Category Archives: Agriculture

Honeybees Are and Have Been Thriving

09 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in Agriculture

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It’s been a while since I’ve heard much about the “beepocalypse”, but apparently many remain under the misapprehension that honeybee populations have languished under the threat of modern farming techniques. Some recent fake news on that subject appears at this link. There are two related contentions here, and both are false. One is that honeybee populations are dwindling. The other is the claim that productivity-enhancing insecticides used in modern agriculture are killing bees.

Bill Wirtz of the Brussels-based Consumer Choice Center notes the following:

“… looking at the statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, beehives are on the rise worldwide. The data show that as of 2020, there has been an increase of beehives by 17% since 2010, 35% since 2000, and 90% since 1961.”

He also points out that efforts to prove the wild bee population in the U.S. declined over the five years ending in 2013 were based on a model laden with assumptions, as opposed to actual statistics. In any case, even if it had been true, a five-year period is hardly proof of a secular decline. Both wild and managed bee populations go through cycles based on natural conditions, and in the case of managed bees, conditions in the market for honey. In fact, high honey prices could favor growth ahead in managed bee populations, though cost factors make that less certain.

As for the insecticides widely blamed for the beepocalypse, there is no real world, field-level evidence of any link to declining bee populations. In a separate article, Wirtz cites reports from the U.S. EPA and agencies in Canada and Australia finding that the widely-blamed neonicotinoids could not be linked to harms to bee colonies. This study found that “neonics” had no lethal or “sublethal” effects on honeybees at field-level dosages, despite reports of such effects in the lab. The lab work cited sort of reminds me of the outrageous tests that led to the saccharine scare of the 1970s, when the saccharine-equivalent of 800 sugar-free soft drinks a day was fed to lab rats. Dose dependence means everything under actual field conditions.

Randy Oliver of ScientificBeekeeping.com has written several thorough analyses of the impact of neonics on bees over the years. In 2012, he posted an important article entitled “The Extinction of the Honeybee?”, in which he reported that “… honeybees were thriving at Ground Zero of neonicitinoid use”. Neonics have definite advantages relative to older pesticides: they are much safer for humans, they are more effective at targeting insects that bore and suck sap, and they can be used as seed treatments with less leaching into the surrounding environment relative to sprays.

Oliver followed that up his first piece with two companion articles in which he documented issues related to regulation, testing regimes, the field applicability of tests, problems in methodology, and interpretation of results. He identified seed planting dust as a serious problem for bees, but one that is easily managed. In the second post, Oliver evaluated a number of characteristics of bee and colony health, including learning performance, orientation, foraging, immune function, social interaction, task allocation, and effects upon brood. He summarized his review thusly (his emphasis):

“Any number of scientists have diligently tried to find any sorts of sublethal effects of neonics on bees, but have failed to demonstrate adverse effects at the colony level at doses produced by seed.”

At the last link, Oliver discusses specific issues with respect to different crops, as well as other potential harms of neonics. However, seed treatments have never been implicated by researchers in bee colony collapse.

Finally, from a more recent presentation, Oliver reviews the history of bee population numbers and factors that drove them. That included infestation by two different parasitic mites in the 1980s and another pathogen in the early 2000s. These invasive waves led to use of the term Colony Collapse Disorder. While neonics had nothing to do with it, there were claims that it did. Oliver is not shy about noting other problems he identifies with the use of neonics, and he is strongly in favor of pest management approaches that rely less on pesticides. This is partly because farmers recognize the consumer resistance to pesticides, rational or otherwise. When neonics are applied properly, however, bee colony collapse is not one of those problems.

Honey prices were up strongly in 2021 (see here) and have remained strong in 2022 (here). That would bode well for the managed bee population. However, costs have increased sharply as well, blunting beekeeper incentives. Suppliers of beekeeping equipment are also facing higher costs. Given these pressures, it’s not clear whether the managed bee population will expand this year, but there is no threat to the long-term health of the bees in the proper use of neonics.

Beepocamyth: Neonics Don’t Kill the Buzz

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environment, Risk

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False claims that a certain class of pesticides threaten the world’s bee populations are commonplace, and we hear the same more recently about various species of birds. The origins of the “beepocalypse” rumor were not based on scientific evidence, but on a narrative that developed among environmental activists in response to a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that began around 2006, roughly a decade after neonicotinoid pesticides (so-called neonics) replaced earlier, more toxic compounds as the pesticides of choice. But Jon Entine writes at The Genetic Literacy Project:

“What causes CCD? It still remains a mystery, in part. But researchers turned up historical examples of CCD-like bee die offs across the globe over hundreds of years, well before the introduction of pesticides, but activist groups would have none of it.”

