Organic farming continues to rise across the globe

World Progress Watch

2 million of the world’s 1.5 billion farmers are now producing organically, with nearly 80 percent based in developing countries. India boasts the most certified organic producers, followed by Uganda and Mexico.

By Kendra Nordin, Staff writer February 17, 2015

 Across the decades of boom and bust that characterize agricultural history runs a trend: the rise and recognition of organic farming worldwide.

According to the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM), 2 million of the world’s 1.5 billion farmers are now producing organically, with nearly 80 percent based in developing countries. India boasts the most certified organic producers, followed by Uganda and Mexico.

Currently 164 nations have certified organic farms, powering an industry worth $63.9 billion. (In 2000, there were 86 countries with certified farms producing $15.2 billion.) With this growth come opportunities for farmers to add value to their products and access expanding markets.

While the 94 million acres of certified organic agricultural land constitutes less than 1 percent of total global agricultural land, industry analysts call the growth of organics significant, also noting that the certified numbers fail to account for the vast numbers of small-scale farmers who use organic methods by default.

“[There are] probably 500 million small family farms worldwide; most of those are traditional farmers who farm primarily through organic principles,” says Andre Leu, president of IFOAM.

He adds that 200,000 organic farmers become newly certified each year. “In most places there is still a dramatic loss [in the numbers] of farmers and ... where we see growth is in the organic sector.”

Farmers today, battling climate swings and plummeting farm incomes, are essentially faced with four options: leave farming completely, obtain off-farm income, expand and play the commodity game more efficiently, or find ways to add value per unit of production, says Joel Gruver, a soil science professor at Western Illinois University in Macomb.

“Basically, organic farming anywhere in the world – if you are certified – is the one label that is most clearly defined,” says Professor Gruver, the university’s director of organic research. “Each nation has its own rules in how they define organic, but the general set of rules is very much the same,” he says. Organic methods eschew chemical additives and rely on such practices as crop rotation to harness ecological processes that promote healthy soils and fight disease, weeds, and pests.

For consumers, organic farming addresses a range of issues on which many feel conventional farming falls short: environmental impact, pesticide residues, and nutritional quality. It addresses concerns about energy consumption and climate change, and even restores a social connection to the land that many feel commodity farming has eroded.
In fact, consumer demand is the driving force behind the growth. In 2012 in the United States and Europe, markets with a healthy appetite for organic goods, there was a 10 percent year-on-year rise in sales.

“Organic farming is the fastest growing multi-product sector in the world,” says Mr. Leu. “[I]f you go into any store now, organic products are in every section. Anything from dairy to [prepared foods] to body care products to organic clothing.... And there is no other sector like that.”

Organic farming does draw critics. Some question the consistency of its accreditation and labeling system. There is debate over whether organics deliver higher nutritional value, and concern that the certification process is too costly to allow for financial success. And there is doubt over whether organic methods can yield enough to feed an ever-growing population. Yet consumer preference continues to grow.

“[T]here is more demand than supply,” says Anna Lappé, author of “Diet for a Hot Planet.” Ms. Lappé also points out that less than 1 percent of agricultural research funding now goes toward refining proven chemical-free farming methods.

Still, there have been considerable efforts to support organic farmers. A growing number of nonprofits provide microloans. IFOAM publishes the principles of organic farming on its website for those who want to practice it but can’t yet afford certification. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have set goals for organic agriculture. The US offers small grants and loans.

Commercial investment may gain momentum, too. Nature’s Path, an organic cereal manufacturer, recently bought 5,640 acres of farmland in Canada and northern Montana in efforts to support organic family farmers there.


http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Progress-Watch/2015/0217/Organic-farming-continues-to-rise-across-the-globe

How changing the way we farm could reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Certain farming practices can trap a majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On a global scale, this could even lead to a net decrease in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels — or, in other words, help reverse climate change.

By Skylar Lindsay, FoodTank September 3, 2014

A recent study by the Rodale Institute documents how specific organic farming practices can trap a majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On a global scale, this could even lead to a net decrease in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels — or, in other words, help reverse climate change.

The study, “Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming,” highlights soil’s natural ability to trap carbon from the atmosphere. This process, called carbon sequestration, occurs when photosynthesis removes carbon from the air faster than other biological processes, like respiration, release it.

According to the Rodale, if half of the world’s croplands were shifted to regenerative methods, the world could reduce net annual greenhouse gas emissions from 51 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent to below 41– the threshold necessary by 2020 to limit global warming to 1.5º C.

The figures are based on 75 peer-reviewed studies and on test sites throughout the world where organic and conventional methods are compared side by side. These include Rodale’s long-running Farming Systems Trial (FST) in the United States and more recent Tropical Farming Systems Trial in Costa Rica. Rodale uses this data to calculate a rate of carbon sequestration per area of land cultivated, and then scale-up to see the impact of global adoption of each practice.

For example, if all current cropland were cultivated using methods tested in Iran and Egypt, 21 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e), or 40 percent of global emissions, could be sequestered annually. If applied to the world’s pasture and grassland, Rodale calculates its recommendations could sequester 37 GtCO₂e, or over 70 percent of emissions. Changing the cultivation of cropland, pasture, and grassland together could lead to a net reduction in the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

Rodale’s recommendations focus on soil health, biodiversity, and avoiding farming methods that contribute to a net release of carbon including the overuse and misuse of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and unnecessary tilling. The regenerative techniques include crop rotation, cover crops, mulching and green manure, composting, and no-till practices.

Cover cropping techniques increase soil carbon via photosynthesis and better carbon retention in topsoil layers. Perennial cover crops, called living mulches, are especially effective due to large, deep root systems. Strategic crop rotations increase soil carbon levels, and coupled with on-farm composting and cover cropping, encourages soil microbes that absorb carbon. These regenerative practices also help carbon-absorbing fungi populations.

Skylar Lindsay majors in Peace & Conflict Studies at Colgate University, where he heads the organic farming initiative and leads for the Outdoor Education program.


http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Bite/2014/0903/How-changing-the-way-we-farm-could-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions

Little Things Matter: The Impact of Toxins on the Developing Brain

From the:
Canadian Environmental Health Atlas

Published November 11, 2014

We’ve been studying the impact of toxins on children for the past 30 years and reached the inescapable conclusion: little things matter. We’ve discovered that extremely low levels of toxins can impact brain development. We have also discovered that subtle shifts in the intellectual abilities of individual children have a big impact on the number of children in a population that are challenged or gifted. Steps should be taken to reduce children's exposure to toxins or suspected toxins.

