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Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#261

Post by carapace »

avip wrote: post #244
acconrad wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regenerative agriculture is another means with which to restore the land without pesticides or herbicides, with the additional benefit of sequestering nitrogen.

>Regenerative agricultural practices include: no tillage diverse cover crops in-farm fertility (no external nutrients) no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers multiple crop rotations https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/food/regenerative-agricul... In other words, Regenerative agricultural is indistinguishable from Permaculture as a cultivation method.

Another reason why I tend to use the phrase "applied ecology" rather than Permaculture.

I'm sure if we tried we could find ways to distinguish between what various people mean when they talk about "regenerative agriculture" or "Permaculture", but would it be a profitable use of our time?

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#262

Post by watertom »

carapace wrote: post #229

Slightly tangential, but I want to point out that there's a way forward without pesticides and without economic disaster: We can switch to a "horticultural" mode of civilization. The idea is that we use applied ecology to create curated ecosystems that have a high proportion of plants that are agriculturally productive. (Not to be mysterious, I'm talking about Permaculture et. al. but that term seems to upset a few p…

This would require people to think and be responsible, so it will never happen.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#263

Post by labawi »

gravelc wrote: post #65
mhkool wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with Roundup that story was "it only interferes with the shikimate pathway" and now we know that it is not true. You simply cannot give any guarantee whatsoever that the dsRNA-based poison that you consider safe, really is safe or has unforeseen fatal effects. You should read more about agriculture and look at the many success stories of farmers who produce in large scale without using poisons. Then you might underst…

Provide me an example then. Organic pesticides that can be used on organically-certified farms are still poisons. White oil, soap spray etc. is all a poison if you're an insect. I don't know of any modern production system that's free of poisons (if you want to refer to poisons as anything that kills an insect, which seems to be the case), but willing to be educated.

Organic, GMO, dsRNA or whatever, pesticides are overused and modern production systems are the problem. Typical modern farming kills the soil and everything on it. Pesticides just speed it up, directly and as an enabler.

As an example without soap, a friend has a garden. Call it holistic, permaculture or whatever. The same plants grow twice as big in his garden compared to neighbor's, because he tends to the plants, the soil and the garden using modern knowledge. No spraying. Lots of mulch, diversity, planning...

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#264

Post by _2d30 »

watertom wrote: post #262
carapace wrote: post #229

Slightly tangential, but I want to point out that there's a way forward without pesticides and without economic disaster: We can switch to a "horticultural" mode of civilization. The idea is that we use applied ecology to create curated ecosystems that have a high proportion of plants that are agriculturally productive. (Not to be mysterious, I'm talking about Permaculture et. al. but that term seems to upset a few p…

This would require people to think and be responsible, so it will never happen.

[flagged]

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#265

Post by carapace »

whenanother wrote: post #254
carapace wrote: post #229

Slightly tangential, but I want to point out that there's a way forward without pesticides and without economic disaster: We can switch to a "horticultural" mode of civilization. The idea is that we use applied ecology to create curated ecosystems that have a high proportion of plants that are agriculturally productive. (Not to be mysterious, I'm talking about Permaculture et. al. but that term seems to upset a few p…

the agriculture shills keep pushing this notion that their way of growing with chemicals is the the most productive way when I've yet to see a study that indicates that any of what they've done has increased crop yields.

Steady on my friend.

I'm an ecology nut but you have to give credit where credit is due: e.g. artificial nitrogen fertilizer really has been an incredible advance, to the point where we have literally been turning oil into people ever since it was invented. The "Green Revolution", pesticides, and even GMOs work, it has to be admitted.

Here is the rub though: For how long?

The final verdict on agriculture is yet to be determined, the story isn't finished yet.

We know ecological food production works long-term because it has, for millions upon millions of years. Every single one of your ancestors got enough to eat to reproduce at least once, going back all the way...

Farming, on the other hand, only works so far (approx 10k-12k years), and in terms of life and ecology and such, "so far" is nothing.

The evidence shows that our systems of food production are more akin to a disease or infestation than any sort of sane harmonious interaction. You can see it on satellite photos: our cities are like scabs or crusts, our farm lands are vast tracts of monocultures, our forests are riddles with clear cuts, our rivers are disappearing where they are not eroding the land, etc...

If you integrate productivity over the long-term then applied ecology beats farming despite all the arguable advances. That's the argument to use, eh?

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#266

Post by whatshisface »

zapita wrote: post #260
whatshisface wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If farmers couldn't increase yields they wouldn't buy all of that expensive chemical stuff. If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing.

Maybe there are network effects at play which make it difficult to do what you suggest?

There's something like a network effect at play insofar as it has a "rich get richer" effect. Farming practices that get more use get more research, which means that the orthodoxy is going to be closer to its local maximum than fringe methods. That means that a fringe method could have more potential efficacy than the orthodoxy while still being worse.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#267

Post by Izkata »

ben_w wrote: post #4

I have always been surprised that anyone is surprised that an insecticide is responsible for the widespread deaths of insects. I assume there is some reason (not immediately obvious to an outsider like me) why it should be surprising, but all these stories feel like “REVEALED: wet pavements caused by spraying WATER on them!”

The surprise seems to be from it having effects far beyond where it's used.

So more like, "Wet driveway caused by water spray from several houses away".

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#268

Post by ncmncm »

flatline wrote: post #154
colordrops wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is one of the great things to come out of the invention of the web. We are becoming better informed and this kind of information is becoming more prevalent. It’s becoming much harder for these big corporations to hide these negative side effects We are at the end of that era. The big corporations are slowly closing down that unintended loophole in which the internet was a tool for free movement of know…

People were fighting Monsanto back in the late 90s. If anything I think they have improved their public image, poor though it still is.

Now they are Bayer, and Monsanto doesn't exist anymore.

The same people are still poisoning us, though.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#269

Post by galangalalgol »

notacoward wrote: post #156
gravelc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree with passively 'letting land return to nature'. If you did this in Australia (where I'm from), and likely other places too, you'd end up with a haven for invasive species, which actively damage surrounding ecosystems. Land needs to be actively managed - if you want it in its natural state, it needs time, money, and effort. In my (biased) opinion, the best thing we can do for the planet is to spend mo…

Also, "natural" is kind of suspect. Nature evolves on its own, even without human involvement. Returning a piece of land to its state from a hundred years ago necessarily means not leaving it in the state it would have reached without us. Treating "natural" as a near-synonym for both "past" and "good" is almost Luddite in its implications.

Well said. We say natural and mean a state sans-man, but our effects are so widespread for so long, there is no way to be confident what such a state would be.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#270

Post by gravelc »

matt_kantor wrote: post #259
whatshisface wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If farmers couldn't increase yields they wouldn't buy all of that expensive chemical stuff. If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing.

The article claims this at the end: > Farms using neonics had 10 times the insect pressure and half the profits compared to those who use regenerative farming methods instead of insecticides according a 2018 study. Like agroecological farming, regenerative agricultural uses cover crops, no-till and other methods to increase on-farm biodiversity and soil health. The regenerative corn-soy operations in the study didn’t…

Quoting the abstract:

>Regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems.

Lower yield and much more expensive for consumers is a difficult sell IMO.

There's some comments here on this study:

http://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-principles-extraordinary...

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