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A meme raised an interesting question. Example: This item about farmers in India spraying crops with the soft drinks Coca-Cola and Pepsi as a pesticide was reported at least as far back as 2004, with the UK newspaper The Guardian reporting that hundreds of farmers in the Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh states of that country were supposedly turning to the practice because the beverages were considerably cheaper than industrial pesticides: Additional information indicated that the soft drinks were effective in controlling crop pests not by directly poisoning or killing insects (as traditional pesticides do), but by attracting — due to their sugary nature — ants to fed on insect larvae. Moreover, there was reportedly nothing special about Coca-Cola or Pepsi in this regard — a variety of other common brands of cola soft drinks and locally produced beverages allegedly worked just as well: The Coca-Cola Company asserted it had identified only a single case of an Indian farmer who might have been using soft drinks for pest management and that its product would be totally ineffective for this purpose: The BBC reported similarly, noting that sugar products have long been used for pest control, that soft drinks such as Coca-Cola don't function the same way industrial pesticides do, and that the beverages are possibly effective in crop management simply because the carbohydrates and sugar they contain boosts the plants' immunity: To what extent farmers in India might currently be using soft drinks in place of pesticides, and just how effective that technique might be, are yet to be determined.
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