Just another reason to embrace organic food and a chemical free environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6KoMAbz1Bw

Wasps saved her gardens

 

 
Wasps saved her geraniums

10/18/2014 12:00 AM

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/home-garden/garden-detective/article2952818.html#storylink=cpy

A reader had a complaint regarding tiny green caterpillars in her geranium plants. The answer is to get rid of the white moth that lays an egg in each geranium bud. The caterpillar egg hatches out in a few days and the tiny worm eats the inside of the bud. Hence, there’s no flower or a damaged one.
The secret to my hedge rows of beautiful full-blooming geraniums is a black wasp that buzzes in and out of the bushes and leaves them thoroughly devoid of eggs and caterpillars. The wasps come to my garden uninvited. Where they come from, I do not know. They just solved a bad situation.

Margaret Tucher, Davis

You are fortunate that a beneficial insect – a parasitic wasp – is limiting pests on your geraniums, said UC master gardener Lorraine Van Kekerix.

The wasps break the life cycle of a common moth that lays eggs in several common flowering plants including petunias and geraniums, one of the moth’s preferred host plants. The adult moth does not eat the plant.

The moth’s wings are about 1 1/2 inches across; the color ranges from light green to brownish with lighter colored bars across the wings. It’s not the familiar white cabbage moth but another pest, the geranium or tobacco budworm moth.

When the moth eggs hatch, geranium budworm larvae emerge. The larvae eat the plants and do the damage. Specifically, geranium budworms eat the developing flower buds so the buds do not open. Severely affected plants may not produce flowers at all.

The geranium budworms eat flower petals as well as the buds. If the infestation is particularly large, they may eat leaves as well. While this pest prefers geraniums, petunias and tobacco (including flowering tobacco), it will also attack other flowers and plants.

What you describe in your rows of geraniums is a beneficial insect, a parasitic wasp. A parasite feeds on a host organism. Most parasites are smaller than the host and often are the larval stages of an insect. Specialized flies and wasps are the most common types of parasitic insects, and there are several types of parasitic wasps that can attack geranium budworms.

Most of these wasps are tiny and do not sting people. Parasitic wasps lay eggs in or on the geranium budworm. When the wasp larvae emerge, they develop by feeding on and killing the worm. Parasitic wasps can lay hundreds of eggs a day.

A beneficial insect is part of the natural cycle of checks and balances when it destroys or reduces a rapid increase in the pest population. We benefit as we no longer need to deal with the pest. There are many ways to protect and increase the population of these naturally occurring beneficial insects in our gardens.

Start by reducing use of broad-spectrum pesticides (that kill a wide range of insects) in the garden. Broad-spectrum pesticides often kill the beneficial insects in higher proportions than the pests. Many pesticide residues persist in the garden, and those residues can reduce the reproduction of these beneficial insects or kill them long after the pesticide was originally applied.

If a pesticide is needed, spare the beneficials by choosing a less persistent pesticide or one that kills only specific pests. For example, Bacillus thuringensis affects only caterpillars including geranium budworms, hornworms and cabbage worms.

To maintain a population of beneficial insects, design your garden to provide the food and habitat they need. These insects need nectar, pollen and shelter throughout the growing season so the population is large enough to control the pests.

Gardens with a wide variety of plants that bloom at different times throughout the seasons can provide these good guys the food and shelter they need at all life stages.

For more information on beneficial insects, visit the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management website and obtain Pest Note 74140, “Biological Control and Natural Enemies.” You can find it at www.ipm.ucdavis.edu.

The IPM website also features a picture gallery of natural enemies, which includes beneficial insects.
The gallery is very useful in identifying beneficial insects. It’s likely you’ll recognize several that are already helping to control the pests in your garden.

http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/home-garden/garden-detective/article2952818.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/home-garden/garden-detective/article2952818.html#storylink=cpy

Our Bees, Ourselves - Bees and Colony Collapse

Our Bees, Ourselves
Bees and Colony Collapse

MARK WINSTON     JULY 14, 2014

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — AROUND the world, honeybee colonies are dying in huge numbers: About one-third of hives collapse each year, a pattern going back a decade. For bees and the plants they pollinate — as well as for beekeepers, farmers, honey lovers and everyone else who appreciates this marvelous social insect — this is a catastrophe.

But in the midst of crisis can come learning. Honeybee collapse has much to teach us about how humans can avoid a similar fate, brought on by the increasingly severe environmental perturbations that challenge modern society.

Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts. The main elements include the compounding impact of pesticides applied to fields, as well as pesticides applied directly into hives to control mites; fungal, bacterial and viral pests and diseases; nutritional deficiencies caused by vast acreages of single-crop fields that lack diverse flowering plants; and, in the United States, commercial beekeeping itself, which disrupts colonies by moving most bees around the country multiple times each year to pollinate crops.

The real issue, though, is not the volume of problems, but the interactions among them. Here we find a core lesson from the bees that we ignore at our peril: the concept of synergy, where one plus one equals three, or four, or more. A typical honeybee colony contains residue from more than 120 pesticides. Alone, each represents a benign dose. But together they form a toxic soup of chemicals whose interplay can substantially reduce the effectiveness of bees’ immune systems, making them more susceptible to diseases.

These findings provide the most sophisticated data set available for any species about synergies among pesticides, and between pesticides and disease. The only human equivalent is research into pharmaceutical interactions, with many prescription drugs showing harmful or fatal side effects when used together, particularly in patients who already are disease-compromised. Pesticides have medical impacts as potent as pharmaceuticals do, yet we know virtually nothing about their synergistic impacts on our health, or their interplay with human diseases.

Observing the tumultuous demise of honeybees should alert us that our own well-being might be similarly threatened. The honeybee is a remarkably resilient species that has thrived for 40 million years, and the widespread collapse of so many colonies presents a clear message: We must demand that our regulatory authorities require studies on how exposure to low dosages of combined chemicals may affect human health before approving compounds.

Bees also provide some clues to how we may build a more collaborative relationship with the services that ecosystems can provide. Beyond honeybees, there are thousands of wild bee species that could offer some of the pollination service needed for agriculture. Yet feral bees — that is, bees not kept by beekeepers — also are threatened by factors similar to those afflicting honeybees: heavy pesticide use, destruction of nesting sites by overly intensive agriculture and a lack of diverse nectar and pollen sources thanks to highly effective weed killers, which decimate the unmanaged plants that bees depend on for nutrition.

Recently, my laboratory at Simon Fraser University conducted a study on farms that produce canola oil that illustrated the profound value of wild bees. We discovered that crop yields, and thus profits, are maximized if considerable acreages of cropland are left uncultivated to support wild pollinators.

A variety of wild plants means a healthier, more diverse bee population, which will then move to the planted fields next door in larger and more active numbers. Indeed, farmers who planted their entire field would earn about $27,000 in profit per farm, whereas those who left a third unplanted for bees to nest and forage in would earn $65,000 on a farm of similar size.

