The United States is facing a historic shortage of weed killers due to ongoing supply chain issues. The manufacturers are struggling to get their hands on some of the inert chemicals needed to make herbicides, as well as cardboard boxes and plastic jugs for caps. Glyphosate is one of the chemicals most affected by these supply chain problems, with farmers scrambling for alternative products to fight off undesired weeds.

This comes conjointly with a regulatory and legislative crackdown on a wide array of herbicides across the country, limiting the ability of farmers to control weeds this year.

The fact that rules vary between counties complicates the matter further, with agriculture professionals confused over which ingredients remain legally accessible, and needing the assistance of weed scientists to sift through the regulatory jungle. This is particularly problematic as many farmers have land extending across different counties.

While shortages affect the day-to-day lives of farmers, law makers’s long-term actions have more far-reaching consequences.

Weed-killers have come under fire by activist groups opposing the use of crop protection, accusing it of harming endangered species. Preventing these species from going extinct is guaranteed through the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a problematic piece of legislation due to its obtuse standards as to what exactly constitutes an endangered species in the first place.

As Hank Campbell at Science 2.0 explains, the ESA has been hijacked by trial lawyers, who use the law to arbitrarily fit their litigation purposes, and perpetuate definitions of “endangered” that are far removed from what the general public understands by the term. In fact, Campbell shows that the numbers of endangered species according to the ESA has skyrocketed under the Clinton and Obama administrations. As a result, we’ve seen a large amount of chemicals companies being sued, then settled, with environmental groups over their manufacturing of pesticides.

As a consumer, why care? As consumers we need to realize that crop protection plays a role in our daily lives, and not in the way it is portrayed by activists and, all too often, the media. When news outlets publish stories with the headline “Glyphosate weed killer found in German beers, study finds,” it makes sense to read through the entire piece and understand that a single person would need to ingest 264 gallons of beer a day for it to be harmful to health. Let’s agree that a person ingesting 264 gallons of beer in one day will supposedly have bigger problems than the exposure to a weed-killer. In turn, herbicides which are so viciously attacked on unscientific grounds provide essential advantages for farmers.

Pre-herbicides we used to hand weed, a practice so painfully visible in developing nations that still practice it. Herbicides alleviate the burden on women and all too often children who are required to hand-weed. In fact, 80% of hand-weeding in Africa is done by women, and 69% of farm children between the ages of 5 through 14 are forced to leave school to work in the agricultural sector during peak weeding periods, leading to long-term spinal deformities.

Herbicides have also increased our agricultural output, and guaranteed food security. Food security– how immense the technological advance is that we don’t even think about the possibilities of food products not being available on our shelves.

That said, the current food price inflation shows how vulnerable our system can actually be. Farming is more than just putting a seed in the ground and hoping it grows. Farming has become an intricate orchestra of players, all interdependent, all relying on technology and modern science. As consumers, if we want safe, available, and affordable food options, we need to recognize the incredibly important work that farmers do, and put our trust in their professional rigor.

Originally published here

The United Nations has warned about the looming food crisis in light of the war in Ukraine. The poorest countries in Africa, heavily dependent on Ukraine and Russia’s wheat supplies, are at high risk of starvation and malnutrition. Food security is also crumbling in Europe, packed with refugees from Ukraine and other politically unstable regions.

Until the very last moment, no one in the world⁠—except Russian President Vladimir Putin–knew whether the war would break out. One can then say that the food crisis caught Europe off guard. But that would be wrong. Europe simply ignored the red flags⁠—and now it’s paying the price.

The European Farm to Fork strategy (F2F), presented in 2019, intended to “enable and accelerate the transition to a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system.” That implied reducing pesticides by 50% by 2030 and increasing organic farming by at least 25%. Many European politicians vehemently defended F2F’s green goals. In October 2021, most Members of the European Parliament voted in favor of the F2F. 

The U.S., however, had no illusions about the F2F. A groundbreaking 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that F2F would reduce “agricultural production by 7 to 12% and diminish the EU’s competitiveness in both domestic and export markets.” The U.S. also recognized that the F2F would impose additional burdens on the EU-U.S. trade talks. 

Commenting on the F2F, David Salmonsen, senior director of congressional relations at the American Farm Bureau Federation, stressed: “A concern coming out of that for us is, in the future, could [Farm to Fork] result in some new trade barriers if they decide the way they want to produce food is the only way and they only want to let products in from outside that produce food the same way?” These concerns were particularly justified and shared by African countries, especially Kenya, as well. At home, multiple EU farming associations warned about the detrimental impact of F2F.

