EU bans neonicotinoids

[Heritage]

My respect and congratulations to the EU for their wise decision.

Steve

[MissS]

I applaud this decision.

[Nan_PA_6b]

Great move! Go bees!

Nan

[Labradors2]

Why does it take so long to happen here in NA?

Linda

[bower]

For some reason we always end up with long "transition" periods. This gives the users of the product some time to find an alternative, and gives the producer of the neonics a last grab of sales money before the ban. In other words, the reasons are economic, and the politicians do put the health of the economy ahead of the environment, every time.

This is the same reason that we have coverups whenever big players have done some seriously evil thing. The people in charge don't want to rock the boat, affect the stock market, hurt the established institution or company etc etc. So sick of the ivory towers, I would rather see them all gone.

[NarnianGarden]

Good. Something reasonable from the EU.

[PureHarvest]

Systemic insecticide has always sounded like a bad idea to me.
That being said, the bottom line is we should all be doing something we have control over directly, TODAY.
Plant a habitat for native bees, no matter how small. Include as much diversity in the flowering season and plant species as possible.
I love all the people (not you guys) that ★★★★★ about urban expansion, big ag, and chemicals, but never have planted a garden or any flowers.
If everyone did this, the cumulative effect would be meaningful.
I need to do a species count on my farm for the three permanent pollinator plantings I've done, but I'd guess its around 40. All native to my region.
I get flowers in April and they go until November.
I'd rather use my time, energy, and resources to do something I have control over.
Not trying to poke anyone here, just wanted to throw this out there as a reminder/encouragement to do something tangible than fight the internet wars that don't do anything but rile people up. Most likely I am just preaching to the choir, as I know most of you are more than just tomato fans.
I guess what I am saying is spread the word to those you interact with to plant flowers. Give them your time and knowledge on how to get it done.

[Dutch]

Hi Steve (Heritage), Thank you for posting about the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides and the supportive link.
Bower and PureHarvest, You both bring up points that I feel are well worth noting.
Thanks!
Dutch

[Labradors2]

Maybe North America will wake up when Europe refuses to buy contaminated produce!

Linda

[Ann123]

Unfortunately things go slowly here too. Lobbies are strong and most farmers fear their harvests. Roundup is still not illegal despite of huge petitions and lots of promises from politicians.
But let's hope this move is the first of many to come.

[NarnianGarden]

Yes, Roundup is very much available here, in the gardening and hardware stores. It is the last resort for those who want to get rid of dandelions and other gutsy weeds. (My dear Mom was willing to purchase it and I was able to convince her that even when used sparingly and locally, the effect on enviroment and on humans isn't good. Thank God, she gave up the idea and now we use our muscle power instead... )

[JerryHaskins]

I guess I'm in the minority on pesticides and herbicides. I think the environmentalists sometimes go overboard on banning things.

When you ban all of the pesticides and herbicides and genetically modified plants, you're going to see the price of vegetables skyrocket and the availability of those perfect produce items in the grocery store go down.

If we continue down that path, we will see a return to something my grandparents encountered back around 1925. They saw an ad for a product guaranteed to kill any kind of insect. It was only 25 cents; so they ordered it. They received 2 blocks: one labeled "A" and one labeled "B". The instructions said, "Place insect on block A and smash with block B."

[PureHarvest]

Originally Posted by JerryHaskins

I guess I'm in the minority on pesticides and herbicides. I think the environmentalists sometimes go overboard on banning things.

When you ban all of the pesticides and herbicides and genetically modified plants, you're going to see the price of vegetables skyrocket and the availability of those perfect produce items in the grocery store go down.

If we continue down that path, we will see a return to something my grandparents encountered back around 1925. They saw an ad for a product guaranteed to kill any kind of insect. It was only 25 cents; so they ordered it. They received 2 blocks: one labeled "A" and one labeled "B". The instructions said, "Place insect on block A and smash with block B."

