In March 2017 two United Nations human rights experts told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that the world needs a binding global treaty to regulate dangerous farm pesticides and gradually phase them out. Their report also took aim at one of agriculture’s most repeated arguments: that heavy chemical use is the only way to feed a growing population. They called that idea a myth.
Here is what the experts actually said, what the science behind it looks like, what has happened since, and how to use tools such as the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists sensibly when you shop.
Who made the call, and what they asked for
The report came from Hilal Elver, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, and Baskut Tuncak, the Special Rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes. Both were appointed in 2014 as independent experts. They do not speak for UN member governments, but their reports are formally presented to the Human Rights Council and often shape later debates.
Their central request was a comprehensive international agreement covering most pesticides across their whole life cycle, from manufacture and sale to use and disposal. They pointed out that existing treaties deal with only a handful of substances. In their words, a treaty covering most pesticides “throughout their life cycle does not yet exist.”
They also asked governments to:
- adopt strict, harmonised rules on production, sale and permitted use, so that chemicals banned in one country are not simply exported to another with weaker laws;
- give special protection to children, pregnant women, farmworkers, rural communities and Indigenous peoples, who face the highest exposure;
- support a shift toward agroecology and other sustainable farming methods;
- hold manufacturers to account for denying hazards, blaming misuse on farmers and using aggressive marketing and lobbying.
The health case: what the numbers mean
The headline figure in the report is roughly 200,000 deaths a year from acute pesticide poisoning, with about 99% of them in developing countries where regulation, training and protective equipment are weakest. That estimate draws on older research, and a large share of those deaths are intentional poisonings, which is why restricting the most toxic products has been a recognised suicide-prevention measure in countries such as Sri Lanka. It is still a stark reminder that the most dangerous products cause most of the harm.
The experts also listed chronic conditions that studies have linked to long-term exposure, including some cancers, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, hormone disruption, developmental disorders and reduced fertility. “Linked” is the right word: the strongest evidence concerns people with heavy, repeated contact, such as farmers, sprayers and families living beside treated fields. Evidence about the tiny residues most shoppers eat is far less clear.
The report singled out neonicotinoids, insecticides widely blamed for harming bees, noting that about 71% of crop species depend on bee pollination. Since then the European Union has acted. After a partial restriction in 2013, member states agreed in April 2018 to ban outdoor use of three neonicotinoids, imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, from the end of that year, after the European Food Safety Authority concluded they posed a high risk to wild and managed bees. Scientists generally see bee decline as having several causes at once, including Varroa mites, viruses, poor nutrition and habitat loss, with pesticides as one important pressure among them.
Do we need pesticides to feed the world?
The report’s most quoted line was blunt: “It is time to overturn the myth that pesticides are necessary to feed the world.” The reasoning behind it is that hunger today is mostly a problem of poverty, access and distribution rather than total supply. The planet already grows enough calories for everyone, yet hundreds of millions of people go hungry while a large share of food is lost or thrown away.
That does not mean pesticides can be switched off overnight. Many agronomists argue that sudden withdrawal would cut yields for some crops, especially in regions facing new pests and a warming climate. The more realistic path, and the one the rapporteurs actually described, is a managed transition: remove the most hazardous products first, then scale up methods that need fewer chemicals.
Soil and land: correcting a common claim
Older versions of this story said that pesticides had made a fifth of China’s farmland unusable. The real finding is different. China’s national soil survey, carried out between 2005 and 2013 and released in April 2014, found that 19.4% of farmland was contaminated, mainly by heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic. Officials blamed polluted irrigation water, industrial activity, and the misuse of fertilisers and pesticides. Contaminated does not mean abandoned, and pesticides were only one of several causes.
What sustainable farming looks like in practice
Agroecology is not a single technique but a toolbox designed to make farms less dependent on chemical inputs. Common elements include:
- Crop rotation and diversity, which break pest cycles that thrive in endless single-crop fields.
- Integrated pest management (IPM), where farmers monitor pests and treat only when a threshold is crossed, choosing the least harmful option.
- Natural predators and habitat strips, such as flowering field margins that shelter ladybirds, lacewings and parasitic wasps.
- Healthy soil built with cover crops, compost and reduced tillage, which supports stronger plants.
- Resistant varieties, bred to cope with local diseases.
None of these is new, and many traditional farming systems already rely on them. What the UN experts asked for was public policy, research funding and subsidies that reward these practices instead of locking farmers into chemical dependence.
What happened after the 2017 report
No single global pesticide treaty has been adopted. Existing agreements still cover parts of the problem: the Stockholm Convention bans or restricts certain persistent pollutants, and the Rotterdam Convention requires prior informed consent before some hazardous chemicals are exported. In 2023 governments meeting in Bonn agreed the Global Framework on Chemicals, which includes a voluntary target to phase out highly hazardous pesticides in agriculture by 2035 where their risks have not been managed. It is not the binding treaty the rapporteurs wanted, but it moves in the same direction.
The Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen, used wisely
If you want to lower your own exposure on a budget, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a US advocacy organisation, publishes two annual lists based on US Department of Agriculture residue testing. The idea is simple: spend your organic budget where residues are most often found, and buy conventional where they rarely are.
When this story first ran, the 2017 lists, released on 10 March 2017, looked like this:
2017 Dirty Dozen (most residues): strawberries, spinach, nectarines, apples, peaches, celery, grapes, pears, cherries, tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, potatoes.
2017 Clean Fifteen (fewest residues): sweet corn, avocados, pineapples, cabbage, onions, sweet peas, papayas, asparagus, mangoes, eggplant, honeydew melon, kiwi, cantaloupe, cauliflower, grapefruit.
The order changes every year. EWG’s 2026 edition, for example, added blueberries and green beans to the Dirty Dozen, so check the current lists on the EWG site before you shop.
Keep the lists in perspective
- Residue is not the same as risk. USDA testing has repeatedly found that the great majority of samples fall below the legal limits set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. EWG argues those limits are too loose; regulators disagree.
- Eat the produce either way. The health benefits of fruit and vegetables are well established. Nobody should eat fewer strawberries because they cannot afford organic ones.
- Organic is not pesticide-free. Organic farmers may use a limited set of approved substances, many of natural origin, though residues are generally lower.
- Washing helps, but only partly. Rinsing under running water and rubbing firm produce removes some surface residue and dirt, but not chemicals taken up inside the plant. Peeling removes more, along with some nutrients.
Practical takeaways
The 2017 report did not end chemical farming, and it was never going to do so on its own. What it did was reframe pesticides as a human rights issue, especially for the farmworkers and rural children who carry most of the risk, and it challenged the claim that food security depends on ever more chemicals.
For shoppers, the sensible steps are modest: eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, wash them, buy organic for the items you eat most if your budget allows, and support local growers who use fewer chemicals. For anyone who works with pesticides, the advice matters far more: follow the label, wear the protective equipment, and talk to a doctor about any symptoms after exposure.
Sources: OHCHR: Pesticides are a global human rights concern, UN experts urge new treaty (7 March 2017); Wikipedia: Neonicotinoid (EU restrictions and bee research); NPR: China admits that a fifth of its farmland is contaminated (18 April 2014); Environmental Working Group: Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce. The original story was published by Collective Evolution.
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