CCD essentially tapered off by 2009, according to Entine, and the number of honeybee colonies are higher now that before the introduction of neonics. See Entine’s charts at the link showing changes in honeybee populations over time. In Australia, where the use of neonics has been especially heavy, bee populations have grown steadily and remain quite healthy.

Entine’s article provides a nice summary of the real and imagined threats to the world’s bee populations as well as distorted claims associated with normal winter die-offs. He provides a number of useful links on these subjects, and he summarizes research showing the lack of any real threat to bees from neonics:

“Over the past seven years, there have been a flood of studies about the potential impact of neonics on bees. Many small-scale, forced-feeding studies that generally overdosed bees with neonics found various negative effects; not a surprise, many entomologists have said, as they do not replicate real world impacts.

In contrast, a multitude of large-population field studies—the ‘gold-standard’ of bee research—have consistently demonstrated there are no serious adverse effects of neonic insecticides on honeybees at the colony level from field-realistic neonic exposure. …

By last year, even the Sierra Club—for years one of the leading proponents of the honeybee Armageddon narrative—was backpeddling, writing: ‘Honeybees are at no risk of dying off. While diseases, parasites and other threats are certainly real problems for beekeepers, the total number of managed honeybees worldwide has risen 45% over the last half century.'”

Then Entine turns his attention to another front in the war on pesticides: a Canadian study in which white-crowned sparrows were force-fed a mixture of seeds and pesticide via gavage — ie, through a tube:

“Only sparrows force-fed the highest dosage were affected, and then only temporarily. They stopped eating, quickly lost body weight and fat, became disoriented and paused their migratory flight—all after tube full of chemicals was forced down their throat and into their stomach. … That said, within a few days of what was likely a trauma-inducing experience, all recovered completely and continued their migration normally.”

Yet the authors reported that the very existence of some wild birds is threatened by neonics, and the media, always eager to report a crisis, ran with it.

Paul Driessen also describes the junk science underlying misleading narratives regarding pesticide use. It is a driving force behind legislation in the House and Senate that would ban the use of neonics in National Wildlife Refuges, where the Fish & Wildlife Service permits farmers to grow various crops. Driessen has some advice for Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), a sponsor of the legislation:

“She should also recognize potentially serious threats to bees, wildlife, soils, waters and plants in refuges from sources that she, her colleagues and their environmentalist and media allies routinely ignore: solar panels, for instance. Not only do they blanket many thousands of acres, allowing little to grow beneath or between them. They can also leach cadmium and other metals into soils and waters. They should no longer be built near wildlife refuges.

Finally, it’s not just bees. It’s also birds, and bats – which are already being killed and even eradicated in many areas by America’s 56,000 wind turbines. Imagine what Green New Deal turbine numbers would do.”

More perspective is offered in this excellent six-part (and growing?) “Pesticides and Food” series (all at the link) by Kayleen Schreiber:

  1. Has pesticide use decreased? Yes, dramatically in per capita and per unit of output.
  2. Have pesticides improved?  Yes, with dramatically lower toxicity, improved biodegradability, and lower use rates.
  3. How dangerous is glyphosate (a herbicide)? Not very. Covered in my last post. Glyphosate is only 1/10th as toxic as caffeine.
  4. How do organic pesticides compare to synthetic pesticides? It’s a mixed bag, with great variability across both classes. Organics are more toxic in some applications, and synthetics are more toxic in others.
  5. Soil health: Are synthetic pesticides more sustainable than “natural” organics?  Organics require more tillage, which creates sustainability problems.
  6. Pesticide residues — Something to worry about? The USDA finds little residue in its testing, with extremely low detection rates for both organics and synthetics.

 

 

Knocking Noxious Weeds Down on the Farm

06 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Agriculture, Technology

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Proof continues to mount that the use of glyphosate herbicide in agriculture and landscape weed control poses no danger to humans, the claims of covetous plaintiffs’ attorneys notwithstanding. Glyphosate is the compound in Roundup and Spectrum weed killers. Ag Daily summarizes the EPA’s 10-year review of the empirical evidence in “EPA reaffirms no human health risk from glyphosate has been found“. The article notes that glyphosate has been studied extensively around the globe:

“The bodies supporting these safety findings include the European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German BfR, and Australian, Canadian, Korean, New Zealand and Japanese regulatory authorities, as well as the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues.“

I should make one qualification about the EPAs findings: they apply to registered uses, and not to improper application or exposure to more than the prescribed use of glyphosate. Evidence that excessive exposure is dangerous is not in doubt, yet such findings are routinely presented as if they apply generally. This article in The Scientist makes clear that there are number of pathways along which glyphosate might be harmful to humans and animals (like anything else, really), but the evidence of those effects is mixed, at best, and limited to unrealistic conditions. Glyphosate, the so-called active ingredient, is heavily diluted for application, so it is correctly used in minute quantities. It is always important to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for use, wear appropriate protective gear, and in the kitchen, rinse your produce thoroughly just to be safe.

