Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret

In this fast moving information age, we have become used to hearing of environmental controversies only when it is convenient for the media. With FATEFUL HARVEST, a proven investigative reporter conveys the painful truth that has been hidden by chemical companies for decades. DUFF WILSON is hardly a fly-by-night writer and his credibility outweighs the reviews elsewhere here that dismisses his words as "sophomoric" and "one-sided."

In fact, WILSON goes far beyond some books that investigate; he goes coast to coast making sure his facts are straight and balanced. So it becomes obvious that the negative reviews written here are likely from industry dogs.

Government officials who first ignored the findings and claims of PATTY MARTIN in Quincy, Washington were simply following the bureaucratic pattern of ignorance and non-action. But an unrelenting MARTIN and others held their ground and the chemical companies like CENEX were caught with conclusive evidence of their crimes. DUFF WILSON has fairly and accurately revealed what all of us have suspected for some time, that corporations use their financial and political power to hide their dirty little secrets. Now the truth is out and what makes this different than the colorful story of ERIN BROCKOVICH and PG & E in California is this is a national tragedy, a national crime. PG & E's poisoning was regional, yet just as criminal.

FATEFUL HARVEST will certainly engage you, it will shock you and it has opened the books on an issue that will change how our foods are farmed and fertilized. If you believe the words of naysayers, then you're obviously in favor of the big companies that dumped this toxic waste on the farmers. Read FATEFUL HARVEST and you'll know that the truth hurts.

Just ask the tobacco companies about the truth.

This is a deeply disturbing true story of a somewhat naive rural housewife who meets the rough & tumble of environmental politics head-on. It changes her life in unforseen ways, as well as those around her -- including the author, a seasoned investigative reporter who lets us inside his head. Readers should not demand absolute proof of health effects from toxic waste in fertilizers. The evidence marshalled by this book is convincing enough that real policy changes should result. In any event, it's obvious that we ought not to be taking toxic waste collected from smokestacks and dumping it on the food supply. The real scandal that Duff Wilson uncovers is the industry amorality and government complicity in this outrageously stupid practice of using toxic waste as plant food. Beware those who say there's not enough proof of harm -- that's what the cigarette companies argued for decades.

Don Delillo could not have imagined this. I was more blown away by 'Fateful Harvest' than by 'A Civil Action' or 'Erin Brockovich'. Those earlier works were isolated cases of industry abuse, while this book exposes a real-life toxic waste scandal focused ultimately on the food eaten by billions. What's most scary is that the scandal is still going on! -- toxic waste is turned into fertilizer, and spread on the food supply; but the politicians shrug while lives are destroyed. Wilson, an experienced investigative reporter, does a great job of distilling the science (and the politics) behind the news story. He effectively weaves the life of an unlikely small-town heroine into the larger perspective. It's definitely a compelling and accessible read. I did it in a day and a half.

It is simple. Read the book. Decide if you want to eat your food with some toxic fertilizer sprinkled on by corporate-terrorists. Do your research and then decide what you are going to do about this horrendous insult to all life and the land around the world. This issue leaves me mourning for our world. Thankfully there are still dedicated people like Duff Wilson that uncover the scoundrels that have no conscience except for the dollar. Rachael Carson blew the whistle on DDT and now Mr. Wilson is blowing the whistle on toxic waste fertilizers unwittingly being used by farmers and gardeners everywhere. Wake up EPA!

Duff Wilson is an investigative reporter for the Seattle Times who got a call one day from Patty Martin, mayor of Quincy, Washington, who told him an almost unbelievable tale of toxic waste being sold as fertilizer. The zinger was, as Wilson discovered, it was entirely legal!

Imagine this: big industrial companies, growing increasingly displeased with having to pay for the cost of disposing of their hazardous waste materials, typically with unsafe amounts of heavy metals, find through a loophole in the law that they can declare the waste a "product" and sell it as fertilizer! Instead of paying perhaps a hundred dollars a barrel to get rid of the stuff, they can sell it to firms that add a little lime or some other soil conditioner and abracadabra! peddle it as fertilizer. Sound like a Greenpeace scare story? A nightmare dreamed up by disgruntled employees? "Bad" farmers looking to blame somebody for their failed Frankenfeed crops? The fertilizer industry would like us to think so, but this story about Patty Martin and her brave and lonely crusade against the dumping of hazard waste on farmlands tells us otherwise.

The terrible thing is that, although Wilson's original story, "Fear in the Fields--How Hazardous Wastes Become Fertilizer," first appeared in July of 1997, as the book closes in 2001, the loophole in the law has not been plugged, congress has not acted, and the polluters are still turning hazardous waste infused with cadmium, lead, arsenic, etc., into stuff smeared on farmlands. It gets into the crops farmers grow and ends up in the food on our dining room tables. It blows off the fields when it's dry and into the lungs of people. The workers in these fertilizer plants have elevated levels of cancer and lung scaring disease, and the sad thing is some of them are so wedded to the company that they are blind to what is destroying their bodies.

Wilson names names and gives examples. He cites the chemical analyses and he quotes the industry apologists and the look-the-other-way bureaucrats in the oversight agencies. But clearly the real culprits are those people at the top of our state and federal governments who are doing nothing stop this dangerous pollution.

This is the kind of story that'll make you hopping mad and wonder about the morality (and sanity) of people who would, to save a few bucks on the bottom line, poison us, themselves and our children.