Jerry, I hear your point. But, the problems can not be solved by the minds and system that created them.
Our ag system is built on curative systems instead of preventative systems. Soil Health is finally gaining traction in the industry. All great societies that failed, failed because they did not build soil, rather lost it.
The plow is probably the greatest threat to soil and food prouction
Simply put: if we do the known things that build soil and soil health, many problems are solved. When we disregard soil and use reactive solutions, the problems magnify and snowball.
It's like having a leaky roof and buying bigger buckets. Then buying pumps to pump the water out of the bucket so you dont have to hand dump them.
Fixing the holes in the roof would be the logical fix though.
Our system is a hammer looking for a nail.
I'm not saying chemicals won't ever be part of the equation, but it is intellectually dishonest to say that we would revert back to hand picking and killing bugs. The point is that we use way too much of everything now and the cumulative effects are going to catch up. The system is set up so that the underlying problem is never solved, so the mind set is that we will all starve to death if we can't keep using chemical and man-made inputs.
It won't happen over night, but there are ways to work towards a system where we reduce/eliminate annual tillage, increase year around soil cover (cover crops/rotations that have semi-permanent cover), use proper rates of nutrients, and reduce the amount of grains we grow (which have little nutritive value).
For the record, I am not a tree-hugging enviro-whacko. Nor am I a vegetarian, or an organic purist. I think grass-fed meats are the foundation of human health, followed by vegetables (especially leafy greens and brassicas).
When people eliminate carb-heavy foods from their diets (just look at the sea of fast food and packaged foods in our stores/restaurants), our need for grain production will drop, and our society's health will greatly improve, which will also solve a lot of healthcare issues/costs.
I don't have all the answers on how that will work on each farm. But I read about and visit farms all the time that are building topsoil, reducing or eliminating steps where fuel or chemicals are used, and putting their efforts into understanding how to harness the power and complexity of the biology in the soil to do the work they were created to do. And these are mostly conventional farms. Using the soil as an nothing more than an anchor for roots, and just adding ingredients from there is foolish and short-sighted. Our current system is a blip on the timeline of Ag's history. The plow in the recent past, followed today by cheap oil and money and the products that come from them have allowed this mentality to manifest. I think we have been dumbed down as a society to accept these methods, because it takes another, albeit small, step to do some homework and thinking to make the changes where we are harnessing the biology to go with the chemistry and physical possibilities of the soil's potential. We now know that plant roots are willing to give up 25-40% of the sugars they make from photosynthesis to exude it to the roots to feed the microbial population in the soil. They would not do that if it wasn't important. When we till and spray, we are screwing up the process and destroying the network that is building. I could go on. If anyone wants to watch an easy to understand presentation on all this, this is great because it looks at the soil system as an economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1U6yhwafbY&t=147s. I know I am turned off by internet warriors that paste links in comment sections, but this presentation is worth the hour if you have it to spare.
I just know that anything can be scaled up. If small farms can make this work, it can be done on large farms if the will and support is there.
This will be hard to change when the government subsidizes crop production like it does, chemical and food companies are loaded with cash, and the healthcare industry needs a customer base that is being fed foods that keep them chasing the next pill, procedure, or gadget.
Again, I am not an organic purist in disguise, pushing a hidden agenda. I just think we need to put more focus on the biology and power of the natural system and harness it. Maybe in 50-100 years the result of that will be little use of man-made inputs, less fuel use, and a return to thriving eco-systems and societies.
The effects of our system are there for all to see. How many people can say that the soil and water bodies in their neck of the woods are not contaminated? And I don't buy into the thresholds that are given for safe levels of things that are tested for and found. There is profit to be lost if we had honest actors policing this stuff. We see it every day. You can all name multiple cases off the top of your head where it is proven that some industry screwed up and tried to cover up. The list is endless.
There is so much mixing of compounds in the environment that it is mathematically impossible to calculate the synergistic effect of all the things that are present in the environment. To continue on as is is madness to think the environment can handle the load into the future.
Whew, rant off.

[Cole_Robbie]

Ironically, reducing tilling and plowing has been the biggest environmental benefit of the Roundup-ready revolution. When I was a kid, soil erosion was the hot environmental topic. It's mostly a moot point today, now that most farms have moved to no-till, roundup-ready crops. They spray and plant in one pass. We may certainly have swapped one problem for others, time will tell.

Another issue with regulation is that governments are national, but our food supply is international. We are eating food from countries where the governments struggle to maintain basic social order. It would be nice to think they regulate their ag chemicals, but that seems like wishful thinking to me. And thanks to our trade agreements, we are not allowed to ask any questions about imported produce. Banning a chemical from American farms does not remove it from our grocery stores, by any means.

[PureHarvest]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Ironically, reducing tilling and plowing has been the biggest environmental benefit of the Roundup-ready revolution. When I was a kid, soil erosion was the hot environmental topic. It's mostly a moot point today, now that most farms have moved to no-till, roundup-ready crops. They spray and plant in one pass. We may certainly have swapped one problem for others, time will tell.

Another issue with regulation is that governments are national, but our food supply is international. We are eating food from countries where the governments struggle to maintain basic social order. It would be nice to think they regulate their ag chemicals, but that seems like wishful thinking to me. And thanks to our trade agreements, we are not allowed to ask any questions about imported produce. Banning a chemical from American farms does not remove it from our grocery stores, by any means.

Cole, not-till does not have to mean Roundup is a major part of the equation.
Cover crops that smother and then winter kill will eliminate fall and spring herbicide applications. There is a farmer in Ohio that has been doing this for years and has cut his herbicide use in 1/2. He also uses a fraction of the nitrogen inputs and his yield is higher than the county average. Not a small plot exception either, he has 1,110 acres Cover crops and no-till are the main things that make his system work:

Reducing Crop Inputs
“Cutting back on commercial inputs has been a tough one for me, because we’ve always been taught we need so many pounds of nitrogen, phosphorus and potash to grow a decent corn crop,” Brandt says. “We’re learning now with cover crops that we don’t need to buy those additional nutrients because we can bring them up from deeper in the soil. They just weren’t available to the crop before.”

