and success.
Whoever told us dandelions and clover were weeds? And whoever told us an ecological dead-zone lawn with nothing for a bee to feast on is attractive let alone a symbol of success?
Like the tobacco industry glamourizing smoking, the pesticide industry manipulates us with advertising to call a perfectly good and beneficial plant a weed. They also manipulate the political process.
Back in 2011, B.C. premier Christy Clark talked about banning the cosmetic use of pesticides. She had the support of the BC Cancer Agency, the Lung Association, the NDP, and a majority of the public. But after an intense bout of pesticide-industry lobbying, she didn’t have the support of her caucus.
Like our barn swallows, Christy Clark’s promises vanished into thin air. And the NDP have done nothing since.
James Steidle is a Prince George writer.