Such logic goes against conventional wisdom that fields and bees alike can be uniformly micromanaged. The current challenges faced by managed honeybees and wild bees remind us that we can manage too much. Excessive cultivation, chemical use and habitat destruction eventually destroy the very organisms that could be our partners.

And this insight goes beyond mere agricultural economics. There is a lesson in the decline of bees about how to respond to the most fundamental challenges facing contemporary human societies. We can best meet our own needs if we maintain a balance with nature — a balance that is as important to our health and prosperity as it is to the bees.

Mark Winston, a biologist and the director of the Center for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, is the author of the forthcoming book “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 15, 2014, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Our Bees, Ourselves.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/opinion/bees-and-colony-collapse.html

New Study Shows Plants Talk to Each Other Through the Soil

New Study Shows Plants Talk to Each Other Through the Soil
by Tafline Laylin
5/23/14

Image via Shutterstock

A new study conducted by Dr. David Johnson at the University of Aberdeen found that plants actually communicate with one another through the soil. The study shows that when vegetables are infected with certain diseases, they alert other nearby plants to activate genes to ward off the disease when it heads their way. The key to this communication is a soil fungus that acts as a messenger.

Image via Shutterstock

Soil fungus and certain plants have a symbiotic relationship, according to the research team, who shared their findings with The Economist. The plants deliver food and the fungus delivers minerals. But now it turns out the fungal hyphae, which creates a network in the soil that connects the various plants, plays another essential role as a messenger.

Related: Glowing Bioluminescent Plants for Lighting Nature’s Way

In 2010, a team of Chinese researchers found that when a tomato plant became infected with a leaf blight, it was able to somehow alert nearby tomato plants, which then prepared their defense. Dr. David Johnson and his team sought to find out by which mechanism the plants were able to communicate this information with Broad Bean plants.

To prove that the plants were communicating through the soil, the team set up a series of “mesocosms” of five bean stalks each. Beans are often attacked by aphids. When this happens, they release a chemical that attracts wasps that then come around and annihilate the aphids.

Related: 3 Houseplants to Feng Shui Your Home

“Five weeks after the experiment began, all the plants were covered by bags that allowed carbon dioxide, oxygen and water vapour in and out, but stopped the passage of larger molecules, of the sort a beanstalk might use for signalling. Then, four days from the end, one of the 40-micron meshes in each mesocosm was rotated to sever any hyphae that had penetrated it, and the central plant was then infested with aphids.”

You can read more about the experiment at The Economist, but the controls demonstrated that indeed the bean plants communicated to each other through the soil when it was found that one of them had been attacked by aphids!

Via The Economist

http://inhabitat.com/plants-talk-to-each-other-through-a-messenger-in-the-soil/
 

Victory in Vermont!!!

Victory in Vermont - in time to Celebrate on Earth Day!

Earth Day is coming up next Tuesday. This year, Mother Earth has at least one thing to celebrate—the beginning of the end of Monsanto’s evil empire.

Yesterday, Vermont passed H.112, this country’s first no-strings-attached law requiring the mandatory labeling of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and outlawing the practice of labeling GMO-contaminated foods as “natural” or “all-natural.”

With the passage of the Vermont GMO labeling law, after 20 years of struggle, it’s time to celebrate our common victory. But as we all know, the battle for a new food and farming system, and a sustainable future has just begun.

Monsanto will likely sue Vermont. And lose. And the Gene and Junk Food Giants will still try to pass a federal law intended to strip Vermont, and every other state, of the right to pass GMO labeling laws.

But we will fight back. And we will win.

Read Ronnie’s essay

Worms Produce Another Kind of Gold for Growers

SCIENCE
Worms Produce Another Kind of Gold for Growers

By JIM ROBBINS
Published: December 31, 2012

SONOMA, Calif. — Under rows of old chicken sheds, Jack Chambers has built an empire of huge metal boxes filled with cattle manure and millions of wriggling red worms.

“My buddies all had planes and boats,” said Mr. Chambers, 60, a former airline pilot. “I have a worm farm.”

Mr. Chambers’s two decades of investment in what he calls an “underground movement” may be paying off. New research suggests that the product whose manufacture he helped pioneer, a worm-created soil additive called vermicompost, offers an array of benefits for plants — helping them grow with more vigor, and making them more resistant to disease and insects, than those grown with other types of composts and fertilizers.

The earthworm’s digestive process, it turns out, “is a really nice incubator for microorganisms,” said Norman Q. Arancon, an assistant professor of horticulture at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

And these microbes, which multiply rapidly when they are excreted, alter the ecosystem of the soil. Some make nitrogen more available to plant roots, accounting for the increased growth. The high diversity and numbers of microbes outperform those in the soil that cause disease.

By contrast, Dr. Arancon said, soil that has been heavily exposed to synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides lacks microbial richness and diversity, qualities that can be restored naturally by adding the microbes from worms.

Some experts and entrepreneurs hope earthworms can also help with another problem: the growing piles of animal waste from dairy farms and other agricultural operations.

Worm Power, a company in Avon, N.Y., transforms 10 million pounds of manure from a single dairy herd each year — about 40 percent of the cattle’s output — into 2.5 million pounds of vermicompost. Tom Herlihy, a former municipal waste engineer who founded the company in 2003, says it has raised more than $6 million in venture capital and $2 million in grants for research, much of it at Cornell University.

Here in Northern California, Mr. Chambers’s Sonoma Valley Worm Farm produces about half a million pounds of similar compost, an amount he plans to increase in the spring. He loads a long metal bin with cow manure and 300,000 to 400,000 Eisenia fetida, or red wigglers — weighing 300 to 400 pounds. In their wake, the worms leave cattle waste that has been processed into rich and crumbly castings that look like fine peat moss.

It takes six months for a vermicompost bed to become fully mature, by which time a million worms roam the manure. Mr. Chambers continues to add two yards of manure and harvest one yard of worm compost weekly. The finished product is shaved, an inch at a time, off the bottom of the bin. An established bed can go on this way for years.

Both operations pre-compost their manure before they fork it over to the worms. That means piling it up and allowing it to get naturally hot enough to kill unwanted seeds and pathogens like E. coli.

The properties of worm compost are different from fertilizer or manure. “It’s interesting and complicated,” said Rhonda Sherman, an extension specialist at North Carolina State University who has taught vermicomposting around the world for more than 30 years and who holds an annual conference on the subject.

“Certain plants might react well to vermicompost from dairy manure,” she said, “and other plants might react better to food-waste vermicompost.” That has led to “boutique composting,” with different blends for different kinds of plants.

A West Coast company, California Soils, uses worms to break down cardboard waste fibers that are too short to be recycled. The glue used to bind the paper serves as an important source of nitrogen for the worms. “It’s a really good product for nut farmers and stone fruit farmers,” Mitch Davis, a company spokesman, said of the compost, adding that it also helps control nutgall, a fungal disease that afflicts walnut trees.