“In fact, we’ve learned in the last two years that we can go to using almost no purchased commercial fertilizer or herbicide and still produce a great crop of corn and beans.”

“Our nitrogen use in fields without cover crops is 170 pounds an acre. Where we have cover crops and longtime no-till, we’re down to about 20 pounds an acre. That’s more than $100 an acre per year nitrogen savings, and we’re not sacrificing any yield.”

The nitrogen comes from cover plants like hairy vetch, Austrian winter peas, cow peas, and sun hemp. They pick out nitrogen from the atmosphere and translocate it into nodules on the roots, Brandt says.

“Some of those nodules will be as big as your thumb. Soil bacteria break them down, and the nitrogen is released slowly in an organic form that the corn plants can use,” he says.

Every cover crop grown on the farm has at least two species. Brandt is moving toward multiple species in the blend, because some—like hairy vetch, late-planted winter peas, cereal rye, barley and wheat––will stay green and keep growing through the winter.

“If we can keep something green in the ground with multiple species, we can build soil faster. So we like multiple blends better than two species,” he says.

“It will take 6-7 years to change or improve a soil with just no-till, but that time can be shortened to 4-5 years or as few as three years if you also use the right blend of cover crops.”

Covers bring up nutrients

Brandt is trying 8- and even 14-way blends of covers. “I’d like to learn more about which covers can bring up trace elements,” Brandt says. “We’ve seen buckwheat bring up phosphorus and zinc, for instance, and sunflowers bring zinc up too.”

Yet, he won’t put in a cover if it won’t pay for itself. “You shouldn’t spend any more for seed on a cover crop than what you can gain in reduced fertilizer costs or increased yields. That’s always been our philosophy,” he says.

Generally for Brandt, cover crops cost from $20 an acre to $35 an acre.

Suppressing pests naturally
The soil health payoff can come in other reduced inputs, too. “We’ve had less weed and pest pressure as we’ve gone along. We see more host insects that will prey on the insects we don’t like to see in the fields,” Brandt says. “We’ve found radishes give off a sulfur smell, for instance, that fumigates the soil and reduces cyst nematodes and slugs in the soil. We’re proud to say we’ve quit using insecticides on the farm.”

Their cover crops suppress winter annuals and broadleaf weeds, and Brandt has cut herbicide use in half.

“We have less sudden death syndrome and less white mold in our beans and less northern corn leaf blight in our corn, too,” he says.

More Microbes a Key

Brandt says he didn’t realize microbes were so important to farming a few years ago. “But I’ve read about how vital they are, and now I see as they increase, we see more good things happening in our soil—more nutrients being released, more water infiltrating into the soil. The more microbial activity we have, the better off we are,” he says.

“I’m really intrigued with the amount of water infiltration we’re seeing with our cover crops. As we go to cover crops with deeper roots, and bigger root masses, we’re seeing rainfall dissipate through the soil better. We don’t have water pockets in our tight clay soils any more.”

Cover crops also moderate soil temperatures. “On hot summer days, with air temperatures over a hundred degrees, our neighbors had soil temperatures of 118 degrees and ours was 86 degrees. Our corn really looked great at those times,” Brandt says.

Sharing the knowledge

Brandt has had to learn about soil health by trial and error on his farm. But he wants others to have an easier road. “I’m trying to pass on what we’ve learned here. I don’t want everyone to reinvent the wheel. I want people to see our failures and our successes,” he says.

“So many farmers have learned to sit on the tractor seat and let an agronomist make their decisions. I like to have farmers come and feel the soil here, dig in it, smell it, and see for themselves how healthy soil should look and feel. That’s when they get excited.”

That includes his banker. “It was hard to get him to understand what we are doing here until we got him out here. Now the quality of our soils and our reduced inputs show up on our balance sheets,” Brandt adds.

“And our landlords are tickled. We can show them how we’ve added organic matter to their soils and made their land more productive, and at the same time kept increasing their crop yields.”

End of quoted story

Some areas can also do the roller crimper on cover crops on the front of the tractor, while they pull a high residue no-till planter behind it.

Again, I don't have all the answers. But 200 million pounds of roundup[ per year in the US might be a problem.There has to be an effect of the bacterial population from that. Like I said in my 1st post, a gradual mind shift and production shift could greatly reduce inputs. Not saying ban them or never use them. I just think we need to minimize their use.

I know that there are plenty of farms here that still plow/disc every season, and spray fall, spring, and after planting.

If they could eliminate the plowing, and fall and spring herbicide apps, that would be a major step in the right direction, just like the guy in Ohio.