When I wrote recently about the next generation of genetically engineered seeds, I was in truth referring to the next next generation. The fact is that the next actual generation of seeds is already out of the lab and poised for approval by the USDA.

And I’m not talking about Monsanto’s recently approved “drought-tolerant” seeds, which the USDA itself has observed are no more drought-tolerant than existing conventional hybrids.

No, the “exciting” new seeds are simply resistant to more than one kind of pesticide. Rather than resisting Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup alone, they will now also be resistant to Dow AgroScience’s pesticide 2,4-D.

“A new pesticide,“ you say. “How exciting!” Except 2,4-D, despite its catchy name, has been around since World War II. Not only is it one of the most commonly used pesticides in the world, but it came to further prominence in certain circles when it was incorporated as a main ingredient in Agent Orange.

Indeed, as with research into new antibiotics, research into new—potentially safer—pesticides has come to a virtual standstill. Like the drug pipeline, the pesticide pipeline has run dry. Instead, biotech companies are going back to the older, more toxic chemicals, like 2,4-D, for inspiration.

And while you’d expect opposition to these new products from the likes of Tom Philpott of Mother Jones or Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one place you might not expect to see it is the pages of the influential, peer-reviewed journal BioScience.

And yet there it is! Led by David Mortensen, a team of scientists from Penn State, Montana State, and the University of New Hampshire published a paper that describes the effects on agriculture from an over-reliance on glyphosate and an overuse of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds. It also discusses at length the risks of using new seeds that “stack” resistance to various pesticides into one genetically engineered package.

In short, they say that you can’t believe Monsanto and Dow when they hype gyphosate resistance plus 2,4-D resistance as two great tastes that taste great together. The two companies are promising to eliminate the growing superweed menace—the one that has caused farmers to abandon thousands of acres of prime farmland and to return to older, more toxic pesticides to protect their crops.

What these scientists conclude is that with so many weeds resistant to glyphosate already, it won’t take long for them to develop resistance to 2,4-D as well.  According to the study’s authors, almost half of the nearly 40 species of weeds that are already resistant to two pesticides have arisen since 2005 (i.e. since the Roundup Ready era began). In short, the crisis Monsanto and Dow are promising to head off is already here.

There are other problems with 2,4-D, such as a strong link to cancer and a much greater tendency to drift on the wind (and thus contaminate nearby fields and waterways)—problems that the development of the less toxic, less volatile glyphosate was supposed to have “solved.” Yet now, thanks to Big Ag’s over-reliance on these genetically engineered one-hit wonders, which encouraged farmers to use too much glyphosate too often, we’re back to square one—or rather to square toxic.

There is, however, an alternative—and one that doesn’t require a total transition to organic agriculture (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Mortensen and his team describe in detail a practice called Integrated Weed Management (IWM). Like its sibling, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), IWM does involve the use of chemical pesticides. But it’s a judicious use that can act as a last resort rather than a first line of defense. As the paper states:

IWM integrates tactics, such as crop rotation, cover crops, competitive crop cultivars, the judicious use of tillage, and targeted herbicide application, to reduce weed populations and selection pressures that drive the evolution of resistant weeds.

It’s designed for production agriculture and would most likely increase farmer profits, since farmers would get the benefit of reduced seed and pesticide costs and no real loss of productivity. But, as with the climate-friendly agriculture I discussed the other day, you’re unlikely to see IWM embraced by Big Ag any time soon.

The USDA, along with the entire large-scale agriculture economy, is built around the profits of pesticide and biotech companies. You need only watch the USDA approve new genetically engineered products—which the agency admits represents a threat to other forms of agriculture—to see how deep in the tank to these companies our government is.

Tom Philpott observed that with this latest development, agriculture is at “a crossroads.” I disagree. I would say that if the USDA approves this new multiple pesticide-resistant GMO seed as it’s expected to, large-scale agriculture in the country will have reached a true dead end.