Worms were said to be Darwin’s favorite organism, and for good reason: it seems they can break down most anything. Studies have shown they can detoxify soil with cadmium, lead and other heavy metals.

Another product made from worm waste is a concentrate, sometimes called tea, that Mr. Chambers extracts using an aerator. Dr. Arancon said even a 1 percent solution of the extract had the same properties as vermicompost.

At Cornell, Eric Nelson, a plant pathologist, is studying how compost suppresses disease. Worm Power’s product, he says, does a better job than traditional compost, perhaps because the worm compost is highly uniform. “The key is understanding why these microbes do what they do,” Dr. Nelson said. Then, perhaps, the mechanism can be enhanced, he said.

The worm compost is considered valuable enough to fetch almost 10 times the price of other composts.

Still, the industry suffers from image problems. “It’s hard to bring it out of the ‘It’s cute to have a worm box in my backyard’ approach and put it on par with other strategies for waste management,” said Allison Jack, who earned her doctorate by studying vermicompost at Cornell and is now teaching at Prescott College in Arizona.

The quality of products varies widely, and because there are no industry standards, anyone can call a product vermicompost.

For a time, the worm business was a haven for swindlers. Companies would sell worms to growers, who were told they could raise more worms and produce vermicompost, which they could then sell back. Some of these offers turned out to be Ponzi schemes.

Still, the properties of vermicompost have long been recognized by growers. Jeff Dawson, the curator of gardens at the Round Pond Estate winery in the Napa Valley, swears by Mr. Chambers’s castings, which he has used for more than a decade.

“A cup or half a cup in the hole as we plant each vine increases the vine’s ability to establish itself at a much faster pace,” Mr. Dawson said. “And it creates a healthier plant.”

This being California, some of Mr. Chambers’s customers are medical marijuana growers, and he likes the way growers do business. “They hand you cash,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 1, 2013, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Worms Produce Another Kind of Gold for Growers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/science/worms-produce-another-kind-of-gold-for-farmers.html

“Mycelium is Earth’s Natural Internet.”

Six ways mushrooms can save the world.

Paul Stamets gives this wonderful TED Talk about mushrooms that are organisms that cover our earth and are very important for the life on earth.

Paul Stamets believes that mushrooms can save our lives, restore our ecosystems and transform other worlds.



Entrepreneurial mycologist Paul Stamets seeks to rescue the study of mushrooms from forest gourmets and psychedelic warlords. The focus of Stamets' research is the Northwest's native fungal genome, mycelium, but along the way he has filed 22 patents for mushroom-related technologies, including pesticidal fungi that trick insects into eating them, and mushrooms that can break down the neurotoxins used in nerve gas.

There are cosmic implications as well. Stamets believes we could terraform other worlds in our galaxy by sowing a mix of fungal spores and other seeds to create an ecological footprint on a new planet.

A Farm for the Future

“All of the debts for society’s century-long industrial fiesta are coming due at the same time. We have no choice but to transition to a world no longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and economies that function within ecological bounds. How we manage this transition is the most important question of our time.”       
              ~ Richard Heinberg

A Farm for the Future is a video about changing the way we garden/farm - it is made in the UK, but so much applies here in the U.S. and throughout the world.

This video starts off examining animal farming, but develops into a holistic examination of growing and providing food in the future.  The scope of this video and what changes need to be made in the future are eye-opening and thought provoking. We are all in this together, so it is encouraging to see some successful examples of farms for the future.

Maine House Gives First Nod to GMO Labeling Bill in Landslide Vote

By Steve Mistler     Portland Press Herald, June 11, 2013

AUGUSTA — Maine is on track to join several other states attempting to require food producers to label food containing genetically modified ingredients, following a landslide vote in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. 

The House voted to support L.D. 718, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lance Harvell, R-Farmington, sets the stage for a legal entanglement between the state and agribusiness and biotech industry giant Monsanto, which has already threatened to sue states that pass similar labeling laws. The political battle between industry interests and the well-organized supporters of L.D. 718 has raged behind the scenes for several months at the State House, as the biotech industry fights to blunt a popular movement that has taken the GMO fight to at least 18 other state legislatures following failed attempts to pass labeling legislation in Congress.

The House voted 141-4 in favor of a amendment that would trigger the labeling requirement once four other contiguous states, including Maine, pass similar labeling legislation.

Supporters of L.D. 718, a bill co-sponsored by 120 lawmakers, including Democrats, independents and Republicans, relished the looming fight with Monsanto, the litigious international company widely vilified by supporters of the organic food movement. Harvell blasted the company, saying lawmakers should not give the industry "veto power" over a bill that tells people what's in their food.

"In this body alone we have routinely taken on the federal government, which is supposedly the most powerful government in the world," Harvell said. "And yet, if a corporation threatens us, we fear them more? Are we going to give these people veto power over this body and the people of the state of Maine? Do we really live in a world where they have more power than our federal government? It's a question that we should ask."

A lawsuit likely may await Maine if the labeling bill goes into effect.

Attorney General Janet Mills, who was asked to review the constitutionality of the bill, told lawmakers on the Agriculture Committee that it is "almost certain" to face a legal challenge from the industry. Mills did not guarantee that her office would be able to defend its constitutionality.

Proponents of the bill, including the Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association, said it is up to states to take on industry to ensure that it discloses whether food is bio-engineered — its DNA has been spliced with that of an unrelated plant, animal, bacterium or virus — because Congress has failed to enact federal legislation.

No state has passed such a labeling law. At least 18 states are considering them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Connecticut recently passed a GMO labeling law that is nearly identical to amended version of L.D. 718. Vermont is on the verge of doing the same. A similar bill is under consideration by the New Hampshire Legislature.

Lance Dutson, a spokesman for the business and industry coalition that's opposing the bill, told the Portland Press Herald in May that Mills' review of the bill essentially reaffirmed the proposal has "serious constitutional concerns."

The constitutional issue centers on free speech, specifically compelling food manufacturers and retailers to disclose ingredients that don't pose a known public health risk. The Maine State Chamber of Commerce, the Maine Farm Bureau and the Grocery Manufacturers Association say the bill would stigmatize genetically modified foods despite a dearth of scientific research proving that such products are any less healthful than those that are grown conventionally.

Maine law now allows retailers to label products voluntarily as certified organic or "GMO-free."

Harvell's bill would prohibit retailers from labeling a product "natural" if it contained GMOs, genetically modified organisms.

Advocates of new regulations say scientific evidence is emerging that genetically modified foods can increase health risks and food allergies. They say federal regulators have left testing up to the industry that is producing and profiting from genetically modified products.

Labeling supporters argue that independent testing on GMO foods hasn't happened because industry patents prohibit it.

"If it's so unique that it requires a patent, then I say that it's time that it requires a label," Harvell said.

