What would you say to the scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who will decide whether glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, should continue to be used on crops?
This could be our last chance for another 15 years to get glyphosate off of the market and out of our food supply. The EPA’s Neil Anderson needs to hear from you today.
TAKE ACTION! Tell EPA’s Neil Anderson: Ban Monsanto’s Roundup Now!
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The month of September marks the beginning of a 3-month, 3,000-mile migration for the monarch butterfly from Canada and the United States down to Mexico.
The annual journey this September is especially notable in light of serious population declines. Since 1997, the estimated monarch population has decreased from one billion to 56.6 million.
The monarchs’ only habitat and food supply, the milkweed plant, is quickly being eradicated through the use of glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto's popular weed-killing herbicide Roundup.
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For industrial-chemical-genetically-modified agribusiness, this has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, butt-kick summer. Maximally so.
The whole, gargantuan, super-efficient, hyper-technical, chemical-dependent agriborg has been repeatedly whacked upside the head by reality. Yet despite a steady assault of paradigm-shattering facts, the mega-tentacled, bottom-line corporate complex plows systematically onward into toxic drainage ditches of its own fouling.
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There is a growing body of science directly implicating neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides in the significant decline of bees and other pollinators.1 Neonicotinoids are applied in multiple ways in many parts of agriculture and horticulture, but are most prevalent as a seed coating material for agricultural commodity crops like corn and soybeans. Based on convincing and mounting evidence and data, beekeepers, scientists and other individuals concerned about pollinators are working together to spur regulatory action and shifts in the marketplace to reduce the use of neonicotinoids.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — To celebrate National Pollinator Week, more than 50 beekeeper, farmer, farmworker, faith-based, environmental and consumer organizations sent letters to more than 100 of the top garden retailers across the country, including True Value and Ace Hardware, urging public commitments to stop selling bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides. These letters follow thousands of calls on Tuesday from customers of Ace and True Value urging these retailers to stop selling bee-killing pesticides and pre-treated plants.
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Lynne Nemeth, executive director of the Arboretum at Flagstaff, stands in a green house with horsetail milkweed seedlings, one of several varieties the Arboretum will be planting on its grounds this summer in an effort to restore habitat for declining monarch butterfly populations. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants and it is the only plant the larvae eat, making it extremely critical for the species.
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Using precise pollen species determination by conventional microscopic methods, accompanied by molecular genetic markers, we found bees collect GMO (genetically modified) soybean pollen and incorporate it in Yucatan honey. Honey comb samples from Las Flores, Campeche, Mexico, often contained soybean pollen. Pollen in honey was analyzed in nine samples; six contained substantial soy pollen and two tested positive for soybean GMO. Our analyses confirm field observations that honey bees, Apis mellifera, gather soybean pollen and nectar. The resultant risk for honey production in the Yucatán
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Understanding the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees is vital because of reported declines in bee diversity and distribution, and the crucial role bees have as pollinators in ecosystems and agriculture. Neonicotinoids are suspected to pose an unacceptable risk to bees, partly because of their systemic uptake in plants, and the European Union has therefore introduced a moratorium on three neonicotinoids as seed coatings in flowering crops that attract bees. The moratorium has been criticized for being based on weak evidence, particularly because effects have mostly been measured
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — On the heels of the 2015 White House garden tour, more than fifty beekeepers, farmer workers, and environmental and consumer organizations sent a letter and petitions signed by more than 200,000 Americans to Michelle Obama, urging the First Lady to publicly commit to ensuring the White House gardens and grounds are free of bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides and use her influence to encourage the Obama administration to take meaningful steps to protect pollinators from these pesticides.
Advocates swarmed the garden tour Saturday to deliver the message in person and joined a virtual “swarm,” sending messages and pictures to the First Lady’s Twitter account.
“The bees can’t wait. The First Lady must stand up for bees and urge meaningful action on bee-toxic pesticides in her backyard and beyond if she wants to ensure healthy and affordable food for America’s children and families,” said Tiffany Finck-Haynes, food futures campaigner at Friends of the Earth.
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Back in February, the Obama Administration committed $3.2 million toward saving the monarch butterfly. Environmental activists, deeply concerned by the monarch’s alarming decline, applauded the move. The bookish among them may have also noticed a literary echo in the encouraging news: the totemic orange-and-black North American butterfly is the cause célèbre of Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 novel, “Flight Behavior,” which happens to feature a tall, thin, Harvard-educated,
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