Session Recordings and Materials

Missed a live seminar? This is the place to find Forum Series recordings. Videos will be posted shortly after the seminars take place.

We are pleased to share—as a teaching tool—TWO recordings that capture the incredible knowledge and work of our incredible speakers who are helping to chart a course for a livable future with scientific research and hands-on work in the field.  [SESSION 1|SESSION 2]

>> Session 1—October 29, 2025, from 1 — 3:30 PM Eastern (ET)

The speakers provide a framework for applying a recognition of the value and importance of natural systems, with specific examples associated with the critical roles that bats, birds, and beavers play in effective agricultural and land management—including the use of hedgerows and other habitat-sensitive practices. The inspiring presentations and discussion helps us to rethink our approach to land stewardship, moving away from harmful practices to holistic solutions that support life-nurturing ecosystems and biodiversity.

Featuring: Danilo Russo, PhD, professor of ecology at the University of Naples Federico II, international leader in bat research, and coauthor of A Natural History of Bat Foraging: Evolution, Physiology, Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation, Jo Ann Baumgartner, executive director of the Wild Farm Alliance, renowned expert in ecological farming and land management practices, Sam Earnshaw, author and expert in hedgerow and farmscape installation and management, and Tony Able, chair of the Southeast Beaver Alliance. Jay Feldman, executive director, moderating.

INTRODUCTION FROM JAY FELDMAN: Welcome all to the Forum!

We cannot survive without healthy ecosystems. In working together as people and communities—across the U.S. and around the world—our approach to land management must embrace nature for its extraordinary and exhilarating beauty and complexity, but also to ensure productivity, profitability, quality of life, and environmental and personal health. A sustainable future requires us to respect nature, define materials that do no harm, eliminate petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, and certify, label, and enforce practices—recognizing that when we support nature, nature will support us.

Our daily objective at Beyond Pesticides is to inform action to empower advocacy with science, policy solutions, and practical implementation of cost-effective alternatives. Conventional, chemical-intensive land management practices are not sustainable. Petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer dependency contributes significantly to escalating crises in health, biodiversity, and climate. These practices have led to entrenched chemical reliance, creating a treadmill with increasing pesticide resistance in the target insects, weeds, and harmful bacterial and fungal populations. Our current conventional land management practices lack resiliency and have become unaffordable, whether it is the growing of our food or the management of our landscapes. Instead of cycling nutrients in tandem with nature, conventional practices contaminate the habitats and ecosystems of the very organisms that offer their ecosystem services for free. The catastrophic decline of pollinators, and insects in general, is not attributable to one chemical or chemical family, but a constellation of chemical mixtures, synergistic effects, and synthetic fertilizers, among other factors.

Rachel Carson warned in her book Silent Spring, “By their very nature, chemical controls are self-defeating, for they have been devised and applied without taking into account . . . . complex biological systems. . .” In this spirit, the United Nations Environment Program states, “Producing food that is both healthy and sustainable demands that we work with—not against—nature.” The solution requires, as the UN says, “reconceiving” the food system.

We can feed the world and embrace nature with organic systems that eliminate petrochemicals on the farm, build productivity, and outcompete chemical-intensive practices. Resilient organic systems generate higher long-term productivity and profitability, according to the Rodale Institute’s 40-year longitudinal study. Other published data show organic production with equivalent-to-higher corn and soybean yields than chemical-intensive practices.

Now, high-tech farming (“precision agriculture”), with the use of drones, satellites, and artificial intelligence, is being touted as a great environmental achievement, focused on soil biology and lower or variable application rates of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers—thus ignoring holistic and inter-dependent elements in nature. Labeling these practices as “sustainable,” integrated pest management, or “regenerative” undercuts ecosystem health.

We are all here to ensure a livable and just future—and to cultivate a collective concern about (i) daily decisions on the management of our personal and community spaces, (ii) the practices used to grow the food we eat, and (iii) the care that we as a society give to a complex and fragile natural world on which life depends.

>> Session 2—December 4, 2025, from 1 — 3:30 PM Eastern (ET)

The speakers engage in compelling presentations that elevate public understanding of the scientific data linking petrochemical pesticides to the crisis in breast cancer, pediatric cancer, and sewage sludge (biosolids) fertilizer—supporting the imperative for ecological land management.