Photo: Minnemom

A young female farm worker picking fruit in Washington’s Yakima Valley came to see Dr. Matthew Keifer after pesticides being sprayed in an adjacent orchard wafted onto her. She arrived with red, swollen eyes and itchy, irritated skin—classic symptoms of exposure to Paraquat, a common weedkiller that can cause kidney, heart, and liver problems.

Keifer suspected the Paraquat had made her sick, but proving those suspicions was impossible: For many pesticides, no tests exist that would show, definitively, whether or not a person been has exposed to the chemical. Had a test existed, Keifer’s patient would have been able to to file a workers compensation claim that, if successful, would have covered the costs of her medical care and given her paid time off while she recovered. Instead, she went without.

“If a person’s illness is judged to be work-related, they enter into a care system with excellent financial support and have access to referrals,” Keifer says. “If not, they’ll be stuck out there in limbo, usually without care.”

Without working diagnostic tools, doctors are left to make educated guesses about their patients’ health by piecing together information about their work conditions and symptoms—a situation that can lead to missed or even wrong diagnoses.

“It’s almost asking clinicians to practice with their hands tied behind their backs,” says Amy Liebman, director of environmental and occupational health programs at Austin, Texas-based Migrant Clinicians Network.

After years of running into this problem while treating orchard workers in Washington’s Yakima Valley, Keifer devised a solution: He wants the EPA to require chemical companies to provide tools that would detect human exposure to their products.

Proponents of the idea say it could help safeguard the health of some of the most vulnerable people in society—farm workers. And it would also let policymakers better understand pesticides’ true impact on public health: It’s hard to effectively regulate a chemical if those in charged with doing so don’t know who’s being exposed or whether existing safety protocols work.

The idea is gaining traction in public health circles. In November, the American Public Health Association passed a resolution urging the EPA to require pesticide manufacturers to develop methods for detecting human exposure to their chemicals. The resolution was authored by Keifer, who serves on the EPA’s Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee, and Liebman. The EPA will hold hearings on biomarkers and other diagnostic tools in October.

Pesticide exposure is a real risk for farm workers and people living in farm towns where pesticides are routinely sprayed on nearby fields from helicopters, small planes, trucks, and backpack sprayers or injected into the soil. Exposure to many of the chemicals used in industrial agriculture, like methyl iodide (which is applied to strawberry fields), is linked to cancer, miscarriage, thyroid disease, and many other life-threatening maladies.

“Exposure is extremely likely, yet we don’t require the chemical companies to provide the tools to diagnose what is almost inevitable: illness,” Keifer says. “This is information that we the public should be entitled to have. What are the long-term health effects of the chemicals [these] companies are putting into the environment?”

Chemicals that wreak such precise havoc on insect bodies inevitably get into human bodies, too.

“Given the fact that that these chemicals are meant to hurt organisms, and that we both share physical processes with these organisms and share an environment with them, it would make sense that we would have a way of diagnosing poisoning with those chemicals,” says Keifer, who left Washington to head the National Farm Medicine Center in Wisconsin last year.

While it is difficult to prove that exposure to a certain chemical causes a certain illness, measuring the presence of a chemical in a person’s body–a process called biomonitoring—is an important step toward understanding the health effects of pesticides, protecting workers from overexposure and helping poisoned workers seek treatment and workers compensation, when possible.

To perform biomonitoring, researchers look for signs that signal a chemical’s presence in the body, called biomarkers. Biomarkers can take various forms—exposure to some chemicals can be tracked by looking for changes in DNA or in the production of certain enzymes. Traces of the original chemical or its metabolites—the byproducts created when it is broken down by the body–can often be measured in body fluids like blood, breast milk, and urine. Unlike environmental monitoring, which measures the amount of a toxic substance in the air, water or soil, and can be used to estimate the degree to which humans are also being exposed, biomonitoring is a more precise way to measure the amount of a chemical a person actually takes into his or her body.