However, it took the war in Ukraine to make the EU realize the damaging scale of its green ambitions. Ukraine is one of the EU’s major agricultural partners, and it is only natural that the trade disruption has raised questions about the EU’s own food security. Less than two weeks into the war, the realization that the green agenda is not feasible has hit the EU.

On March 8th, European People’s Party (EPP), the parliament’s largest group, asked to call off the F2F. French President Emmanuel Macron also said that “Europe cannot afford to produce less.” It took the EU less than a month of war⁠—not even on its soil⁠—to realize that the green agenda is not fit for the challenges of today. And who needs such unsustainable policies to start with?

On the one hand, it’s great that the EU has now realized that green agriculture is unworkable. On the other hand, the whole drama could have been avoided in the first place if the EU had thoroughly considered the U.S.’s concerns. Moving forward, both the EU and the U.S. should use the F2F as a reminder that green policies sound great on paper⁠—but they are not feasible.

Originally published here

On the 24th of February, Russia started an unprovoked full-scale war against Ukraine. As Ukrainians are dying on the battlefield, the petrol prices bring a sense of war to every household globally. On the 8th of March, the U.S. recorded the highest fuel price per gallon of $4.17. European consumers also brace for further increases.

The war in Ukraine has changed policy priorities. The comforts and privileges of the pre-war time, when we could afford to spend countless hours discussing climate change, are gone. Now we have to deal with tangible crises, with the risk of global hunger being the greatest.

Ukraine and Russia are top global exporters of wheat, grain, and various nutrients. Russia, for example, accounts for 6 percent of the U.S.’s potassium imports – second only to Canada. Belarus, now on the brink of new sanctions, also contributes 6 percent. While the U.S. will probably manage to substitute these imports quickly, the search costs and high fuel prices alone will toll food production.

Globally, things look even grimmer. According to the United Nations, the disruption caused by the war could push international food prices by a staggering 22 percent. Food insecurity and malnutrition in the world’s poorest countries will consequently also be on the rise. The Center for Global Development has found that the price spike in food and energy will push over 40 million into poverty.

The war has served as a wake-up call for the EU, heavily dependent on Ukraine’s grain and Russia’s fertilizer imports. Europe has now realized that it can no longer afford its green agriculture plans, once so passionately advocated for. The Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy ambitiously sought to cut the use of pesticides in the EU by 50 percent while increasing organic farming production from 7.5 percent to 25 percent. 

Ferociously endorsed by green groups, the strategy was also highly costly and hardly climate-friendly. As the world cripples with limited resources, organic farming requires more farmland. To drastically reduce the use of pesticides – without giving farmers an alternative – would be a final nail in the coffin of European food production. Farmers’ associations understandably protested, but that wasn’t enough to make European policymakers change their minds.

The EU’s green agriculture strategy was so expensive that, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, its impact “would stretch beyond the EU, driving up worldwide food prices by 9 (EU only adoption) to 89 percent (global adoption).” The said study found that F2F would reduce “agricultural production by 7 to 12%  and diminish the EU’s competitiveness in both domestic and export markets.” A more recent 2022 study by Dutch scientists found that productionwill decline by 10 to 20%, or in some cases 30%. With strategies like this, the world wouldn’t need wars to find itself at the end of the cliff.

But, ironically, it took a war to make the EU realize that the F2F was not workable. Less than two weeks into the Ukraine-Russia war, as food prices climbed up and food security was at risk, the strategy got called off. In arguing for the pausing of the F2F, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “Europe cannot afford to produce less.”

The EU has convinced itself that green agriculture was the way forward, and it was only a matter of time until the bloc would have started telling the world to go green. Thankfully, the U.S. saw through these intentions and blasted the F2F as “protectionist,” “uncompetitive,” and misguided.” Commenting on F2F,  the U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “The world’s got to get fed, and it’s got to get fed in a sustainable way. And we can’t basically sacrifice one for the other.” The EU had a chance to learn that green agriculture is not sustainable earlier if it listened to the U.S. Now, as the global food security crumbles, the bloc is learning it the hard way.

The war in Ukraine is a brutal reminder that our reality remains vulnerable to external shocks, so we should only build food systems that last and stand firm. Green agriculture is not one of them, and it should never be back on the agenda. Not in the EU, or the U.S., not anywhere.

Originally published here

Those privileged of having met their grandparents, or even better, their great-grandparents, know of the staggering improvements in human prosperity over the last 100 years. For those born into wealth it’s noticeable through the advances of modern medicine (allowing you to meet your great-grandparents in the first place), but the changes are even more breathtaking for those whose ancestors have a background in farming. 

