Kis növényvédelmi etimológia: Vegyszer-e a növényvédő szer?

Abstract

Basic question of the paper: whether is it possible to gain professional and reliable performance with changing means of communication? Is it feasible to substitute real, progressive action with communication? Where are the limitations of objectivity? Starting situation: a member of the Hungarian crop protection administration indicated at a scientific conference that a pesticide (plant protection product) must not be called chemical because this later expression decreases the respect of crop protection among consumers. This paper consequently tries to clear the definitions according to reliable Hungarian and international professional and linguistic references. It surveys the eras of crop protection, its developing, challenging and critical periods by computational linguistics (Google ngram viewer, an online viewer that charts frequencies of any word or short sentence using yearly count of n-grams in the sources printed between 1880 and 2000). English and German crop protection expressions like pesticide, chemical control, integrated pest management, biological control, genetically modified crops; Pflanzenschutzmittel, chemischer Pflanzenschutz, integrierter Pflanzenschutz, biologischer  Pflanzenschutz and Agrogentechnik were studied and evaluated. The frequency of these words in Google books during a long run can characterise the success, pragmatic, research image of the evaluated society practice. Although evaluation of such semantic units must have incalculable uncertainty, since being precedent events they can be compared with professional references. On the strength of relevant references, most pesticides used in crop protection are chemicals in the scientific as well as accepted meaning of the word. Evaluation and respect of a given economic, production branch is determined by its production standard, product quality and product safety. These must be - regarding crop protection – the abundant, good quality products, which are possibly free of pesticide residues and produced sustainably. Sustainable crop protection suits integrated pest management of which use is compulsory in EU member states from 1 January 2014.