Biomonitoring isn’t alien to watchdog agencies; Washington and California mandate the biomonitoring of farm workers who apply organophosphates to strawberries, broccoli, lettuce, and other crops. Organophosphates have been linked to ADHD, reproductive health problems and cancer, and the data has been used to remove workers from potential overexposure and evaluate workplace safety practices.

But the EPA has about 19,000 pesticide products with more than 1,000 active ingredients in its registry. Developing biomarkers for each one is a task research chemist Dana Barr, an Emory University professor who spent more than 20 years at the Centers for Disease control developing tools to detect exposure to chemicals, calls “daunting.”

One of the biggest challenges is figuring out the metabolite for each chemical—a key step in developing many biomonitoring tools. Researchers often resort to trying to predict which chemicals will be on the market and what their metabolites might be, but the process can involve a lot of trial and error, says Barr.

Asking chemical companies to provide that information would make it simpler and less expensive to develop biomonitoring tools, Barr says. “I think they know a lot more about they chemicals they manufacture than we know,” says Barr. “I’m not saying they’re purposefully withholding that information; I just don’t think they’ve been asked for it.”

Bruce Hammock, an entomologist who’s spent 26 years developing biomonitoring tools at the University of California, Davis, agrees that requiring pesticide companies to provide this sort of information would streamline his work. His researchers usually go through the sometimes-arduous task of isolating biomarkers for certain chemicals because companies were not willing to release that information.

“In some cases you can guess [the biomarkers] pretty well,” he says, “but other times you’d be surprised.”

The EPA’s rules already require pesticide manufacturers to submit extensive information about their products, including their effects in laboratory animals.

Everyone interviewed for this story, including Thomas Helscher, Monsanto’s director for corporate affairs, agrees that chemical companies already possess much of the information they would need to develop a biomarker for their products. Monsanto makes the weed-killer Roundup, which is widely used in soy farming (not to mention home gardening). Long term exposure to high levels of its active ingredient, glyphosate, could cause reproductive health problems and kidney damage, according to the EPA. A 2010 study linked low doses of the chemical to birth defects in animals.

Helscher said creating tools to detect his company’s chemicals in the human body would be “feasible” in most cases. Still, he cautioned that biomarkers may not always be helpful in detecting agricultural chemicals that pass quickly through the body. “Whether the data from such an assay will be useful will depend on the specific chemical or metabolite,” Helscher says.

Helscher also said Monsanto has cooperated with researchers who were developing biomonitoring tools for some of his company’s products. Still, he cautioned that while biomonitoring can measure exposure to a chemical, it does not diagnose disease.

But even if tests are developed for each chemical available, performing them could still be cost-prohibitive, Barr says. “There are lots of tests that exist, but very few labs have the capacity for testing a broad range of pesticides,” she says.

Still, Hammock, the UC Davis entomologist, says it’s often not necessary to do expensive tests for a broad range of pesticides—just the ones that are being sprayed on the crop at any given time. Researchers are close to developing a dipstick urine test for pesticides that would be similar to a pregnancy test and allow workers to see almost instantaneously whether they’d been exposed to a handful of common pesticides.

Hammock sees potential for cheap, quick tests like these to be used to demonstrate the value of using safety equipment and following safety protocols.

He worked with a group of men who were spraying pesticides in highway median strips in California. The group tested their urine and found that while all showed signs of exposure, two of the men’s blood samples showed pesticide metabolite levels 1000 times higher than the rest of the crew’s. When Hammock went to talk to the men, he realized they’d done reckless things—one accidentally sprayed his car with pesticides, wiped the windshield off with his hand, and then ate a sandwich. The other blew out the nozzle of the applicator with his mouth.

“Being able to say, ‘Look at what we found in your urine versus what we found in your buddies’ urine,’ has real shock value,” he says.

