Common use of genetically modified crops leading to rise in pesticide, herbicide use

Use of genetically modified crops has become commonplace in agriculture, but has led to an increase in use of pesticides and herbicides, according to a new study. Weeds and pests have have adapted to the modified crops and become resistant to the chemicals used to protect them, so farmers have been forced to spray crops with increasing amounts of the chemicals. The use of pesticides increased by 404 million pounds from 1996 to 2011. Herbicide use increased by 527 million pounds, and insecticide use by 123 million pounds.

Charles Benbrook, lead author of the Washington State University study, said it "undermines the value of both herbicide-tolerant crops and insect-protected crops," Carey Gillam of Reuters reports. Monsanto's Roundup Ready seeds were a hit with farmers, who enjoyed the benefits of being able to spray their entire crop, killing weeds and bugs without hurting their crops. However, more than two dozen weed species have become resistant to Roundup.

The amount of herbicide needed to fight "superweeds" is increasing by about 25 percent every year, Benbrook said. The annual increase has risen to 90 million pounds in 2011, up from 1.5 million in 1990. Insecticide use dropped 28 percent from 1996 to 2011, but is now rising, Benbrook said. (Read more)

EPA won't ban pesticide suspected in bee die-offs

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency formally refused to recognize that honey bees face an “imminent hazard” in denying a request by beekeepers to immediately suspend the use of pesticides that pose harm to pollinators. (Shutterstock.com photo)

The Center for Food Safety says the announcement comes in response to a petition filed by 25 beekeepers and environmental organizations, citing significant bee kills linked to neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides that has already been banned in several countries. “We’re disappointed. EPA has signaled a willingness to favor pesticide corporations over bees and beekeepers,” said Steve Ellis, a petitioner and owner of Old Mill Honey Co., with operations in California and Minnesota.

CFS says "This spring and summer, beekeepers from New York to Ohio and Minnesota, are reporting extraordinarily large bee die-offs, due, in part, to exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides. The die-offs are similar to what beekeepers have reported in the past few weeks in Canada (where EPA has admitted there are 120 bee kill reports). On average, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that beekeepers have been losing more than 30 percent of their honey bee colonies each year since 2006, but some are losing many more times that number." (Read more)

Society of Environmental Journalists awards honor work on fracking, agriculture issues, many others

Reporting on hydraulic fracturing of deep shale for natural gas earned several reporters recognition in the 2012 Environmental Journalism Awards competition of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Other rural-oriented winners reported on other extractive industries, pesticide drift and patented seeds.

Photo: Barron Ludlum, Record-Chronicle

Ten reporters at the Denton Record-Chronicle in Texas won the Kevin Carmody Award for in-depth reporting in a small market  for “Citizens of the Shale,” a series that helped prompt the Texas legislature to requiring public disclosure of fracking chemicals and water use.

Mike Soraghan of Energy & Environment News won third place in outstanding beat reporting in a large market for his stories in Greenwire and The New York Times on the shale drilling boom. The entries were "Baffled About Fracking? You’re Not Alone;" "Big Mac Is King in N.D. Energy Boom, but Other Businesses Struggle to Keep Up;" In Fish-Kill Mystery, EPA Scientist Points at Shale Drilling;" "Earthquakes Erode Support for Drilling, but They're Nothing New;" and What EPA Really Said About Wyo. Fracking Pollution."

Second place in the small-market category went to Shauna Stephenson of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle for reporting on the Niobrara oil play; third place went to Clare Howard of 100 Reporters for "Downwind: Big ag at your door," about pesticide drift.

First prize for outstanding beat reporting in a small market went to Matthew S. Frank of the Missoula Independent and High Country News; second place went to Sandra Hausman of WVTF, the public radio station at Virginia Tech, for a wide range of stories, including one on fracking. The Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard won third place for a series titled "Environmental Journalism Under Fire." For links to those entries, click here.

In feature reporting, Paul Salopek won third place for “Closed-Source Crops” in Conservation magazine, which the judges called "a frightening and thought-provoking story that explores how multinational corporations have become the equivalent of the 'new seed oligarchy' in the agricultural world and how their practices and controls threaten biodiversity and food security." This category was won by Meera Subramanian for “India’s Vanishing Vultures” in the Virginia Quarterly Review. It "tells the story of an important but little-known ecological event, the sudden and rapid collapse of vulture populations in India in recent years." The story is here.

House Agriculture Committee approves its version of Farm Bill, pushes for floor vote

The House Agriculture Committee approved its version of the 2012 Farm Bill about 1a.m. today. The bill would provide farmers with a new form of crop insurance and cut about 2 percent in spending from food stamps, officially the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program. The approval comes just three weeks after the Senate approved its version of the bill. Its prospects in the full House are uncertain; the current farm law expires in September.