Harvell, during a rousing floor speech, said Tuesday that if GMO foods are so unique that they require a patent, the public can't be sure that it's safe to eat.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates genetically modified foods but does not approve them. The agency assumes the foods are safe until confronted with evidence that they're not. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union, has worked on labeling legislation in Congress. He told lawmakers during a public hearing on Maine's bill that federal regulators have ceded review of genetically modified products to ensure that the industry — not the government — is legally liable if health problems surface.

Opponents say a labeling law would be costly to farmers and sellers, who would have to review affidavits to determine whether the food they're selling contains genetically modified ingredients.

The Legislature previously has rejected four GMO-labeling bills, but supporters say there is growing support for a law.

The proposal endorsed by the House differs from the original bill. It would not take effect until five other contiguous states pass similar legislation.

Some lawmakers worried that the amended version would doom the labeling effort because one state could derail the effort if it doesn't pass labeling legislation. Rep. Brian Jones, D-Freedom, said the altered bill effectively would grant New Hampshire veto power over Maine's effort if Granite State lawmakers don't pass a labeling law.

Rep. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough said the amended bill would help defray some of the anticipated legal costs and "send a message to the federal government."

The bill now moves to the Senate for a vote. The bill may face a steeper climb among Republican state senators. Sen. Andre Cushing, R-Hampden, on Monday described the bill as a Democrat-led effort on a conservative website.

The LePage administration testified against the bill during the public hearing. Adrienne Bennett, the governor's spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the governor had not yet taken a position on the amended bill.

In May the U.S. Senate rejected an amendment by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would give states the power to require genetically modified food to be labeled as such. U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, voted for the amendment. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against it.

Steve Mistler — 620-7016 smistler@pressherald.com

http://www.pressherald.com/news/Maine-House-gives-first-nod-to-GMO-labeling-bill-in-landslide-vote.html 

For related articles and more information, please visit Organic Consumers Association - OCA's  Genetic Engineering page, Millions Against Monsanto page and Politics and Democracy page.

Connecticut First In The Nation To Pass GMO Labeling Bill

by Jacqueline Wattles | Jun 3, 2013 6:32pm

 Tara Cook-Littman, an advocate who pushed for the bill celebrates her victory

A bill that would mandate labels on foods that contain genetically modified ingredients passed the House Monday, making Connecticut the first state in the nation to pass this type of legislation.

Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are crops that have been manually altered using modern technology in order to be resistant to herbicides and pesticides or take on other characteristics such as a longer shelf-life. Connecticut’s legislation came in response to a national campaign to mandate labels on foods that contain GMOs.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy joined activists and House and Senate leadership to celebrate the bill’s passage, assuring them that the bill’s last step before enactment - his signature - would not be an issue.

“This is important stuff. . . and I think the rest of the world is starting to understand that,” Malloy said. “I know a lot of you are surprised. I’m not. I saw it coming. It’s an appropriate thing to do.”

Sen. President Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, said the bill would make a “critical difference.”

“We have made history in the state of Connecticut, and this issue is so important in terms of the safety of our food supply and the health of the men, women, and children in this country,” Williams said. “We know these GMO foods are tied directly to increased use of herbicides and pesticides that are wreaking havoc in our environment.”

The bill’s passage came after a different version of the bill was shuffled between the House and Senate for weeks before leadership in both chambers came to a compromise.

The issue was whether to allow the law to go into effect automatically, or tack on a “trigger” that would require neighboring states to pass similar legislation before Connecticut’s law would become effective. The idea behind the trigger, as House Speaker Brendan Sharkey said, is to ensure that Connecticut won’t “stand alone” with the bill and cause undesirable economic consequences.

But the House and Senate resolved their differences last week when compromise legislation was passed by the Senate. The new version requires that four other states pass similar legislation in order to “trigger” Connecticut’s labeling requirement. One of the states must share a border with Connecticut and their combined population must equal at least 20 million people.

If the trigger is met, sellers or distributors who sell products containing GMOs that are not labeled would be subject to a daily $1,000 fine per product and the Department of Consumer Protection would be able to embargo the products.

Sharkey said he was pleased with the compromise.

“We were able to come together and compromise to protect consumers and the economy in the state of Connecticut,” he said. “I think it’s a tremendous achievement.”

Senate Minority Leader John McKinney said the reason the bill came back after hitting so many legislative roadblocks was because of the grassroots activism that was louder than ever this session.

“Everyone was committed to making sure we got something passed,” he said. “Sitting down, doing the hard work, listening to the advocates, and getting the bill passed…[the advocates] are the reason.”

The bill received bipartisan support, passing the Senate unanimously and winning a 134-3 vote in the House.
Though the compromise weakens the Senate’s original bill, which would have gone into effect in 2016 regardless of whether other states were on board, the advocates that pressed the legislators for action said they support it.

Tara Cook-Littman, the face of the Right to Know GMO campaign in Connecticut, has spent the past two years lobbying for GMO-labeling legislation. She said was “thrilled” about the legislation and is not concerned about the trigger clause.

“This is a very strong bill . . . it represents the highest standard developed by GMO-labeling leaders throughout the country,” Cook-Litmann said. “To all those concerned about the trigger clause, we have nothing to fear.”

Rep. Diana Urban, one of the bill’s main proponents, said Maine, New Jersey, and New York are “well on their way to passing similar legislation.”

“This is history,” Urban said. “It’s a doable trigger, and I am just thrilled. Sixty-two other countries either ban [GMOs] or label them, and we’re the first in the nation to stand up and do this.”

Sharkey added that passing this bill is instrumental in getting other states to follow suit.

“The hardest thing that we can ever do is get that very first state to say to the country that this is the way we as a people want to see our country go, and Connecticut is going to lead the way,” he said.

Activists that lead GMO-labeling advocacy groups in Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all traveled to Hartford to celebrate with the Connecticut advocates.  and said they are hopeful Connecticut’s bill will help push proposed legislation in their own states through.

Jim Garrison, a potato farmer and a member of Maine’s Right to Know GMO coalition, said the Maine House of Representatives may vote on a GMO-labeling bill as early as Friday and the bill has 123 co-sponsors.

Martin Dagoberto, a member of the Massachusetts Right to Know GMO coalition, said he felt Connecticut’s action would pressure other states to follow suit.

“This win for Connecticut is a win for all of us,” Dagoberto said. “It feeds our collective momentum, and we will not be stopped. The trigger clause is nothing more than a way to encourage other states to share the burden of defending the integrity of our democracy and our food supply because powerful corporate interests want to keep us in the dark.”

GMO-labeling legislation has also been proposed in the lower house of the New York State Legislature, a state Urban said is instrumental in getting on board because of its big economy, but no votes have been taken yet.
 