Keifer, a driving force behind October’s EPA meeting on biomarkers, says asking the EPA to use its authority to better protect farm workers who are largely Latino and low-income is largely an issue of environmental and economic justice.

“Who gets poisoned by pesticides? It’s not the guys who run insurance companies, and it’s not senators,” says Keifer. “It’s poor working guys and women in the field and they are disproportionately affected by the lack of tools to diagnose pesticide poisoning.”

Originally published at The Ration

Four years ago, the United States government held the first congressional hearing on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), an as yet unknown affliction responsible for the devastating and sudden losses of native honeybees, which mysteriously disappear and never return to their hives. While the news has been relatively silent on CCD the past couple of years, there’s been a resurgence of other media around this phenomenon, including “Vanishing of the Bees,” a documentary film directed by George Langworthy and Maryam Heinen and narrated by actress Ellen Page (“Inception” and “Juno”).

“Vanishing of the Bees” brings awareness to the ongoing struggle faced by the bees and their keepers, delving deeply into Colony Collapse Disorder, its potential causes and what the bees’ disappearance might be telling us.  The film opens with storybook charm on our beloved protagonist, the bee, as it flies from flower to flower in search of pollen and nectar. The cuteness-factor quickly turns heart-wrenching and real as the film spells out the situation in no uncertain terms. If the bees disappear, much of our food supply goes with them, as does the $15 billion dollar a year industry built up around these industrious pollinators.

But that industry may just be part of the problem. David Hackenberg, a commercial beekeeper, was the first to report large honeybee losses in 2006. The following year, reports flew in from around the country (and world) of beekeepers losing anywhere between 30-90 percent of their hives–billions of bees gone, often in a matter of weeks. While the cause of CCD has yet to be identified, beekeepers and researchers appearing in the documentary have honed in on some likely culprits.  From scrutinizing the agricultural practice of planting monocultures and its ties to harmful commercial beekeeping practices, to uncovering the widespread application of systemic pesticides, made from the same chemicals used for warfare in World War I, “Vanishing of the Bees” paints a grim but clear picture.

“Bees are an indicator of environmental quality. When the bees are dying, something’s wrong, and that’s going to affect all of us,” says David Mendes, a commercial beekeeper and good friend of Hackenberg’s. The film’s take on governmental “protection” is, at best, cynical. While European governments have applied the precautionary principle and banned certain systemic pesticides, like Bayer’s Gaucho, due to their potential threat, the United States utilizes risk assessment, deeming a certain amount of risk to the public and environment acceptable. But as the film makes clear, the very agency that’s charged with protecting us from a harmful pesticide often relies on the data provided by the companies who would most profit from its use.

“Vanishing of the Bees” takes an intense look at a seemingly dire situation, yet the film is punctuated with timely humor to lighten the mood. And despite the many hurdles faced by beekeepers, there may be a glimmer of hope for bees in the telling of their story. Humans have worshiped bees throughout the centuries and looked to them for signals of things to come. If the bees are trying to tell us something, “Vanishing of the Bees” has captured their message, deftly portraying a saga that plays upon human emotion and stirring a deep-seated connection to bees that stands 10,000 years strong.

For upcoming screenings of “Vanishing of the Bees,” visit: http://www.vanishingbees.com/events/.

The directors are currently working on a 30-minute educational version of the film for high school classrooms, and are working with education experts to develop a curriculum to engage youth.  To donate to the cause, visit: http://www.vanishingbees.com/donate/.

To stay informed of current events affecting our bees–like the EPA’s decision on June 24, 2011, to approve the emergency usage of a systemic pesticide known to be harmful to bees and a potential culprit in CCD, as a way to battle stink bugs on the east coast–visit the “Vanishing of the Bees” Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/vanishingbees.

The produce lobby is livid that consumers might be concerned about pesticides. They are taking their fury out on the USDA for its annual report on pesticide use (via The Washington Post):

In a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, 18 produce trade associations complained that the data have “been subject to misinterpretation by activists, which publicize their distorted findings through national media outlets in a way that is misleading for consumers and can be highly detrimental to the growers of these commodities.”