The information in this session empowers voices for the transition to practices and products that do not accept toxic chemicals as necessary when alternative systems are available to us. The science supports the urgent call for systemic change at this moment of health, biodiversity, and climate crises, with the promise of productive and profitable alternatives. This call for foundational change is motivated by our collective understanding that the critically needed response to the crises must not be diverted by anything less than a holistic strategy—recognizing the science on adverse effects of extremely small chemical doses to all organisms, including humans, and the synergistic effects of multiple chemical exposure.

Featuring: Carolina Panis, PhD, associate professor of Medicine at Western Paraná State University (UNIOESTE, Brazil) and Visiting Researcher at Harvard University and the University of Arizona; Rossella Cannarella, M.D., PhD, endocrinology specialist and a European Academy of Andrology (EAA) certified clinical andrologist, University of Catania, Génon Jensen, founder and executive director of Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL); Jabeen Taiba, PhD, postdoctoral research associate, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center; and Emile Habimana, doctoral candidate specializing in Environmental Analytical Chemistry at the Université de Montréal. Jay Feldman, executive director, moderating.

INTRODUCTION FROM JAY FELDMAN: Thank you, Paula. And, welcome all to Session 2 of the Forum.

We talk about change in public health and environmental protection as requiring science, policy, and action. We need all three of these pillars, with the central pillar –science--informing action and changes in practices and policy.

When we launched the Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database at Beyond Pesticides over 15 years ago, we began cataloguing the body of science that links pesticide exposure to existential adverse health effects—to empower informed discussion and advocacy where we live and work.

Currently, there are over 2,800 independent peer-reviewed studies in the database, divided into 14 categories/70 subcategories of illness and disease, including Cancer, Birth Defects, Brain and Nervous System disorders, Immune System Degradation, Respiratory Disease, Sexual and Reproductive Dysfunction, and so on. . . Biodiversity health is included as a category because of its essentiality to life. What becomes equisitely clear from the database is that the range of adverse health effects are not prevented with the restriction of one pesticide or pesticide family, but rather requires that we address a constellation of toxic pesticides for which there is systemic societal dependency. The good news is that these are chemicals that empirical scientific data find are not necessary to grow our food or manage our homes and landscapes.

While all the debilitating and deadly illnesses linked to pesticides in the scientific literature are unacceptable and must be central to the public discourse, cancer as a leading cause of illness and death worldwide, continuing to attack our loved ones in unspeakable numbers, causing wrenching pain for families, and friends. 

Of course, there are challenges in deciphering all the contributory factors to environmentally induced diseases because we live in a polluted world, exposed to chemical mixtures. The scientists at today’s Forum are cutting through the noise of pollution and connecting the dots to pesticides and other toxic chemicals. The goal is to tap into this knowledge—not with all the technical aspects of the studies that you’ll learn about today, but to extract the findings, point to the data, illustrate the preponderance of evidence, and offer a preventive solution.

We are dealing with complex interactions for thousands of chemicals that are not fully studied for their cumulative, aggregate, or synergistic effects—and for their impact on vulnerable and high at-risk population groups.

Our focus today is breast cancer, pediatric cancer, prostate and testicular cancer, and infertility. The scientific literature just on these health outcomes alone justifies a major shift in decisions associated with any pesticide use, especially given available alternatives that make petrochemical pesticides obsolete. We’ll hear today about adverse effects to the endocrine system, and yet we rely on endocrine disrupting pesticides, found in our air, water, food, on the farm, in our parks, and children’s playgrounds, in backyards and schoolyards. Contaminated sewage sludge to be discussed tells a dramatic story of the toxic soup in which we live and spread on our farms and landscapes.

The problem is going to be solved from the ground up—from wherever we are all now sitting--where decisions are made to use pesticides, which are not necessary for productive and profitable food production, aesthetic landscapes, and quality of life. For managing land in sync with nature, see the recording of Session 1 of this Forum on the Beyond Pesticides website.

The esteemed scientists speaking today bring us the facts, and we benefit from having them with us from across the globe. It is up to us to use these facts to elevate our advocacy for an urgent transition to practices and products that preserve health.

Note—Remote Simultaneous Interpretation from Portuguese for the presentation of Carolina Panis, PhD, provided by our partners at Interprenet.