Petition to get government to continue ban on Neonics

[kenneal - lagger]

Please sign this petition to get the government to continue the ban on the use of neonics to help save the bees, butterflies and some birds as well.

I have recently started bee keeping and have been doing a course run by our local bee keepers association and given by a commercial bee keeper. As he moves his bees every year onto oil seed rape fields I asked him if he had noticed any ill effects from the once neonic treated rape on his bees. He said that it had made no difference to his bees and he wasn't worried about whether or not neonics were used. Most commercial bee keepers have the same attitude.

I have signed the petition as I believe that we should be using less of the toxic chemicals anyway but it is worrying that the petitioners are quoting science when the topical evidence says that the science is wrong.

Large numbers of bees have not survived the winter in our area and the blame is being put on a bad summer last year and a late spring this year. There have been nearly sixty hives lost in our Association area alone out of, I think, about 120 members. Several members have lost all their two or three hives. Are neonics implicated in some way, or pesticides in general or is climate change the culprit?

[woodburner]

Done.

PS you can get your own supply of neonics here http://www.diy.com/departments/provado- ... 510_BQ.prd

So if anybody belongs to the halfwit group that thinks their insignificant little domestic trophy plant is worth poisioning the insect world for, that's where to shop. You can also get loads of glyphosate too. That way you can ruin the soil as well.

[emordnilap]

Are neonics implicated in some way, or pesticides in general or is climate change the culprit?

None are good for bees.

[kenneal - lagger]

I've just seen that Bayer is proposing to take over Monsanto to form a monster corporation which could control sales of seed, fertiliser and pesticides to farmers from a monopoly position.

[AutomaticEarth]

Done as well.

Just FYI - I had to give a silly presentation today. I gave two examples of brand recognition.

I used Apple as a brand that is well known and enjoys showing it off. The other example I gave was to show a bag of Roundup weed killer, and pointed out that the Monsanto logo is not easy to see - I had to point this out. The other one was to show an Xbox carton from 2010. The Microsoft logo was nowhere to be seen.

A bit off topic but there you go.

[emordnilap]

I've just seen that Bayer is proposing to take over Monsanto to form a monster corporation which could control sales of seed, fertiliser and pesticides to farmers from a monopoly position.

Expect a name change too, a la Philip Morris.

[emordnilap]

Insect numbers down by 75% in 25 years

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany

So it's a conservative estimate.

Figures and statistics like this do little to change attitudes. Move along now, nothing to see here.

[kenneal - lagger]

New Groundbreaking Research Shows Glyphosate Persists in Soil.

So Monsanto has been lying to us all along. Surprise! Surprise!

[kenneal - lagger]

Insect numbers down by 75% in 25 years

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany

So it's a conservative estimate.

Figures and statistics like this do little to change attitudes. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Another way of sampling insects – car windscreens – has often been anecdotally used to suggest a major decline, with people remembering many more bugs squashed on their windscreens in the past.

“I think that is real,� said Goulson. “I drove right across France and back this summer – just when you’d expect your windscreen to be splattered all over – and I literally never had to stop to clean the windscreen.�

Literally nothing to see!

Again, anecdotally, I remember as a child living in the suburbs of London in the 50s and 60s the buzz of insects on a sunny summer day. Now, living on an organic small holding in the Berkshire countryside, I don't hear that buzz any more. OK I'm getting deaf in my older age but even with my hearing aids in I don't hear anything and, just as importantly, I don't see that many either.

Anybody reading this, PLEASE copy the link to the article to your MP and ask them to read the article, take in the inferences for the human race (not the planet, please, that will look after itself after we have extinguished our own lives) and to vote for any pesticide ban that comes up.

[kenneal - lagger]

What I notice most of all is the lack of hover flies. We seem to have plenty of various species of bumble bees on our lavender but there don't seem to be the hover flies on the fruit trees and bushes.

[kenneal - lagger]

Insect numbers down by 75% in 25 years

The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany

So it's a conservative estimate.

Figures and statistics like this do little to change attitudes. Move along now, nothing to see here.

I sent the following letter to my MP about the above article. You are welcome to use it or part of it to contact your own MP. If people contact them about a subject they take notice and if people don't, they don't. So don't just complain that your MP does nothing, or will do nothing, get off your arse and do something yourself; it only takes about 10 minutes to whip off an email.

As one organic farmer to another, I would like to draw your attention to this alarming article about the loss of 75% of flying insects in 25 years

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ct-numbers

and the link in that article to the advice from Prof Ian Boyd, one of the UK’s chief scientific advisers, saying that "global regulations (on pesticide use) have ignored the impacts of 'dosing whole landscapes’ and must change."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -scientist

This last article also links to one showing that farms could slash their pesticide use without affecting yields

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ch-reveals

and to one siting the UN report which denounces the myth that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing global population.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -the-world

Please could you support votes for the banning, and campaign for the continued banning and the extension of any current bans, on pesticide use in the UK and Europe.

Conventional organic farming has been carried on, largely successfully, for thousands of years. Novel synthetic chemical farming is an invention of the last few decades and the results of this disastrous experiment with our environment are now becoming known. No doubt the chemical industry will poor scorn on this science, as we are only now finding Monsanto has been doing, but "they would, wouldn't they" as they have billions of dollars of business to lose.

But what are billions of dollars compared with the loss of the web of life which supports the human population of the planet?

[kenneal - lagger]

Just to make it easy, you can get your MP's email address here, and don't forget to add your own address and phone number.

http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/

[emordnilap]

Whilst our own acre is a-buzz with wildlife it's a drop in the ocean of course - but it does highlight how individuals can help.

Trouble is, the worst individuals claim most of the land!

[emordnilap]

Report (pdf) from the Pesticide Action Network into pesticide residues in the food provided by the school fruit and vegetable scheme. Head shaking. 84% tested positive for one residue. 66% tested positive for multiple residues.

In total, we found residues of 123 different pesticides, including 43 suspected endocrine (hormone system) disruptors. Imazalil, a ‘probable carcinogen’ and developmental toxin, was the most frequently detected pesticide. Second most frequent, and present in a fifth of all samples, was chlorpyrifos, a pesticide which has almost no permitted uses in the UK. It is well documented to have negative impacts on children’s cognitive development.

Of the 2238 samples tested by the government, two-thirds contained residues of multiple pesticides and large numbers of different residues were detected in individual samples. For example, one sample of apples from 2016 was found to contain the residues of eleven different pesticides.

Eleven! Most apple trees, if left alone, will produce perfectly edible and safe apples. Why daphuc 11 pesticides?

For a little under £6m annually this scheme could go mostly organic.