This report happens also to be the basis for the Environmental Working Group’s popular “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean Fifteen” lists of fruit and vegetables with the most and least pesticide residues. The produce lobbyists are pretty steamed about those, too:

“There are some organizations with agendas that do want to scare people away from fresh produce,” said Kathy Means, a vice president at the Produce Marketing Association, a major industry group. “We don’t want anyone eating unsafe foods, of course. But for those products that are grown legally and the science says [the pesticide] is safe, we don’t want people turning away.”

Never mind that many consumers want this information. As with labels for genetically modified food, the industry’s position is that ignorance leads to bliss (or at least profits!). The industry maintains that even the Dirty Dozen show pesticide residues beneath EPA limits, and to them, the letter of the law is what matters. Of course, if you believe that pesticides are more dangerous than government scientists are willing to admit then these limits are insufficient. Then there’s the whole concept of synergistic effects–combinations of several pesticides in small amounts can deliver a greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts toxic punch.

As The Washington Post article observes, recent research showed that children exposed to higher levels of a once-common class of pesticides known as organophosphates displayed lower IQs, suggesting that “safe” levels of pesticides may not be safe at all. Organophosphate pesticides have also been linked to ADHD in kids. And research that came out last summer suggested that in families that eat conventional produce, pesticide levels in kids’ blood can spike beyond EPA limits during the height of fruit and vegetable seasons.

Indeed, I’d feel somewhat more sympathetic to the industry’s complaints about lists like the Dirty Dozen if not for the fact that they continue to fight tooth and nail the EPA’s attempts to regulate pesticides. In fact, there is a massive battle going on right now in Congress over this very subject. A legal case from the 1990s has led to a court order requiring EPA permits for pesticide application. This represents a major shift for farmers, who can pretty much apply pesticides as, when, and where they want. The question now is what the exact permitting process will be and how onerous it will be with the EPA set to establish a final rule by this fall. See this McClatchy article for a bit more detail on the issue.

The GOP–never a party to shrink from radical change or from heeling to the demands of agribusiness–is attempting to get around the whole problem by exempting pesticides entirely from the Clean Water Act. This, despite the fact that pesticide run-off is one of the largest water pollution issues we face. A bill to do just that–with a name designed to misdirect and obfuscate, The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011, has already passed the House and could pass the Senate soon.

At the same time, the GOP also opposes reform to the woefully outdated Toxic Substances Control Act. The update, known as the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011, would require greater safety testing for the tens of thousands of industrial chemicals in use today, most of which were approved based on little or no data, and would move the burden to corporations to prove the safety of industrial chemicals. It would also tighten the EPA’s approach to risk assessment so that the potential for harm becomes more important.

So while the produce lobby is accusing food safety experts of “fearmongering” and crying crocodile tears over the fact that misplaced consumer “panic” over pesticides will lead people to avoid eating fresh fruits and vegetables, it’s worth noting that it doesn’t have to be this way. The produce lobby could support consumers’ desires (and dollars) and push farmers to adopt more aggressive tactics to reduce pesticide use. It is possible. There is a middle ground between annually dousing crops with millions of pounds of toxic chemicals and going totally organic. It’s called Integrated Pest Management, it’s (of course) more common in Europe than in the U.S. and there’s no reason why it can’t become the norm here. Oh wait. There is a reason. It’s our horribly corrupted political system. Right. Almost forgot.

Originally published on Grist

California’s top pesticide regulator is leaving her job to work for Clorox. Mary-Ann Warmerdam, the director of the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), announced her resignation on Tuesday. Warmerdam’s departure was voluntary, but environmental and public health advocates have been pushing for her removal for months. They say she let the chemical industry’s influence trump science and the public’s health when her agency approved the use of methyl iodide—which causes cancer, nerve damage and miscarriage—for use in strawberry cultivation. (See more Civil Eats coverage of the issue here, here and here.)

