As Evidence Points Away From Neonics As Driver, Pressure Builds To Rethink Ban
If bee health problems were critical in Canada, they would certainly have surfaced in the country’s 19 million acres of canola farms, which are mostly in the west. Beekeepers who forage their bees in the canola fields, where neonics are used far more heavily than on Ontario and Quebec farms, say their hives are generally thriving. Apart from a single, ambiguous case, there have been no reports of bee kills attributable to neonics in all of western Canada in recent years.
Hummmmmmm….I thought that mass murderer Rachel was dead. Oh well. (1984) Good captcha
Excuse me Kate, this article is helpful. Facts, truths and scientific analysis are forbidden in Ontario political practise. What matters is that we care more than you. And we are going bankrupt faster than anyone else to prove the point. Take that fiscally conservative Saskatchewan.
Well, if you get a chance to talk to a beekeeper who isn’t a bullshitter, he’d tell you that virtually all of the hives that were wiped out were killed by starvation; not enough food had been left in the hives to see the bees through our last two long cold winters.
That however, was unpalatable for two reasons: it dldn’t fit the global warming narrative, and, it assigned personal responsibility for failure.
My beekeeper says monoculture (lack of food for bees) and poor beekeeping practices are the main causes in hive failure but no one wants to talk about the latter.
Obviously, neonics don’t harm Western bees because all you Westerners smoke like chimneys, and they’re acclimated to it.
In the pristine air of Southern Ontario, and especially around Toronto (that gray smudge that lines the horizon is an evil legacy of Stephen Harper, doncha know?), the bees are never exposed to second hand smoke, and thus they all die like snow flakes left out in the sun.
One of the Toronto free rags reported last week that ‘bee colonies have been disappearing at a rate of 30% per year’. Math is hard.
Perhaps the article is correct. However, I think the bigger question is: Is it really a good idea to apply any kind of broad spectrum neuro-disruptor on thousands of acres in a monocrop situation? Doesn’t matter if it’s a neonic or the old style stuff like furadan or decis, we should be moving more to IPM and away from broad spectrum, blanket-applied, you-never-know, just-in-case stupidity.
H
“…we should be moving more to IPM..”
That will happen when IPM makes sense economically to enough farmers. I know very few farmers who wouldn’t try something different if it reduced input time/costs and maintained or increased income.
That’s the problem. We are broadcasting stuff because its cheap. Its hard on the environment, and no cost as yet has been attached to that. Now less than stellar regulations are being forced on ag, what will that cost? As usual, we are very short-sighted.
H
The irony is that neonics are less damaging to bees than the alternative. The bans on neonics force farmers to return to chemicals that actually do kill bees. It was never about bees. It is plain old activism disguised as science.
Fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides have increased the health of the environment. They, along with selective breeding resulting in an actual Green Revolution (thanks Norman Borlaug), have substantially increased crop yields. Higher yields means there’s less land used for crops to feed a much larger world population. There’s less land in cultivation and more allowed to return to its natural state in Europe and North America. Integrated pest management has not been shown to be anywhere near as successful on large scale farms. If you want to use less fertilizers and chemicals then the only other option is gmo crops designed to resist pests and drought.But the greens oppose them too. Nothing but subsistence level farming gets their approval.
Well, I don’t know what the “cost” will be…but neither do the environmental handwringers who predict the apocalypse.
The problem is that Eco-apocalypse prophets refuse to acknowledge the real, quantifiable benefits of modern agriculture and energy technology. They conjure up scary scenarios and despite repeated failures of doom predictions to appear, politicians keep listening them. We need more Borlaug’s “The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives” to promote affordable, reliable food and energy. It’s not by accident that starvation and poverty rates are substantially lower over the last 30-40 years.
‘ipm not near as successful on large scale farms’. Of course not, because we have not attached a cost to wiping out good pests along with the target ones. That’s the whole point. I’ve seen it on my own farm, years ago we had a scientist in one of our canola fields with a sweep net. The pest numbers were high, but after sweeping up a sample of bugs, he dumped them on the hood of his car and gave me a crash course on who-eats-who. Turns out we didn’t have to spray. Do you think that kind of management happens any more? It doesn’t and as a result we have resistance issues, and even more problems down the road.
H
People who are convinced that everything is getting worse will never be persuaded by facts or reason. Crop yields are up, pest problems are not worse, environmental health is better, extinctions are rarer, people are living longer, fewer people are poor and starving, standard of living is increasing, etc.
And…modern farming methods will continue to progress. I predict gmo crops that are more resistant to weather, pests, disease and are more nutritious, higher yielding, with a longer shelf life are the next step. GMO crops also have the potential to greatly reduce the need for ” -cides”. IPM is fine for small, labour intensive, organic operations and there’s definitely a market for those products. No one wants to stop you or anyone else from following their ideology. Give others the same freedom. Don’t demand politicians regulate, ban and restrict chemicals that are deemed safe simply because environmental activists are irrationally afraid of modern farm practices.
Nowhere did I say everything is getting worse. And using an IP management system is not following and ideology, it is simply doing a better job, period. I’m not promoting or asking for more regulation either. I’m just asking that all things are properly accounted for. To broadcast apply any kind of -cide without reason, other that it is slightly cheaper short term, is ludicrous. We are seeing the effects of that kind of thinking; widespread round-up resistance, rapid insectide resistance, increased threat of gov’t regulation, concerns of resistant drugs for humans due to over-use in animals, etc.
If you’re climbing a mountain and keep looking back and congratulating yourself on how far you’ve come, you run the risk of walking over the peak and falling down the other side.
H
I completely disagree. All data indicates higher yields with current methods. The future of farming is looking better, not worse. Crop science is finding ways of improving production and reducing environmental harm. That means less poverty, less starvation. IPM can’t really compete with biotech. It won’t scale up adequately. Going backwards is not an option for a world with increasing needs.
I do appreciate that you haven’t become a troll. Nice to debate without getting angry responses.
I appreciate it as well, have a good evening,
H