It’s also important to note that in terms of toxicity, glyphosate is benign relative to the herbicides it replaced, a process that accelerated in the 1990s. Michelle Miller describes a basic relation that is critical to understanding the real dangers posed by any natural or manufactured substance: Risk = Hazard + Exposure. So-called “natural” herbicides used on organic farms are often applied heavily due to their relative inefficacy, so heavier exposure to those herbicides may well offset the presumed health advantages of organic foods.

Glyphosate has additional advantages: it minimizes tillage of fields, which reduces the energy-intensity of farming and avoids unnecessary microbial disturbance, thereby reducing emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and CO2. It also improves farm yields, helping farms prosper and enhancing the world’s food supplies.

 

Replacing the Top Banana

11 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in Agriculture, Biotechnology

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Almost all “dessert bananas” consumed in the U.S. are of one variety: the Cavendish. Dessert bananas are consumed raw, as opposed to “cooking bananas”, or plantains. This post by Steve Savage on his Applied Mythology blog provides some history of the commercial banana and the reasons why the market is dominated by a single banana cultivar. Many other cultivars exist across the globe, but there are sound economic reasons for the dominance of the Cavendish. For starters, people like them!

Incredibly, bananas became one of the early modern fruit staples, available at an affordable price at all times of the year, even in the dead of winter far from the hospitable growing conditions of the tropics. At that time, the dominant banana variety was the Gros Michel, but it fell victim to a fungus called Panama Wilt in the 1950s (still, populations of the Gros Michel survive today). The Cavendish proved to be an excellent replacement, though banana enthusiasts claim that it is inferior to the Gros Michel. Nevertheless, the Cavendish has reigned as the “top banana” in international commerce ever since. Now, however, the Cavendish is threatened by a relatively new strain of the same fungus that ravaged the Gros Michel. The impact so far has been felt mainly in Asia, but it is expected to spread.

This vulnerability has led to criticism of the industry’s reliance on the Cavendish as an example of “extreme monoculture”. Savage regards this as uninformed. He acknowledges the wide diversity of banana cultivars around the globe, but he asserts that the critics do not have a sound understanding of the highly-calibrated economics of growing, transporting, ripening and delivering bananas at the optimal point in the ripening process. The Cavendish meets the requirements of that process far better than the many other varieties, so its long-time dominance in export markets reflects rational decision-making:

“First of all, a banana for export has to be seedless. Many wild bananas have large, very hard black seeds – not something that has much consumer appeal. …“

By the way, seedless bananas (or rather, bananas with tiny, undeveloped seeds) are not GMOs, as the term is popularly understood. Domestication of the banana began several thousand years ago as early farmers selectively bred those plants producing the most desirable fruit for consumption: less seeds and more pulp. Savage goes on:

“Next, the banana needs to be productive in terms of overall yield per tree or acre. … The usable per-hectare yields of the Cavendish variety are quite high, and that is why it has been a both economically viable and environmentally sustainable choice for a long time. …

But probably the most limiting requirement for a banana variety to be commercially acceptable is that it has to be shippable. … Very few of the wonderful range of cultivated or wild banana types could ever do that, but because the Cavendish can be shipped this way, the energy and carbon footprint of its shipment is small. This crop has a very attractive ‘food-miles’ profile.“

In addition, Savage explains that the ripening process must be manageable and predictable. For all of these reasons, the Cavendish (and the Gros Michel in its time) has been an ideal choice in international commerce.

There are many potential solutions to the new challenge faced by the Cavendish, but they may or may not be able to provide a viable replacement before the new fungus presents a full-fledged crisis. You can learn about some of these alternatives at the Bananas.org forumoron other industry sites. For one thing, the Cavendish has shown to be protected from the fungus when grown in mixed plantations with papaya and coffee. In Taiwan, Cavendish bananas have been bred to resist the fungus. Other varieties are grown in central America and the Caribbean, including a surviving Gros Michel population, though it’s doubtful that it could survive the new fungus. There is also the so-called Apple Banana and the Berry Banana. While a greater variety of banana choices would be welcome to consumers, it is not clear how well these exotic bananas would meet the requirements of growers, shippers, grocers and consumers, and at a price that balances the interests of all parties.