In fact, most of our ancestor’s stories relate to farming. European immigrants to the United States are often referred to as “seeking a better life”, but the harsher reality is that in most of Europe famine and disease was haunting those living from day to day. The Irish famine of 1845 killed one million people, which at the time represented 15% of the total population. About a century before the mainstream introduction of fungicides, the farming population had no ability to fight potato blight – leading to famines across Europe which caused civil unrest, even toppling the French July Monarchy in the Revolution of 1848. 

Read the full article here

Alternatives to sulfoxaflor exist, what are we waiting for?” titles a blog post on the website of the Belgian environmentalist NGO Nature&Progrès.

The post argues that given the available alternatives to modern insecticides, it should be reasonable to phase them out indefinitely. It claims that we are facing an insect apocalypse caused by crop protection tools – however, both statements are untrue.

The warnings of a so-called “insect apocalypse” date back to 2019, when a study titled “Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers” by Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, from the School of Life & Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, predicted a spiralling decline of insect populations worldwide.

“It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none”Bayo told The Guardian in February.

Read the full article here

In 2014, after Broomfield County had just approved licenses to keep honeybees, I bought my first two hives off of a beekeeper in Evergreen who was tired of the bears getting into them every winter. Then I attended my first meeting of the Boulder County beekeepers and learned about colony collapse disorder and the environmental stresses that lead to honeybee colonies failing.

Now, in 2021, these sentiments are being echoed to justify a ban on neonics in Boulder County, which we believe would be counterproductive to Colorado and demonstrates that one size fits all is never a good policy.

It is commonly cited within the beekeeping community that pesticides called neonics can negatively impact honeybees. An oft-invoked visualization shows a bee landing on a sunflower grown from seeds coated in neonics, triggering its neuroreceptors and leading it to collect nectar in an inefficient and bizarre pattern. While this is harmful to the foraging bees that are at the end of their lifecycle, this doesn’t mean that this is leading to colony collapse disorder or massive deaths of bees.

What’s more, recent evidence has proven that pesticides such as neonics (short for neonicotinoids) and sulfoxaflor haven’t been as responsible for declines in bee populations after all.

All beekeepers are aware of varroa mites, now present in all American honeybee colonies since first detected in the U.S. in 1987. The original research on these parasites in the 1960s hypothesized that they lived off the blood of honeybees, but a groundbreaking study published in 2019 found that this theory was false. These mites have a “voracious appetite for a honeybee organ called the fat body, which serves many of the same vital functions carried out by the human liver.”

These mites put a lot of stress on honeybee colonies and make it very hard for them to survive over the winter. While there is debate amongst the beekeeping community on whether it is right to treat honeybees for mites, most beekeepers treat their colonies at least once a year with some sort of pesticide that is safe for the bees but kills off a lot of mites. A popular method is to vaporize oxalic acid inside the hive. In this instance, pesticides assist beekeepers with preventing colony collapse disorder, further debunking the claim.

While we understand the urge to protect and promote pollinators such as honeybees in Colorado, Boulder County needs to allow farmers the choice of pesticides. Sugar beets have been grown in Colorado since 1869, as it is an ideal climate and soil for growing them. Sugar was processed in mills across our state for over a hundred years. Banning neonics means that sugar beet farmers must use the pesticide Counter, which is applied at 9.8 pounds per acre compared to 24 grams per acre for neonics.

This puts them at greater risk of exposure to pesticides and the kicker to all this is that sugar beets don’t even have a flower. This one size fits all policy isn’t about saving the bees but rather harms the local small business owners that grow Colorado sugar beets and a host of other crops.

That’s why, whether at the local level or state level, lawmakers must keep in mind that pesticides are vital for farmers and turn to science, not politics, when it comes to crafting smart policy.

Originally published here

A Belgian NGO attacks crop protection products that keep food safe and affordable

“Alternatives to sulfoxaflor exist, what are we waiting for?” titles a blog post on the website of the Belgian environmentalist NGO Nature&Progrès.

The post argues that given the available alternatives to modern insecticides, it should be reasonable to phase them out indefinitely. It claims that we are facing an insect apocalypse caused by crop protection tools – however, both statements are untrue.

The warnings of a so-called “insect apocalypse” date back to 2019, when a study titled “Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers” by Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, from the School of Life & Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, predicted a spiralling decline of insect populations worldwide.

“It is very rapid. In 10 years you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left and in 100 years you will have none” Bayo told The Guardian in February.

This study has since been debunked by researchers at the University of Oxford, who point out that out of the 73 studies Bayo reviewed, he highlights only those that show significant reductions in insect populations, and that he made “false statements on the lack of data for ants”.

The critiques go further. The premise of the insect apocalypse Bayo describes rests on the “red lists” – the presumably growing list of extinct species. However, the red lists contain insects that have regionally disappeared, not those that are globally extinct. In certain regions of the world, due to weather changes, certain insects displace to find more suitable living conditions. While on a case-by-case basis we can identify if human involvement, notably habitat loss, was the cause, this doesn’t mean that the insects are globally extinct.

