Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides destroy soil and ecosystems. Yet a third of crops are lost to pests just as in the many millennia of farming before chemicals
Preface. This is a book review of Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen”, and I have added additional information and conclusions. This book is not technical and could be read by both high school and undergraduate students as an introduction to soil ecosystems and the damage done by agricultural chemicals, and the science of why this is ultimately not sustainable.
And here’s a new wrinkle, pesticides can increase the number of mosquitoes: Mosquitoes … have evolved resistance to chemicals meant to kill them. The mosquitoes’ predators, meanwhile, have not kept pace with that evolution—and that has allowed the mosquito population to boom. Resistance to the major groups of insecticides is widespread around the world, and especially worrying that mosquitoes are unaffected, since they spread many dangerous diseases (Weathered 2019).