Monday, May 14, 2012

Planting time or klling time?

I saw this this morning, from Catch the Buzz, a beekeeping e-letter. Kinda scary...
"Simply, pesticides, those troublesome neonicotinoids, are applied to corn seeds before they are planted so when the corn begins to grow the pesticide on the seed is absorbed by the new roots and fills the plant with poison for the rest of its life. But the stuff is sticky and doesn’t come out of the planters very well so farmers supply a slippery additive in the form of talcum powder to make those seeds, in airblast seed planters, simply fly right out of the drop chute and into the ground. But there’s the rub. That airblast planter is blowing all that talcum powder and loose pesticide dust everywhere…up into the air to travel where ever something as light weight as talcum powder can travel…feet and yards and yards certainly, maybe miles…nobody knows.

"But birds are dying. Robins and crows. And one observer says that wildlife eating the seeds are dying…three seeds will kill a quail is what I’m hearing, but I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised. But for beekeepers, what’s happening is that this poisonous dust is landing on everything downwind…dandelions, flowers, water surfaces, everywhere a honey bee can go, that’s where this stuff is landing."

<idle musing>
We're paying a high price for cheap food—and food that isn't even good for us! Not content with just killing some insects, we try to kill everything else, too. Just another reason I favor organic methods.
</idle musing>

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