Boiled Frogs and the Pesticide Time Bomb from Dr. Mercola
Boiled Frogs and the Pesticide Time Bomb from Dr. Mercola
July 17, 2018 • 7,825views
Story at-a-glance
In 2018, nearly
every corn seed sown in the U.S. was treated with neonicotinoids, along
with about half of soybeans and most of the cotton
Planting
neonicotinoid seeds kills off insects that prey on slugs — prominent
corn and soybean pests — thereby reducing crop yields
The chemicals are having a pernicious influence on insects, such that entire ecosystems could be in jeopardy
Neonicotinoids
are only one type of agricultural chemical that’s being used in excess;
glyphosate and dicamba usage also continues to grow in spite of serious
environmental concerns
By Dr. Mercola
Corn and soybean seeds colored red and blue, respectively, have
become an all-too-common sight on U.S. farms. The seeds are given a
colorful hue because they’ve been treated with neonicotinoid
pesticides, and the coloring is one of the only ways to tell them apart
from their untreated, yellow counterparts. In 2018, nearly every field
corn seed sown in the U.S. contained the insecticides, along with
about half of soybeans and most of the cotton.1
(For clarification, there are three kinds of corn: field, sweet and popcorn. Popcorn is never genetically modified, 2
although some brands may include GMO Ingredients, for example, if you
purchase preflavored bags. Sweet corn is that tasty corn you eat right
on the cob every summer, and it’s moist when it’s harvested,3
unlike field corn, which is left on the stalk longer so it can dry out
in preparation for processing. Field corn is then used to make
processed food products and animal feed.)
According to John Tooker, associate professor of entomology at
Pennsylvania State University, “ … [T]hese insecticides will be used
across at least 150 million acres of (field corn) cropland, an area
about the size of Texas.”4
While some attention has been given to neonicotinoids’ potential role in bee decline,
Tooker believes the chemicals are having an even greater pernicious
influence on insects, such that entire ecosystems could be in jeopardy.
What’s more, neonicotinoids are only one type of agricultural chemical
that’s being used in excess while the environmental consequences begin
to unfold all-around us.
Neonicotinoids Devastating the Environment While Reducing Farmers’ Crop Yields
In recent years, the acreage of crops treated with neonicotinoids
has skyrocketed, as has the volume used. From 2011 to 2014, Tooker
says, seed suppliers doubled the amount of insecticide applied to each
seed. During that time, the number of pests have stayed largely the
same, as they have since the 1990s, when only 35 percent of U.S. corn
acres and 5 percent of soybean acres were treated with neonicotinoids.
Even at those levels, “pest populations did not cause economically
significant harm very often,” according to Tooker. “This suggests that
it is not necessary to treat hundreds of millions of acres of crops
with neonicotinoid seed coatings.” Further, while the chemicals are
very effective at killing insects, this is part of the problem.
Not every insect is a pest; in fact, many are beneficial. Research by
Tooker and colleagues found that planting neonicotinoid seeds kills
off insects that prey on slugs — prominent corn and soybean pests —
thereby reducing crop yields.5
Other research revealed that planting seeds coated with neonicotinoids reduced predatory insects by up to 20 percent.6
Such insects help to reduce pest infestations on crops from insect
pests like black cutworm, giving another example of how using
neonicotinoids may actually lead to reduced crop yields for farmers.
There are other alarming effects as well, particularly since only about
2 percent of the chemical is taken up by the plants.
“The critical question is where the rest goes,” Tooker says, and it’s
known that some of it ends up in nearby waterways where the chemicals
are now polluting rivers and streams and killing off aquatic insects
that other species depend on for food. Not only can the treated seeds
directly kill birds if they pick one up for a snack, but research
suggests that declines in insect-eating birds are associated with high
usage of neonicotinoids.7
An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
even found that treating soybean seeds with neonicotinoids provides no
significant financial or agricultural benefits for farmers.8
The researchers also noted there are several other foliar insecticides
available that can combat pests as effectively as neonicotinoid seed
treatments, with fewer risks.
Duration of Pesticide Exposure Is a Ticking Time Bomb
Risk assessments for pesticide application
often consider only the present time of use and don’t factor in that
usage may increase over time or the modes of application may change. In
reality, pesticide usage is changing rapidly and non-target species
are being exposed to multiple chemical agents for long durations of
time, with unknown consequences. Writing in the journal Frontiers in
Environmental Science, researchers tackled the question of how changing
pesticide usage over time may affect migrating amphibians such as
frogs.9
They looked in particular at glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide,
which has been continuously increasing since it was introduced in the
1970s. “Glyphosate-based herbicides can be used as an appropriate
indicator for assessing how changes in pesticide application modes
affect wild-living organisms in agricultural landscapes over time,”
they reasoned, estimating that the use of glyphosate in German
agriculture increased by 5.7-fold from 1992 to 2012.
During this time, amphibians also became more likely to transverse
fields treated with the chemical during their travels. Their analysis
found that juvenile great crested newts and fire-bellied toads faced
the highest likelihood of coming into contact with the herbicides, while
moor frogs and spadefoot toads were subjected to moderate increased of
exposure ranging up to 3.6-fold higher.
Such exposure could be devastating, as glyphosate-based herbicides
are toxic to amphibians, especially during the aquatic life stages,
with POEA (polyethoxylated tallow amine), a surfactant commonly added
to the chemical formulations, thought to be responsible for many of the
adverse effects. Although POEA-free glyphosate-based herbicides were
introduced in Germany in 2013, there is still concern that
glyphosate-based herbicides could lead to problems with development,
malformations, stress and death in amphibians.10
Dicamba Drift Reports Continue
In November 2016, the EPA approved Monsanto’s weedkiller, XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology, a dicamba
variety that is supposedly less prone to vaporization and drift,
designed for use with genetically engineered (GE) dicamba-resistant
seeds. The chemical was supposed to solve earlier problems caused by
Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant crops, which were released before they
received approval for the less drift-prone herbicide.