CT First In The Nation To Pass GMO Labeling Bill

Saving Seeds: 7 Reasons Why and Dozens of Tips for How

Saving seeds can help gardeners save money, grow better crops and become more self-reliant. Learn all about saving vegetable seeds.

By Roberta Bailey
December 2012/January 2013

When you save your own seeds, you are joining a chain of farmers, gardeners and seed savers that dates back to the Stone Age. All domestic crops were once wild plants that early humans selected to feed themselves or, later, their livestock. Today, gardeners save seeds for many reasons.

Photo By Dwight Kuhn

1. Money Savings. Every time you buy a seed variety, you invest in your future. For example, I just bought some expensive ‘Midori Giant’ soybean seed, and I feel better about the high price tag because I know I’ll have the variety as long as I continue saving seeds from my plants. (With soybeans, you simply let the last picking dry on the plant and you have next year’s seed.)

2. Seed Security. Hundreds of excellent plant varieties have been discontinued as big corporations have consolidated the seed industry and focused on more profitable hybrids. If you save your own seed, however, you control the supply. I save seed for ‘Miragreen’ and ‘Blizzard’ peas, ‘Lutz Green Leaf’ beets, and ‘Scarlet Keeper’ carrots because these varieties all grow well here in Maine but have become difficult to find in seed catalogs.

3. Regional Adaptation. This is where saving vegetable seeds can get exciting. Most commercially available seed has been selected because it performs fairly well across the entire country if given synthetic fertilizers. (Several companies now offer seeds selected specifically to perform well in organic conditions — but this isn’t the norm.) When you save seed from the best-performing plants grown on your own land and with your unique cultural conditions, you gradually develop varieties that are better adapted to your soil, climate and growing practices.

4. Consistent Quality. To keep their prices competitive when producing open-pollinated (OP) seed crops, large seed suppliers rarely “rogue” the fields to pull out inferior or off-type plants. This means the OP seed they sell to retail seed companies may have a lot of off-types in it. For gardeners and market farmers, that translates to loss of production per foot of row. To avoid this loss, either save your own seed, or pay more for premium seed produced by small, organic producers whose seeds cost more because they properly select for uniformity and rogue out any plants that aren’t true to type. (See our Seed Company Directory for profiles of more than 100 seed companies, some of which do their own variety trials and follow careful selection practices.)

5. The Joy of Learning. Some people are drawn to the science of seed saving because they want to take their gardening experience to a higher level. The more seeds you save, the more you inevitably learn about botany and the plant kingdom.

6. Explore Heirloom Varieties. Some folks like to grow heirloom varieties because doing so gives them a connection to our garden heritage. Others choose non-hybrid seeds because they don’t want to support the industrial agriculture system that increasingly controls our food supply. Plus, some older, open-pollinated varieties produce more nutritious crops than do modern hybrids bred mostly for high yields and long shelf life. 

7. Influence Crop Traits. Gene pools are incredibly elastic. By carefully observing your plants, you can save seed from those plants that best meet your needs for germination, ripening time, yield, specific fruit shape, flavor, storage qualities, less seediness, better disease resistance, bloom color, or other unique traits within the variety. With time, most of the plants you grow will have your desired traits. For instance, I obtained ‘Elka,’ a Slovakian poppy seed traditionally used before walnuts became commercially available. The Slovaks saved seeds from only the seed heads with the smallest vents — the little holes below the cap that allow the precious nutty seeds to disperse — until eventually their variety had all unvented heads that shed no seed. When I first grew ‘Elka,’ only two-thirds of its seed heads had no open vents. I started selectively saving seed only from the poppy heads that had closed vents. Within three years, all of my plants had seed heads with no open vents, and I didn’t lose any more seed.

Know Your Seed-Saving Goals

Think ahead and create specific goals as you save seed. If you’re saving an heirloom, are you trying to keep it true to its original traits? Are your seed-saving practices changing the plant? If you save seed from the first lettuce plant to bolt, you are selecting for lettuce that bolts early — not a good trait in lettuce. If you save seed from your tomato plants that did not succumb to late blight, you are selecting to improve that variety’s disease resistance.

When I started growing ‘Czech Black’ hot peppers, the fruits varied greatly in shape, from fat peppers with large seed cavities to slender ones with almost no seed. Most were medium-sized fruits that came to a blunt point. If I’d just wanted to save the most seeds with the least amount of work, I could have saved the fat peppers that had the most seeds. But I was trying to produce a seed crop to sell and it needed to be true to the plant type, so I saved seed from the medium-sized peppers growing on the sturdiest, highest-yielding plants. After four years, the peppers were uniform in fruit size and heat — plus, the plants were sturdier and more productive.

Seed-Saving Tips

You should always choose open-pollinated varieties for seed saving. Open-pollinated (OP) plants are non-hybrid plants with seed that is true generation after generation. A hybrid is the offspring of a cross between two parent varieties. Its seed will not be true to type if saved and replanted. Hybrid varieties will be labeled in catalogs and on seed packets as “Hybrid” or “F1.”

 There are two main types of open-pollinated varieties: self-pollinating and cross-pollinating. The easiest crops to save seed from are peas, beans, tomatoes and peppers, all of which are self-pollinating crops. Self-pollinating plants pollinate themselves, usually before the flowers open. The seed that you save from these plants and grow the next year will yield plants just like the original ones. To maintain the plant’s genetic diversity, you should ideally grow and save seed from 20 or more plants. If you save seed from only one self-pollinating plant, the plant will reproduce, but you are narrowing its genetic diversity.

Unlike self-pollinating plants, cross-pollinating plants, such as brassicas, corn, carrots, beets, squash, cucumbers and melons, must receive pollen (usually via wind or insects) from other plants of the same variety to produce viable, true-to-type seed. Cross-pollinating seed crops need to be isolated from other varieties of the same species. The simplest solution is to grow only one variety of a given species. You can save seeds from just one or two plants, but to maintain long-term health and vigor, you should buy new seed every few years unless you can collect from much larger populations than the 20 plants recommended for self-pollinators. Grow a minimum of 50 to 100 plants, and at least 200 for corn. Keep an eye out for plants that seem off-type (like my fat ‘Czech Black’ peppers), and don’t include them when you collect seed. (Go to the Seed Savers Exchange’s Planting and Seed Saving Instructions for details on isolation distances and other specifics for dozens of crops.)

To save seed from legumes, such as self-pollinating peas and beans, simply allow some pods to dry on the plant. Save the leftover seed at the end of your picking stage, or cordon off a section of the row. As the plants will need to be in the garden longer than the “green” stage, allow for this in your garden plan. Different varieties grown right next to each other will have minimal or no cross-pollination, but ideally you should separate varieties by 20 feet to avoid rare cases of cross-pollination.

