If pesticides put the environment and humans at risk for potential adverse effects, then why are they so widely used? The answer, of course, is that they provide benefits.

Perhaps most important, pesticides are a critical factor in ensuring a bountiful food supply.They have become an integral part of the world's system of food production.Although that may not always be the case in the future, more people would go hungry today without pesticides to increase the food supply.

In a book on pesticide policy, Christopher J. Bosso attempts to explain to his readers how modern pesticides changed agriculture.

"Most Americans today are several steps removed from the farm, and food is something to be purchased in prepackaged form in supermarkets, not something to be wrested from nature," he writes."Few urbanites can picture the devastation wrought on wheat crops by...