The list of opponents to pesticides is long and diverse: It includes conservative health nuts and very online paleo types, libertarian corporate skeptics and off-gridders, haughty old-school liberals and conspiracy theorists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the classic liberal hippies and environmentalists. They form an unholy alliance of otherwise modern people who argue for a regulatory regime that cracks down on these products and sends us back in time on food production.

Nostalgia makes for strange politics, and fantasies about the virtue of small farms free of innovation or industrialization can be found in any political corner.

What brings them all together? Chiefly, a general technophobia — the fear and avoidance of modern innovation — but also a widespread distrust of the manufacturers that produce these chemicals.

Trust in the integrity and safety of the food supply can be achieved in one of two ways: It can be felt, or it can be proved.

The latter is what most communication in the agricultural field focuses on. An overwhelming body of scientific evidence points to the safety of both glyphosate and atrazine, two of the most commonly used pesticides in American agriculture.

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