If you want to save seeds for several varieties of a cross-pollinated crop in the same garden, a physical barrier such as a screen cage or row cover can keep the seed crops isolated. I use wire hoops and row covers on some seed crops to keep them pure. I also alternate years, growing one variety one year and another the next. My ‘Lutz’ beet seed crop produced enough seed to last five to 10 years, leaving me free to produce other beet seed crops in the interim.

If you’re growing a crop for seed, think ahead of time about spacing. Tomato, pepper or bean plants don’t need more space as seed crops, but biennial beets and carrots do because of how large the seed-producing plants will be in their second year. Beet plants that I set out the second year from roots I stored in my root cellar grew to 3-foot-wide plants. As large seed crops grow, also think about feeding them. I give my seed crops extra nitrogen and minerals during seed production.

When saving seeds, good record keeping is essential. Label your seedlings, your planted rows and your stored seed. I keep a map as a backup record, too, in case a critter makes off with a row marker or weather washes away a label’s ink.

If you spot an interesting off-type, you can save seed and grow it out the next year to see what happens. You may be on your way to creating a new variety — or at least embarking on a little botanical adventure.

Seed crops are harvested at different times than food crops. I often tie off an entire section of a row with ribbon and save all of the seed from that section, leaving it long after the rest of the plants have been removed. Watch plants that produce pods; when the pods are dry but not shattering, they are ready to harvest. I find handpicking pea pods easiest, at least on a small scale. I harvest entire bean and soybean plants and hang them until they are completely dry, then thresh them in a clean bucket. Blow off the chaff using wind or a fan, or sift it through a screen.

Flower heads are usually hand-harvested as they dry. Morning glories and vine crops often mature their bottom seed husks or pods first and progress up the vine as the season goes on. Spread the seed heads out to dry, rub them back and forth between your hands to free the seed, and then winnow or screen away most of the chaff.

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cucumbers can be picked as individual fruit. Let the fruit become very ripe to overripe to ensure mature seed. Leave cucumbers on the vine until they mature past the yellow blimp stage. Eggplant should be starting to brown and rot. Tomatoes and peppers need to be very ripe or just past ripe, or picked close to ripe, and then stored until fully ripe to overripe (a process called “after-ripening”).

Tomatoes and cucumbers are “wet” seeds: They have a gel sac around each seed that hinders germination and, in rare cases, can harbor disease. They need to be soaked to remove the gel sac. Squeeze the tomatoes or scrape the seed from the tomato cavities into a labeled container, covering it to keep out flies. Allow the seed to soak for 24 to 48 hours. Add more water after soaking. The good seed will sink while the immature seed will float along with the pulp. Pour off the pulp. Add more water and continue to pour off the pulp until all that remains is clean seed on the bottom. Pour this seed into a strainer to drain off all liquid, and then spread the seeds out to dry in a cool, airy place. I spread my seed on newspaper. Paper plates also work, but paper towels are too fibrous and will stick to the seeds. Label the newspaper or paper plate with the variety name. When the tomato seed is half-dried, stir it to make it less clumpy. After seeds have completely dried, break up any remaining seed clumps and pack the seeds for storage.

To save eggplant seed, grate the fruit or put it through a food processor, and then add it to water. The seed will sink and the pulp will float.
Peppers are even simpler: Just cut fruits open and remove and dry the seed.

For much more on seed-saving procedures for different crops, see the books Saving Seeds by Marc Rogers and The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds by Robert and Cheryl Moore Gough.

Store dried seed in glass jars, plastic bags or paper envelopes. Glass is best, as it does not allow moisture into the seed. Store seeds in a cool, dry place — ideally at less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and at a relative humidity level of less than 50 percent. In general, for every 10 degrees colder the storage conditions, seed longevity doubles, so it’s best to keep seed in a covered container in a refrigerator. As long as the seed is very dry, it will last longest if you keep it in a freezer. All seed should be dried to a brittle state, ideally to less than 14 percent moisture (the level at which ice crystals won’t form on seeds if stored in the freezer). When you’re ready to use seeds that have been in freezer storage, allow the storage jar to come to room temperature before opening it to avoid condensation on the seed.

Different types of seed have different life spans. Many retain good germination for only a few years, while others stay viable for an impressively long time. Some classic one-year wonders are parsley, parsnip and onions. They may last a second year, but germination and vigor will be much lower. In general, pepper seeds maintain good germination rates for two years; legumes and carrots, three years; squash, beet, eggplant, tomato and brassicas, four years; cucumber, five years; and lettuce, six years. Exact storage conditions affect longevity greatly, however, and seeds from some of these crops can last 10 years or more.

You can do a simple germination test by loosely rolling a few dozen seeds in a moist, white paper towel, keeping it covered with plastic wrap and slightly moist to sprout the seed. Most seed will sprout in four to 28 days. If it takes longer or if less than 50 percent of the seeds sprout, you should probably toss the seeds.

If you end up with more seed than you can use, find a local seed swap. You can trade or share your seed, and you’ll come home with new, locally adapted seed varieties as well as a head likely spinning from all of the knowledge you’ve gleaned from fellow gardeners who share a love of growing great food.
 Organize a seed swap near you, and have MOTHER EARTH NEWS help you get the word out.

Saving Seeds to Sell

If you’re interested in selling seeds that you produce, contact a seed company’s purchaser to inquire about which crops the company needs grown. Specify your areas of expertise. Most seed companies contract for specific strains or varieties one to three years ahead of time.

If you pitch your favorite variety to a seed company, the representatives will want a seed sample so they can trial or observe it for a year or two. Then, if they’re interested, they will contract with you. Some seed companies have tight legal contracts and deadlines. Some use just verbal commitments, however, and you can provide a contract if you want more insurance in such cases.

Prices paid vary with each seed company, and certified organic seed commands higher prices. My experience selling organic seed has been the following: tomato seed at $360 per pound; peppers at $40 per ounce; flowers from $10 per gram for tiny seed to $50 per ounce; hardy, rare rice at $10 per ounce; peas and beans at $5 per pound.
A small seed company may only need a few ounces of seed. Larger companies rarely deal in small lots, requiring 1 to 20 pounds of small seed, such as that of tomatoes. Inquire upfront about amounts needed.

The Organic Seed Alliance provides education and advisory services for seed savers and is an excellent resource.

---

Seed Saving Made Simple

Always save from open-pollinated (OP) varieties, not hybrids. There are two main types of OP crops:
• Self-pollinating (easiest to save), including peas, beans, tomatoes and peppers
• Cross-pollinating (require isolation), including brassicas, corn, carrots, beets, squash, cucumbers and melons

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/saving-seeds-http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/saving-seeds-zm0z12djzsto.aspx

College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences

Killer in a Bottle?

