In the Orchard: Farm Worker Children’s Moral and Environmental Reasoning

In this study, researchers talked with 40 children in second and fifth grade who lived in farm-working families. The children were asked about their views on pesticide use and whether nature deserves moral consideration, meaning whether it should be treated as having value in its own right.

The study found that all of the children thought pesticide exposure was wrong and harmful. However, many of them still accepted the use of pesticides in the orchards where they lived. They explained this in different ways, such as believing that safety practices reduced the danger, or by balancing concerns about health with the need for families to earn a living.

When talking about harm to nature, many children showed concern for plants and the environment themselves, not just for how damage to nature might affect people. This shows that children can recognize the value of nature at an earlier age than researchers had previously thought.

Finally, the findings support a new way of studying how people separate concerns about human needs from concerns about protecting the environment when they think about what is right and wrong.

Abstract

In this study, farm worker children (N = 40) in 2nd and 5th grade were interviewed about (a) their conceptions and judgments of pesticide exposure and (b) their reasoning about the moral standing of nature. First, results showed that all participants negatively judged pesticide exposure based on moral obligatory criteria. Yet, most children accepted pesticide use in the orchards where they lived. Their reasoning was either based on assumptions that certain practices eliminated potential harms or coordination of potential physical harms with concerns for financial security. Second, participants expressed biocentric considerations (wherein nature is accorded moral standing) when reasoning about harms to nature. The results provide evidence of biocentric reasoning earlier than previously shown in the developmental literature, and indicate a developmental shift in the form of biocentric reasoning. Finally, the results offer support of a new methodology for disentangling human considerations from environmental moral reasoning.