While environmental health advocates say the move illustrates the coziness of government officials and the industries they are supposed to oversee, it may also be a step toward halting the use of the potent fumigant that UCLA chemist John Froines called, “one of the most toxic chemicals on earth.”

DPR spokeswoman Lea Brooks said Warmerdam’s departure was not related to the pesticide uproar. “Her decision had nothing to do with methyl iodide. It had to do with opportunity,” said Brooks.

Warmerdam’s departure to chemical-giant Clorox was no surprise to Kathryn Gilje, co-director of the Pesticide Action Network of North America. “Unfortunately, we see far too often this revolving door between people from pesticide companies and government regulators,” she said.

Still, the resignation has revived hopes that methyl iodide may not be used in California’s strawberry fields after all, depending on who Governor Jerry Brown appoints to the post. “If there’s someone there who will use science and community engagement and will take the mandate of the department seriously, there’s no doubt in my mind the methyl iodide decision will be reversed,” Gilje said. If the DRP decision stands, the chemical will likely begin to be applied within the next few months.

Despite the objections of the DPR’s own scientists and an all-star scientific review panel [PDF], California approved methyl iodide in December. The DPR green-lighted the fumigant’s use at levels that would expose farm workers and people who live near strawberry fields to levels 100 times greater than what is considered safe. It will be used as an alternative to methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting pesticide which is being phased out internationally in accordance with the Montreal Protocol.

Critics of methyl iodide say state regulators crumbled under the force of lobbying by the chemical’s manufacturer Arysta LifeScience, the largest privately-held chemical company in the world.

In January, a coalition of farmworker and environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the chemical’s approval. And more than 52,000 Californians submitted comments in opposition to methyl iodide’s approval, a signal of the public’s rejection of corporate influence in government, Gilje said. “We are seriously heartened by the increasing groundswell of people are unwilling to accept corporate capture of government and democracy,” Gilje said.

Evan Westrup, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, said “a diverse pool of candidates are being considered,” but could not say when Warmerdam’s replacement will be appointed.

The Environmental Protection Agency has opened a 30-day public comment period on methyl iodide. To read the petition and submit comments go here.

For more information on what you can do:

Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA)
Pesticide Watch
Californians for Pesticide Reform

Photo: Pesticide Watch via Flickr

Editor’s Note: CivilEats today introduces a new partnership with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism News21 course on food reporting. Over the next several months we will regularly feature stories from students in the class.

Outrage summarized the reaction of the environmental, public health and organic farming communities around California last week, when the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) announced its approval of methyl iodide for use in strawberry production.

The EPA approved methyl iodide in 2007, and the chemical is currently in use across the southeastern United States. But California, New York and Washington all have state-specific procedures for registering new chemicals. While Washington and New York have banned methyl iodide, California has, for now at least, chosen to follow the EPA’s lead.

DPR director Mary-Ann Warmerdam hails the pesticide as an effective alternative to methyl bromide, which is being phased out as part of the Montreal Protocol on climate change. Critics of methyl iodide counter that the new chemical is a boon only to its producer (Arysta LifeScience). The Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA) expressed that this was a triumph of corporate lobbying pressure over scientific research and public sentiment:

Crumbling under chemical industry pressure, including an intensive pro-methyl-iodide lobbying and communications campaign run by Arysta LifeScience—methyl iodide manufacturer and the largest privately held pesticide company in the world, the state of California has shunned the findings of top scientists who have consistently said that the chemical is too dangerous to be used in agriculture. Arysta LifeScience pushed to secure registration of the pesticide in California because it is one of the most lucrative pesticide markets in the nation.

The issue of whether or not to ban methyl iodide has pit the interests of a biotech corporation against scientists, farmworkers, consumers and public health activists. As Paul S. Towers of Pesticide Watch put it, “It’s clear that corporate bullying has made a mockery of a process that is supposed to be based on science.”

