Troublemakers

One of the themes of my Environmental Conservation class that I'm hoping we'll investigate more is the rift between the academic elite and the working class that often occurs when the environment is concerned. Based on comments I hear in discussion, I think that many of the students have little grasp of how their proposed environmental policies will appear to those affected. Still, sometimes you just want to side with the academic elite outright. This is an extract from "Fear In The Fields" by Duff Wilson, originally published in the 3 July 1997 edition of the Seattle Times:

[Mayor] Patty Martin is not a popular politician in parts of Grant County these days.

Since she began raising the alarm about the use of toxic waste as fertilizer, she has been threatened with a lawsuit by a local farmer, been verbally attacked in town meetings and seen the City Council - led by a son-in-law of the local manager of the Cenex fertilizer company - pressure her to shut up or quit.

Many farmers in and around Quincy, a town of 4,030, say they're doing very well, thank you, with the fertilizer and the help and advice they've received from Cenex Supply and Marketing, which sells expertise, financing and farm supplies in the West and Midwest.

They call Martin a troublemaker and fear she's fomenting a scare akin to the Alar alarm that nearly ruined Washington's apple industry in 1989.

In that case, the CBS television show "60 Minutes" reported that a substance sprayed on Washington apples to preserve them in packing was dangerous to consumers. CBS later admitted it had made some mistakes in the story, and the Washington apple growers sued the network. But the suit was dismissed, and in the end, Alar was classified by EPA as a carcinogen and banned for all food uses.

"We had a woman starting that one, too, and a lot of people got hurt by it," Bill Weber, an apple and potato farmer, said at one council meeting, bringing nods and laughter.

I suspect that Mr. Weber is one of the many people who believe that women and apples have had troubled history (pretty much right from the start, I mean), but this kind of comment still gets me.