Understanding Glyphosate’s Growing Presence in Agriculture and Its Effects on Human Health

 A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances designed to kill, repel, or control pests. Let’s break it down into the two components: The term “pest” refers to any organism (insects, weeds, rodents, fungi, bacteria, etc.) that is considered harmful or undesirable, particularly in agricultural settings. And then “-cide” is a suffix derived from the Latin word “caedere,” meaning “to kill.”

It is commonly used in words to indicate something that kills or destroys, such as herbicide (kills plants), insecticide (kills insects), and fungicide (kills fungi).

Pesticides serve as an umbrella term for substances targeting pests, with subcategories defined by the type of pest being addressed, such as herbicides for weeds, insecticides for insects, fungicides for fungi, and rodenticides for rodents.

There are natural options that can be highly effective in controlling pests, including neem oil, pyrethrins extracted from specific flowers, rotenone derived from plant roots, diatomaceous earth, Bacillus thuringiensis (a bacteria-based solution), sulfur, garlic and pepper extracts, and copper-based compounds. Many of these options are used in organic agriculture.

And then there are chemical agents. The types of synthetic pesticides commonly used in conventional agriculture include...<<<Read More>>>...