There might also be a role for biotechnology in the effort to replace the Cavendish. Genetic engineering (GE) is a promising avenue through which disease-resistant varieties might be created, as it has with the papaya in Hawaii. It is also possible for GE to enhance the nutritional quality of crops. However, you can bet that food activists will condemn any attempt to leverage GE in banana farming.

Anti-Glyphosate Goons and Gullibility

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Agriculture, Regulation, Technology

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pseudociencia-a-saco

See the Postscript below.

A “roundup” of findings on the safety of glyphosate shows that the herbicide is very benign, highly unlikely to pose any real threat to humans, and far less toxic than many common household chemicals and even natural hazards in the environment. However, the debate over glyphosate is heavily politicized, as illustrated by the unsavory details surrounding a report issued last year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO). The IARC reclassified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on a few cherry-picked, poorly-designed studies with weak statistical power. That finding is inconsistent with the vast preponderance research, which shows that glyphosate is not a significant threat to human health.

The Farmer’s Daughter provided a good summary of the issues shortly after the IARC’s ruling was announced last year. She offers the following quote from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

“The U.S. EPA classified glyphosate as Group E, evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans. The U.S. EPA does not consider glyphosate to be a human carcinogen based on studies of laboratory animals that did not produce compelling evidence of carcinogenicity.“

European regulators reached similar conclusions and are rather damning in their assessment of the IARC’s findings, though Brussels recently disregarded their findings and decided to ban the sale of glyphosate for gardening. In this post at Biology Fortified, Anastasia Bodnar discusses the low toxicity of glyphosate with links to several recent studies on its safety. And here is the Risk Monger blogs’s list of “ten reasons why glyphosate is the herbicide of the century“:

  1. Controlling invasive weeds leads to better agricultural yields
  2. Better yields = less land in production = more meadows and biodiversity
  3. Extremely low toxicity levels compared to (organic) alternatives
  4. Allows for no or low till farming – better for soil management
  5. Reduces CO2 emissions (compared to organic)
  6. Glyphosate saves lives
  7. It is much more affordable and effective than other options
  8. Glyphosate is off patent so no single company is profiting heavily from it
  9. Glyphosate-resistant crops allow for more ecological weed management practices
  10. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that glyphosate is safe for humans

How, then, did the IARC reach such a negative conclusion? Again from the Risk Monger, David Zaruk, the IARC hired just one external technical advisor, Christopher Portier, an activist previously employed by an NGO, the anti-pesticide Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Portier has no technical background in toxicology, and the IARC apparently went to pains to avoid references to his affiliation with the EDF. Moreover, the IARC’s conclusion seems to have been preordained:

“The IARC study rejected thousands of documents on glyphosate that had industry involvement and based their decision on carcinogenicity on the basis of eight studies (rejecting a further six because they did not like their conclusions).“

The lead author of the report, Kathryn Guyton, gave a speech in 2014 in which she stated that herbicide studies slated for 2015 showed indications of a link to cancer. Just how did she know, so far ahead of time? And then there’s this revelation:

“According to the observer document, the glyphosate meeting started with the participants being told to rule out the possibility of classifying the substance as non-carcinogenic.“

Zaruk believes there is internal pressure for the IARC study to be retracted. The organization has suffered a great loss of credibility in the scientific community over the report. In addition, WHO has remained neutral thus far, but they are expected to address the issue this month.

Zaruk and Julie Kelly provide a more succinct summary of the issues in “The Facebook Age of Science at The World Health Organization” at National Review. The suggestion made in the title seems to be that WHO’s decision might be swayed by public pressure, measured by Facebook “likes” by the superstitious, such as unknowing David Wolfe devotees, rather than science:

“Environmentalists and organic companies tout phony studies claiming that glyphosate is found in everything from breast milk to bagels. … Meanwhile, farmers who use glyphosate to protect their crops and boost yields are caught in the crossfire. Even if glyphosate is banned, they will need to use another herbicide, probably more toxic, because the romantic notion of hand-weeding millions of acres of crops is promoted only by those who have never done it.“

I’ll keep using Monsanto’s Roundup, thanks! Or a competitive brand of glyphosate. To close, here’s a quote from Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist blog on the embrace of pseudoscience at the IARC and elsewhere (including social media):

“Science, humanity’s greatest intellectual achievement, has always been vulnerable to infection by pseudoscience, which pretends to use the methods of science, but actually subverts them in pursuit of an obsession. Instead of evidence-based policymaking, pseudoscience specialises in policy-based evidence making. Today, this infection is spreading.“

Postscript: On May 16, WHO announced that glyphosate is “unlikely to cause cancer in people via dietary exposure.” Here is a Q&A from WHO regarding its assessment, explaining that it is based on risk as opposed to mere hazard, upon which the earlier IARC report was based. This is good news!