The three greatest burdens on the agricultural community in recent times have been the high cost of fertilizers, insect pests, and damage from wind and storm. I have already dealt adequately with the topic of fertilizer, and would now like to speak in detail about insect pests. Harmful insects breed because of fertilizers, which pollute the soil, cause it to degenerate, and weaken its potiential. At the same time, the impurities introduced by the fertilizers remain. All kinds of matter decomposing in the polluted places encourage insects and bacteria. The several varieties of fertilizers are responsible for the varieties of insects that breed because of their presence, and the new kinds of insect pests that have emerged recently are the results of the production of new kinds of fertilizers.

One should emphasize here the grave wrong committed by people who use chemical insecticides to rid themselves of crop pests. These substances, which are toxic enough to kill insects, permeate and ruin the soil. Soil polluted with chemical insecticides adds yet another poison to the fertilizer toxin already absorbed by plants grown in it. The soil weakens and, like human beings, loses its powers of resistance, with the result that insect pests proliferate. This kind of vicious circle is a good example of how mistaken agricultural practices have been in the past.

Obviously, the health of people who eat rice raised with the highly toxic fertilizer, ammonium sulfate, will be adversely affected, since their blood will be clouded. Even though individual dosages are very small, eating such contaminated rice three times daily all year round causes a large accumulation of toxin, which becomes the fundamental cause of all kinds of illnesses.

January 15, 1951