An amendment repealing the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration provisions in the 2008 law, which were meant to protect small farmers by forcing new rules on meat and poultry buyers, was approved, Erik Wasson of The Hill reports. Approval of the bill is seen as a major victory for Committee Chairman Frank Lucas and ranking member Collin Peterson, left, "who had risked angering factions in their own parties to forge a compromise bill," Wasson writes. Lucas has said he will now immediately push for a full House floor vote, but his party leaders appear uncertain because of pressure from their right wing for more cuts in the food-stamp program.

The bill is estimated to save $35 billion over 10 years, mostly through major changes in commodity programs and cuts to food stamps, which are about 80 percent of its spending, David Rogers of Politico reports. Direct cash subsidies would end and be replaced by a new form of crop insurance, but target prices as a safety net, which are important to Southern farmers, would be kept. Five Democrats joined Republicans in a 31-15 vote upholding $16.5 billion savings over 10 years from food stamps. In a "pivotal" move, Rogers writes, Alabama Republican Martha Roby's amendment tightening procedures for verifying the legal status of immigrants receiving food stamps was upheld.

The strong bipartisan vote puts more pressure on House Republican leaders to give the bill a floor vote before the August recess, Rogers writes: "Seldom has a major bill moved so far in Congress with so little attention. But defying its doubters, it can no longer be ignored politically — with Iowa in play in the presidential election and the current farm program expiring Sept. 30."

The Environmental Working Group, a leading critic of how farm subsidies are structured, called the bill "the worst piece of food and farm legislation in recent memory. With the U.S government in a deep fiscal crisis, the committee’s farm bill increases unlimited subsidies for the largest and most profitable farm businesses. As millions of families struggle to put food on the table, the bill cuts funding for critical nutrition assistance programs by $16.1 billion. And with water, land and wildlife habitat under unprecedented assault by industrial agriculture, the committee’s bill slashes environmental programs by more than $6 billion while gutting regulation of pesticides, forestry, and genetically modified crops." (Read more)

Farm workers face 'red tape,' fear of retaliation when reporting harm from pesticide use

Farm workers are constantly at risk from pesticides in fields where they work, and even though the Environmental Protection Agency maintains a "Worker Protection Standard" that's supposed to regulate pesticide use, "no one knows the full scope of the environmental perils in the fields," reports Ronnie Greene of iWatch News. (Associated Press photo by Luis M. Alvarez)

The Government Accountability Office said in 1993 that a "lack of data" about the health effects of pesticides "could lead to a 'significant underestimation of both the frequency and the severity of pesticide illnesses,'" Greene reports. Today, the EPA can "still only guess" about the number of pesticide-related illnesses, mostly because farm workers tend to be illegal immigrants who don't want to speak up. States, which have been given EPA-authority to enforce pesticide regulation, don't receive many complaints, according to federal records. Some state officials think the system is broken, but EPA"red tape" is keeping reforms from happening, Greene reports.

Workers fear the price for speaking up may be too great. In 2010, farm workers were fired on the spot and sent back to Mexico after complaining multiple times about pesticides sprayed near them in a tomato field. A farm worker in Florida became ill in 2009, and discovered the pesticide endosulfan, which has since been banned by the EPA, was sprayed less than 24 hours after she started working. When she went to the doctor, she said she wasn't asked about the pesticide. The crux of the issue, Green reports, is this: "Workers have little voice when it comes to pesticides." (Read more)

Scientists link bee colony collapses to fatal virus spread by mites

Reddish Varroa destructor mite on honeybee (Photo by Alamy)

The worldwide collapse of honeybee colonies may have finally been linked to a blood-sucking parasite that has successfully spread a fatal virus on a global scale. According to findings published in the journal Science, the researchers warned that the virus passed on by the varroa mite is now one of the "most widely distributed and contagious insect viruses on the planet."  Furthermore, writes Damian Carrington in The Guardian, the new dominance of the killer virus "poses an ongoing threat to colonies even after beekeepers have eradicated the mites from hives. Varroa destructor has spread from Asia across the entire world over the past 50 years."

Bees and other pollinators are vital in the production in up to a third of all the food eaten by humans, and a 2011 United Nations report estimated that bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, beetles or birds do work worth $191 billion a year for the world economy. The role of mites in colony coll,apse disorder had been suspected but unclear; bacteria, fungi and pesticides had also been found in colonies along with the viruses. The disorder had proven difficult to study because the bees generally left the hive en masse to perish, making it difficult for effective post-mortems.  (Read more)