At the Scientific Review hearing in Sacramento last June, scientists John Froines, Katherine Hammond and Ed Loechler all testified that methyl iodide is both too dangerous and too new to make its use in agriculture safe. Health risks include early miscarriage, cancer and permanent nerve damage for those working with the toxin as well as those living or working within a half-mile of treated fields. Susan Kegley of PANNA said that scientific consensus about these risks has been “completely unanimous except among the chemists who own the patent.” It is important to note that methyl iodide will be applied to the soil and not directly to plants and, hence, does not pose an immediate health risk to consumers. However, residual iodide could accumulate in the soil over time, contaminating both groundwater and crops–risks that have not yet been evaluated.

NRDC scientist Gina Solomon characterized the depiction of methyl iodide as a methyl bromide alternative to be misleading: “Methyl iodide is a gas that will be injected into the soil to kill all living things. As a gas, it’s not likely to stay in the soil despite tarps intended to keep it down. [. . .] The quantities that escape are expected to be high enough to result in significant risks of neurological damage, cancer, and fetal toxicity.” An editorial in the Fresno Bee echoed Solomon: “Why replace one toxic, ozone-depleting pesticide with another chemical that while not damaging to the ozone is even more toxic?” The DPR continues to claim that their regulations will safeguard against the chemical’s risks. But, when asked at the June hearing about both pesticide drift and noncompliance, Warmerdam dismissed such concerns and implied that any negative impacts would be the fault of individual farmers and farmworkers.

Sustainable agriculture experts argue that safe alternatives already exist to methyl bromide. A number of techniques have proven effective in managing strawberry pests, including crop rotation, steam treatments, biofumigation with mustard or broccoli (crops that release natural pesticides in the decomposition process) and a new technique from UC Santa Cruz called anaerobic soil disinfestation. (The California Strawberry Commission has also been funding research into such practices.)

Since last spring when the DPR first announced its plans–against the recommendation of its own scientists–to approve methyl iodide, over 53,000 people have submitted comments expressing opposition. The issue appears to be uniting otherwise disparate communities in California, a coalition that has no plans to cease and desist. PANNA, Pesticide Watch, Work Safe California, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Credo Action, the NRDC and other groups are coordinating legal and political action. As evidence of these efforts, Credo launched a petition over the weekend calling on Governor-Elect Brown to reverse the DPR decision by exercising his power to issue a moratorium on the chemical and reconvene the scientific review committee. Concerned citizens also can put pressure on their local agriculture commissioners, who will be tasked with issuing permits for the use of methyl iodide at the county level.

Methyl iodide is shaping up to be a lightning rod issue for California, a state that seems to be at a political crossroads. For opponents of methyl iodide, that crossroads might be summed up as a long view of the common good, on the one hand, and the economic interests of corporations like Arysta, on the other. While the state’s multi-billion-dollar strawberry industry certainly needs an alternative to methyl bromide, this challenge offers an opportunity to transform the industry into one that is more, rather than less, sustainable and socially just.

Photo: Images by Arden

The New York Times made a long-awaited (and much emailed) announcement on its front page last week: The mystery of the ongoing and agriculturally devastating bee die-off (aka Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD) has been cracked!

I’m not trying to hype the news. Here’s the headline and lede:

Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery

It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership–of military scientists and entomologists–appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

It’s easy to miss, but in that last sentence, reporter Kirk Johnson takes a wrong turn. In essence, he confuses proximate and efficient causes (i.e. what bees ultimately succumb to vs. what makes hives susceptible to collapse) and from that logical error, a whole series of cascading failures ensue. But don’t take my word for it. Go read Katherine Eban’s crack piece of reporting for Fortune that dissects the problematic nature of the Times article; the underlying study; its lead author, Jerry Bromenshenk; and the role in the whole debate of the pesticide company Bayer CropScience.

