Halt Malathion Today, Eat It Tomorrow : Medfly: Farm and city should unite, for if the pest isn’t stopped soon, the price will be more than either wants to bear.

My farm is 200 miles north of Los Angeles and the Mediterranean fruit fly. Two things stand between my grapes and peaches and this pest: the Tehachapi Mountains and the willingness of people to be sprayed with malathion.

I’m scared that neither barrier will last long.

If the Medfly slips over into the Central Valley, my farm will be threatened. Ripening fruit leaves us farmers with little time and few choices. My orchards will have to be sprayed, new quarantines will be imposed on my grapes, and my fruit may have to be fumigated before it can be marketed. In short, more chemicals will be used on our farms.

If the Medfly invades this valley, most of California agriculture will be crippled and markets tossed into chaos. Farmers will blame the city people. The whole state will blame Los Angeles.

When I first heard of the Medfly outbreak, I felt that the benefits of spraying clearly outweighed the limited risk. A billion-dollar industry needed defending.

Science stood behind my rationale. Research has shown that the minute amounts of malathion used in aerial spraying are not hazardous to human beings. I couldn’t believe people would object. After all, the consequences of not spraying would devastate the state’s biggest industry.

Then I grew angry. The Medfly would affect more than just profits; my small farm, which took decades and generations to build, was being threatened by a force we could not control. I felt violated. My basic rights were being abused by anonymous zealots--maybe even, rumor had it, terrorists who were actually spreading the Medfly around Los Angeles. A few protesters, driven by hysteria more than reason, would harm entire communities, thousands of people, they’d never even seen.

We farmers look toward government for protection. In state offices, decisions were made above the dramatic swirl of emotions; policy was formulated based on scientific information. Our political system delegates responsibility to an entity higher than the individual. The authorized treatment for the Medfly was the price to be paid for living within a common social system.

The fear people have is genuine, and we all pray that no one falls ill from the spraying. But the outcry in Los Angeles has shocked me. Voices demand that unfounded fears about public health be put above certain risk to the economy. Anger has evolved into political pressure. People are seeking protection from their own government.

The Medfly crisis is not about science or safety risks. Nor is it about economics and cost/benefit analysis. It’s about ethics: one person’s rights versus another’s.

The battle has reached an impasse, a test of individual will with no winners. Opponents perceive each other’s actions as morally empty: If the malathion spraying continues, the farmer is guilty of callousness; if the Medfly invades the Central Valley, city dwellers will be condemned as ignorant and self-involved. We all are victims caught between forces of nature and human nature.

The Medfly crisis epitomizes the growing polarization between city and farm. Farmers think all that’s needed is to “get our story out” and consumers will understand and support us. Consumers, though, prefer to remain naive about the food they buy and the effect of their actions on farmers. You tell me you want chemical-free peaches, but my sales returns tell me differently: You can’t resist the cosmetically flawless fruit that chemicals make possible.

We must start considering both urban and rural interests and forge new relationships. Neither one of us is absolutely right or wrong. Farmers and city dwellers share the Medfly problem. Spreading the pest into the Central Valley will not stop the spraying. Keeping the Medfly contained in the city is not an acceptable solution.

We live in an interdependent community; the “wall” between urban and rural life fell long ago. The Tehachapi Mountains will not control the Medfly. Collectively we have to choose what is an acceptable risk for us all.