Title: New Pesticide Legislation Affecting Food Prices (Oct, 2008.)
Summary:
In Oct, 2008 Sean Rickard, of Cranfield University ,was interviewed at an pesticide legislation event in Brussels, Belgium hosted by MEP( Member of Europeon Porlament ) Mairead McGuiness who gathered Europe’s top economic and environmental experts to discuss new pesticide legislation.
Topic: Sustainable Agriculture
Category: Government (Multi-Media)
What is it? This is video interview of Sean Rickard
Publication Information:
New Pesticide Legislation Affecting Food Prices (Oct, 2008.)
Posted to Youtube on Oct, 21 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_dpsF9k9Hs
Author: Sean Rickard and an unnamed interviewer
Location:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_dpsF9k9Hs
Accessed: March 11th 9:15pm
Support:
Sean Rickard : Economic Expert and former Chief Economist with the National Farmers’ Union
European Commission- Environment
MEP Mairead McGuiness hosted this meeting of experts and top researchers to confront Europe’s agricultural problem. Sean Rickard was interviewed at the event, offering his opinion from the stand point of an agricultural economic expert.European Commission- Environment mediated the event and considering the expert’s opinions for future legislation.
Audience and Agenda:
This event was hosted by MEP Mairead McGuiness and sponsored by The European Parliament which contains 785 elected MEPs. The European Parliament influence legislation across Europe including environmental laws and regulations. This video was posted on Youtube, which is a video sharing website owned by Google Inc who has a reputation for conducing honest and sustainable business practices and considered to be one the best places to work by Fortune Magazine. Youtube recieves over 80 million online hits a month.
Usefulness:
This interview was done after a meeting about preposed pesticide legislation between government officials and Europe’s leading environmental and economic experts. This video was created to inform Europe’s general public and develop transparency into how the government handles tough issues and controversial legislation.Sean Rickard makes the case that the economic and crop output advantages to using pesticides outweigh the environmental risks. He neglects to mention the possibility that pesticides may nullify farmlands for future generations, furthering the world’s food shortage problem. His stance on the use of pesticides offers an effective counter argument to oraganicfood-now’s Feb 2009 blog How Much Poison do You Want to Eat? (Feb, 9th 2009). This source was very helpful to my research because it approached the issue of sustainable agriculture in the shoes of an economists instead of a environmentalist. This difference in vocation and background resulted in a drastically different view point.
Works Cited:
European Commission- Environment
Filed under: Source Notes
[...] midst of a food crisis. As we need all the production we can get, regardless of the ramifications. Environmental economic expert, Sean Rickard echoes this stance during on interview at a pesticide le… on meeting in Brussels, Belgium on October 21st 2008. Rickard believes that the word food market [...]