For years, Toni Genberg assumed a healthy garden was a healthy habitat. That’s how she approached the landscaping around her home in northern Virginia. On trips to the local gardening center, she would privilege aesthetics, buying whatever looked pretty, “which was typically ornamental or invasive plants,” she says. Then, in 2014, Genberg attended a talk by Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware. “I learned I was actually starving our wildlife,” she says.
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One day last fall, deep in the middle of a devastating drought, I was walking the dog when a van bearing the logo of a mosquito-control company blew past me and parked in front of a neighbor’s house. The whole vehicle stank of chemicals, even going 40 miles an hour.
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As explained by the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies, “neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides in the world.” If you were to visit a conventional farm, you’d likely see evidence of their use in the form of brightly colored red corn seeds and blue soybean seeds, which are color-coded to denote treatment with neonicotinoids.
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Thanks to a record wet spring, his hundreds of hives, scattered across the central Arizona desert, produced a bounty of honey. Arp would have plenty to sell in stores, but more importantly, the bumper harvest would strengthen his bees for their biggest task of the coming year.
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It is a wild understatement to say it has been a hard year in agriculture. It has been a year of loss, heartbreak and stress. As a frontpage Washington Post article captured, “Farm bankruptcies and loan delinquencies are rising, calamitous weather events are ruining crops and profits are vanishing during Trump’s global trade disputes.”
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Unbeknownst to many Americans, a majority of soybean, corn, canola and sunflower seeds planted in the U.S. are precoated with neonicotinoid insecticides, also known as “neonics.” Needless to say, since the chemical is taken up systemically through the plant, it cannot be rinsed off.
A 2015 report by the American Bird Conservancy revealed neonics were found in congressional cafeteria food, demonstrating just how pervasive they have become in our food supply.
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The polar bear has become the poster child for climate change. Just picture one of the furry white giants struggling to hang on to a melting ice cap and it’s clear why a fast-warming planet is a bad thing.
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Ever year, farmers in the United States devote at least 80 million acres, a combined landmass three-quarters the size of California, to soybeans. At least half the crop comes from proprietary seeds coated with insecticides and fungicides. These chemicals infuse the plants as they emerge, protecting them from damage by insects and fungal pathogens.
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Neonicotinoid insecticides are water soluble and used to coat the seeds of most corn, soybeans and canola. However, the toxins affect the insects pollinating plants, kill the birds eating the seeds and get into the groundwater; in addition, the use of genetically engineered seed has increased the need for pesticides in the past 25 years.
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Paul Kernaleguen says regenerative agriculture has brought bees back to his farm. “With the flowering species [of plants] we have now, you definitely see more,” he said. He’s referring to the mixture of plants in his fields, near Birch Hills, Sask. Along with his partner, Erin Dancey, he now grows flowers like red clover, phacelia and sunflowers, along with barley, oats and peas they grow to feed their dairy cattle.
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