As a result, illegal dicamba formulations were used, and the
resulting dicamba drift caused significant damage to cropland across the
U.S. The newer dicamba, however, did not prove to be the panacea that
Monsanto had promised, and by November 2017, an estimated 3.6 million
acres across the U.S. had been damaged by dicamba drift,11 as had trees in Iowa, Illinois and Tennessee.
In response, the EPA placed some restrictions on dicamba usage,
making it more cumbersome for farmers. For instance, special training
is required to apply the herbicide, and its application is prohibited
when wind speeds are greater than 10 mph. Farmers are also asked to
assess the risk that spraying could have on nearby crops, as well.
Despite this, reports of damage from dicamba drift have continued in
2018, including 25,000 acres of soybean damage in one area of Missouri
alone. Some farmers feel they’re being forced to buy Monsanto’s GE
dicamba-tolerant seeds, just so they can survive their neighbors’
chemical sprays.12
Kevin Bradley, a University of Missouri weed specialist, confirmed
that this is, indeed, a reality, telling the Delta Farm Press:13
“From what I can tell … if you don’t have Xtend soybean, your crop
is going to be cupped up from one end to the other. That’s not a
surprise because we’ve seen that for the past two seasons … [It doesn’t
take a] super-trained eye to see the tree injury from dicamba. It’s
kind of shocking to me to see so much damage to trees … I said it all
winter: it’s rarely one thing, but a combination of factors. One of
those factors is physical drift …
We also have volatility. All the data in front of me says we still
have a problem that hasn’t been addressed. It isn’t all operator error
like some claim, no way … drift calls from folks who are incredulous
and surprised at what’s happened. I’m not — this is the third year of
this and I haven’t seen anything that’s worked to keep these products
from moving off-site.”
Monsanto, meanwhile, has continued to downplay the damage reports,
sometimes blaming them on farmers’ using the chemicals at wind speeds
higher than outlined on the label, changes in wind speed or direction or
on other factors entirely.
They have no plans to scale back usage of the environmentally
devastating chemical, instead boasting that they intend to sell even
more GE Xtend crops (and the dicamba to go along with them) in 2019: “We
went from 25 million acres in 2017 to a doubling of 50 million acres
this year [2018] and expect that to continue to rise for 2019.”14
The Hat Trick — Neonic-Coated Seeds With Roundup/Dicamba Premix
Pesticides do not provide a long-term solution, even in the best-case
scenarios, as nature typically finds a way around them.
Glyphosate-resistant superweeds like pigweed are now driving farmers to
seek out dicamba-resistant crops, but dicamba-resistant weeds have
already sprouted in Kansas and Nebraska, raising serious doubts that
piling more pesticides on crops will help farmers, or the environment,
in the long run.
In fact, in one greenhouse study of the weed Palmer amaranth, Jason
Norsworthy, a weed scientist with the University of Arkansas, was able
to induce dicamba resistance in just three generations by applying
dicamba at sublethal doses to the first two generations. “Even though
this resistance was recorded in an artificial environment, the research
confirms herbicide resistance can develop in just three years if the
same weed population is exposed to sublethal chemical doses,” Farm
Journal reported.15
The industry’s solution, not surprisingly, has been to create crops tolerant to an ever-increasing mix of toxic chemicals.
In 2016, for instance, Monsanto released Roundup Ready Xtend cotton
and soybean seeds, designed to tolerate both Roundup and dicamba. Add
in the neonicotinoid (neonic) seed coating and you’ve got exposure to
three toxic chemicals all from the same seed.
In addition to the environmental risks, exposure to dicamba has been
linked to developmental and reproductive problems as well as to
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer originating in your
lymphatic system.16Glyphosate
has also been linked to a slew of health problems, including being
labeled a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research
on Cancer (IARC).
Integrated Pest Management and Other Solutions for the Pesticide Time Bomb
There’s little doubt that the ever-increasing rate of pesticide
usage is a ticking time bomb for environmental and human health — but
there are other solutions that are far healthier (and productive) for
everyone involved. Tooker, among other experts, recommends the use of
integrated pest management (IPM) as one tool.
A 2015 study found that IPM techniques reduced pesticide use while
boosting crop yields in a meta-analysis of 85 sites in 24 countries.17
Some were even able to eliminate pesticide use entirely using
techniques such as crop rotation and pheromone traps to capture insect
pests. In order to work, however, seed companies must cooperate and
admit to their mistakes. Tooker wrote:18
“To implement IPM in field crops with neonicotinoids, seed
companies need to acknowledge that the current approach is overkill and
poses serious environmental hazards. Extension entomologists will then
need to provide growers with unbiased information on strengths and
limitations of neonicotinoids …
Finally, the agricultural industry needs to eliminate practices
that encourage unnecessary use of seed coatings, such as bundling
together various seed-based pest management products, and provide more
uncoated seeds in their catalogs.”
Unfortunately, as it stands, an estimated 7.7 billion pounds of
pesticides are applied to crops each year, and that number is steadily
increasing.19 Rather than acknowledging that pesticide usage is overkill, companies like Monsanto incentivize the use of more harmful chemicals to farmers by offering cash back for purchasing more chemicals.
You can get involved by actively seeking out and supporting organic,
regenerative farmers, who have decided that avoiding chemical-treated
seeds and excessive chemical spraying is essential to nurturing soil
health, protecting the environment and growing nutritious food.
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