Household insecticides may play a role in declining bee populations

By Becky Beyers

Vera Krischik and her lab in the Department of Entomology are exploring a different avenue: how neonicotinoids, a group of insecticides commonly used in urban gardens and forests as well as in agricultural fields, might be making bees less resistant to the parasites and pathogens that researchers now believe are likely causes of Colony Collapse Disorder.

Infesting the system

About two-thirds of the world’s crops rely on bees and other pollinators; if the bees are gone, so are the fruits, vegetables and other plant-based foods they help create.
Other insects are less beneficial, however, so farmers and gardeners turn to insecticides to protect their crops. The first neonicotinyl insecticide, imidacloprid, came on the market in the 1990s. Since then, three more—thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran—have been registered for use. All have similar toxicity to bees and all are commonly used in Minnesota: in 2009, more than 8 tons of insecticides primarily using imidacloprid and nearly 10 tons of clothianidin were used on farms and nearly another ton of imidacloprid was used on the state’s landscapes. When it was first introduced, imidacloprid was considered a breakthrough because it wasn’t harmful to humans or mammals, and they’re now extremely popular. “Most people didn’t realize that this is a systemic insecticide,” Krischik says.

Imidacloprid is commonly sold to farmers as Admire, Provado and Gaucho and to businesses and home gardeners under names Merit, Marathon, Bayer Advanced Flower and Shrub, Bayer Tree and Shrub Protect, Bayer Complete Insect Killer for Turf, Krischik says. When neonicotinoids are applied to a field or garden, the chemicals are absorbed through the plants’ vascular system, which makes the entire plant toxic to insects. That works well for unwanted leaf-feeding pests, but the chemicals that kill unwanted insects also go into the nectar and pollen that pollinators need. The toxic effects to bees can last for several months to years in pollen and nectar from just one application. When the insecticide is applied to soil it can last for years, adding to the imidacloprid reservoir in the plant.

Honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees all respond to the insecticides, which are also commonly used for controlling emerald ash borer and Japanese beetles. Less-than-lethal exposures can cause honeybees to have problems flying and finding their way back to the hive, lose their sense of taste and have more difficulty learning new tasks, according to a group of scientists called the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, who summarized some of the existing research on bees and neonicotinoids this year.

Neonicotinoids are banned from use on corn and canola seed in both France and Germany, and after two studies last spring that made a strong connection between their use and declining bee health, support is growing in the United States for stronger regulation both in agricultural and home use. Early this year, beekeepers from Minnesota and California petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to immediately suspend sales of neonicotinoid insecticides, but in July the EPA denied the request and said it will review the insecticides’ effects, a process that could take until 2018. More recently, members of Congress have asked the agency to speed up the process. Krischik says more research is needed.

Digging in to home use

For years, beekeepers, scientists and chemical companies have argued about the amount of insecticide used as a seed treatment. The imidacloprid seed treatment Gaucho permits 0.675 mg AI (active ingredient) imidacloprid/seed for corn and 0.11 mg/seed for canola, Krischik says. But the greenhouse rate used on perennial landscape plants allows for 300 mg AI/ per 3 gallons—a 444 times higher rate on landscape plants than on field corn. Consequently, greenhouse and urban landscapes use higher concentrations of imidacloprid, and to make matters worse, gardeners often disregard the products’ instructions and reapply the insecticide or use it at peak flowering time, giving home use much greater potential to affect bees and other beneficial insects.
It gets even worse with trees, Krischik says. A surface soil application of imidacloprid in agriculture is limited to about 4mg/sq ft. But when used to stop emerald ash borers or Japanese beetles, the allowable application for a similar area is 1,675 times greater. These higher application rates in urban areas have huge implications for movement of imidacloprid into flowers and effects on bees and beneficial insects.

Addressing the controversy

So how much imidacloprid kills a bee? Bayer says 20 parts per billion will alter behavior and 170 ppb in food will kill a bee while it is drinking.

So how much imidacloprid ends up in nectar and pollen from a standard application dose in agriculture or landscapes? Is it enough to kill pollinators?

The seed treatment Gaucho results in around 6 ppb imidacloprid in canola pollen and 0.6 ppb in canola nectar, 3 ppb in corn pollen and 3 ppb in sunflower pollen and 1.9 ppb in sunflower nectar.

In landscapes, a standard 300mg dose to a 3 gallon pot results in 1,600 ppb in milkweed nectar, around 800 times more than from a sunflower seed treatment, according to Krischik. That concentration can cause high mortality in beneficial insects other than bees such as lady beetles or lacewings. Krischik’s lab is the first to study how the higher concentrations affect bees.

By partnering with a local golf course that had applied a surface drench of imidacloprid to linden trees, Krischik found that 1 month after application the linden leaves had around 100 ppb imidacloprid—which had the desired effect of killing Japanese beetles—but 12,865 ppb imidacloprid remained in the soil under the linden trees. Any flowering plant growing under the linden will pick up the imidacloprid and move it to pollen and nectar.

“Our data demonstrates that a homeowner application to rose bushes results in 812 ppb, which will kill any insect eating the pollen,” Krischik says. “We have seen in our trials that bees die on the flowers while feeding on a mint treated with the standard dose or a second application of imidacloprid, which is permitted. We showed that a rose bush will kill leaf-feeding Japanese beetles for 3 years after one standard consumer application of imidacloprid. However, you can apply it many times a summer.”

Because the neonicotinyl insecticides (imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran) have a similar lethal effect on bees and other beneficial insects, the problem is enormous, Krischik says. Her lab showed that 4 species of lady beetles, a parasitic wasp, a predatory green lacewing and bumblebees all die at the standard application rate of imidacloprid. In bumblebee colonies, queen mortality, colony weight and stored nectar all are affected in direct proportion to daily dosages. Imidacloprid also reduces bumblebee memory in her lab studies and stops bee foraging.

Unfortunately, she says, research about neonicotinoids’ effects and consumer education on how to use them safely aren’t getting the funding they need from federal agencies. Krischik was awarded a 2009 state grant to study the effects of imidacloprid on bees; a second grant in 2010 that would have allowed her to investigate the uptake of ash and linden trees of imidacloprid and potential nontarget effects on bees and beneficial insects was awarded, but revoked six months later by state legislators who didn’t see the value in understanding consequences of the high amount of imidacloprid used in urban landscapes. “Wow, it is frustrating,” Krischik says.

The Xerces Society report published earlier this year also made the case for continued long-term independent research, noting a long list of questions about bees and neonicotinoids that no one has yet studied in depth.

Bees are too important to be ignored, Krischik says. “If you don’t support managing them in the appropriate way, you’ll lose part of your diet, a lot of the anti-oxidants found in fruits… People rally for polar bears 3,000 miles away and that is great. We need people to rally for bees in their own back yard.”

http://www.cfans.umn.edu/Solutions/Fall2012/Killer_Bottle/index.htm
October 2012