Expert Tells Iowa Audience the State’s Agriculture Is ‘Too Pesticide Intensive’
February 28, 2025 | Source: The Gazette | by Olivia Cohen
IOWA CITY — An agricultural expert with more than four decades of experience studying pesticide use, food safety and agricultural policy, says Iowa’s agriculture is too pesticide intensive.
“It is harming the soil, harming public health, and it is harming fish populations and birds and the deer,” said Charles Benbrook, a visiting scholar at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, and president of Benbrook Consulting Services. “It’s harming any critter that lives out there where all this stuff is sprayed.”
Benbrook was in Iowa City Thursday to deliver a lecture titled “Pesticides, Farming and the Future of Public Health in Iowa.” The event, held at the Iowa City Senior Center, was sponsored by the Iowa Farmers Union, Drake Agricultural Law Center, University of Northern Iowa, Food & Water Watch, 100 Grannies, and the UNI Center for Energy & Environmental Education.