UNDERSTAND THE CHALLENGE

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1. More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are applied every year on U.S. farms, forests, golf courses and lawns.

2. Based on a worldwide farming population of approximately 860 million individuals, approximately 44% of farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year.

3. Pesticides used in agriculture likewise pose a grave threat to soil—damaging the inherent organisms that are critical to healthy soil and biodiversity, which decreases soil's ability to extract carbon from our air to combat climate change.

4. Pesticides aren't necessary to feed the world. As the Pesticide Action Network so clearly states, "hunger in an age of plenty isn't a problem of production (or yields, as the pesticide industry claims), efficiency, or even distribution. It is a matter of priorities. If we were serious about feeding people, we wouldn't grow enough extra grain to feed 1/3 of the world's hungry — and then pour it into gas tanks.

5. Pesticides have ""catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole," according to a report by two United Nations human rights experts.

6. Our regulatory system is not doing its job. Farmworkers and rural communities suffer illness throughout the spray season and beyond, and infants around the world are born with a mixture of pesticides and other chemicals in their bodies.