The intellectual shortcuts in the Bayo study were striking, and not just based on an inaccurate reading of the data: three studies that he cites in support of pesticides being the only cause of insect decline do not actually say that.

Nature&Progrès goes beyond the claims made by Bayo, blaming all neonicotinoid insecticides and the neonics-alternative sulfoxaflor for insect deaths. It provides no data or link to a scientific study that underlines this argument. A hard task in any regard, namely because sulfoxaflor has not been shown to affect honeybee populations, even though this is regularly repeated.

Incidentally, Nature&Progrès dabbles in the same surface-level assumptions that lead the French National Front to demand a ban on sulfoxaflor in 2015 – an amendment rejected by the European Parliament.

Let’s not forget why European farmers use crop protection tools such as insecticides in the first place. Pests threaten crop output each year, to the extent that France has granted an exemption on its ban of neonicotinoids, as beet farmers were facing a complete wipe-out.

Meanwhile, in markets where neonic pesticides continue to be used, honeybee populations are actually steady or increasing. In short, a ban on crop protection tools threatens the livelihood of farmers, the food security of European countries, and can further increase food prices that are already affected by inflation.

Environmentalist NGOs are suggesting to move to an “agro-ecological” baseline of farming instead.

According to its original definition, agroecology is simply the study of ecological practices applied to agriculture. What started out as science, however, has morphed into a political doctrine that not only rules out modern technologies such as genetic engineering, advanced pesticides and synthetic fertilizer but explicitly extols the benefits of “peasant” and “indigenous” farming and in many cases discourages mechanization as a way of freeing the world’s poor from backbreaking agricultural labour. Add on to a hostility to international trade and intellectual property protections for innovators (“seed patents,” which are standard in all advanced crops, not just GMOs, are a frequent cause of complaint) and you can see why agroecology’s promoters so often talk about it as “transformative.”

We should remember that not all “transformations” are good. They can just as easily be bad, even catastrophic.

A study by pro-agroecology activists found that applications of their principles to Europe would decrease agricultural productivity by 35% on average, which they considered a positive, as in their view Europeans eat too much anyway. It’s hard to see how a 35% drop in productivity would protect European from rising food prices, and how a complete phase-out of crop protection equipment would ensure adequate food safety.

Originally published here

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, harsh government regulations are putting you in jeopardy.

With Christmas so close, many of us in Michigan have enjoyed a common holiday tradition this year: finding the perfect fresh Christmas tree to put up in our home. Unfortunately, harsh state regulations could put Michigan’s Christmas tree production in serious jeopardy.

Christmas trees are a big deal in this state, so much so that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently declared December “Michigan Christmas Tree Month.” Ranking third in the nation for the number of Christmas trees harvested, Michigan provides about 2 million trees to the national market every year, generating roughly $40 million in value.

With over 500 Christmas tree farms over 37,000 acres within the state, this industry is massively important and affects many Michigan residents.

However, growing Christmas trees is no easy feat. According to the Michigan Christmas Tree Association, it takes about seven years to grow a tree to commercial height, although it can take as many as 15 years in some cases.

Additionally, it is common for tree farms to plant around 2,000 trees per acre, although only about 1,250 on average survive as infestations from pests, insects and disease are common. Fortunately, there are many innovative solutions to prevent infestations and ensure that Christmas tree farmers are able to optimize their yields.

One of the innovative solutions listed in Michigan State University’s 2021 Michigan Christmas Tree Pest Management Guide is neonicotinoids or neonics, a type of insecticide with a chemical structure similar to nicotine.

Neonics have been used extensively in agriculture because they effectively target insects and pests while being significantly less harmful to wildlife than most other insecticides.

Unfortunately, there have been calls to restrict neonics in Michigan that would result in severe economic harm to our Christmas tree farms. Just earlier this year, a bill was introduced to the Michigan House that contained language banning the use of neonics, claiming that the insecticide would kill bee populations.

At one time, many believed that a decline in bee populations were a result of widespread use of neonics and substitutes such as sulfoxaflor, although this has since been debunked. In reality, the supposed drop-off in honeybee colonies was a result of how beekeepers tracked the number of bees they managed. According to research from an international group of ecologists, the number of global honey bee colonies has actually increased by 85% since 1961.

If neonics were banned in Michigan, it could economically destroy the state’s Christmas tree farms and industry, leaving many farmers out in the cold after working tirelessly to make our holidays special over the years.

Instead, legislators should “branch” out from bad policy and embrace the innovative scientific solutions that will keep Christmas in Michigan merry and bright.

Originally published here