The enigma wrapped in a mystery coated with pesticide

Let’s be clear: The study itself makes no conclusive claims about the causes of colony collapse disorder. Eban quotes from the paper that the research does not “clearly define” that the virus/fungus combination is “a marker, a cause, or a consequence of CCD.” A scientist interviewed by Eban very helpfully offers the metaphor of HIV to describe what’s going on with bees. HIV doesn’t kill you–it’s the opportunistic infections and diseases that follow HIV’s dismantling of a sufferer’s immune system that do. In the case of bees, the virus/fungus combo are most likely the follow-on infections that kill off an already weakened hive.

The Times blunder goes beyond whether Johnson or his editor misinterpreted the results of new research. Unfortunately, as Eban details–in part drawing on an unpublished piece she wrote for the now-defunct Portfolio magazine–the Times left out key pieces of the real story of the fight over research into what’s killing the bees.

As I wrote last January, many scientists believe that a novel class of pesticides called neonicotinoids–which are insect neurotoxins-has played a major role in CCD worldwide. An Italian entomologist at the University of Padua, Vincenzo Girolami, has research currently undergoing peer review showing that bees can be exposed to lethal levels of these pesticides through the use of seeding machines that sow neonicotinoid-coated seeds. These devices throw up a toxic cloud of pesticide as they work: bees fly through the cloud and either die or take the pesticide back to the hive. Once inside, even at low doses, it can cause disorientation or, as Girolami calls it, “intoxication” of whole hives.

The maker of this pesticide is Bayer CropScience. What does a corporation do when it discovers it may have developed and marketed a dangerous and potentially devastating product? Here in America, you confuse, you obfuscate, and you buy off scientists.

And as Eban skillfully details, that’s exactly what Bayer has been doing for the last decade or so.

Beeing clear

Which brings us back to Bromenshenk. He was an expert witness for a group of beekeepers that in 2003 sued Bayer over the pesticide Imidacloprid. Bromenshenk later backed out of the lawsuit and, soon after, Bayer gave Bromenshenk a “research grant.” But it gets worse. Eban reports something the Times piece doesn’t: that Bromenshenk’s consulting company, Bee Alert Technology, is developing diagnostic tools for “various bee ailments.” The company stands to profit from curing bee diseases–and thus it’s rather convenient that Bromenshenk has published research that points the finger towards “treatable” conditions, rather than pesticides, as the primary culprit in bee deaths. Indeed, he had admitted as much to Eban while she was researching her Portfolio piece.

While this tremendous potential conflict doesn’t necessarily invalidate Bromenshenk’s findings, it certainly warrants a mention.

So where does this leave us? In an email exchange with me, the Italian scientist Girolami said he agrees with many of the experts Eban interviewed: The virus/fungus combination is secondary. In Girolami’s opinion, the underlying causes of CCD–the factors that are weakening the hives and making them susceptible to infection and die-offs–are most likely neonicotinoids along with the Varroa mite, a parasite that can infect and destroy hives all on its own.

In fact, last year Italy banned neonicotinoid-coated corn seeds and, according to this report, after the first non-neonicotinoid sowing, nary a hive was lost, although neonicotinoid spraying is still allowed in some areas–and still linked with bee deaths. France has also banned coated seeds–though there, as in Germany, the pesticide lobby has fended off total bans for now. As for the U.S., Bayer successfully convinced a judge to throw out crucial evidence in the beekeeper lawsuit and has, to date, prevented the EPA from releasing the data the agency used to approve neonicotinoids in the first place.

Eban concludes with the observation that little neonicotinoid research is going on in the U.S .at the moment, thanks in large part to Bayer’s efforts to “support” scientists who work in other, shall we say, less-sensitive areas. It seems it is up to scientists outside the U.S., in countries less beholden to corporate interests, to do the scientific heavy lifting.

Ah, America. Fighting hard for the freedom to spray toxic chemicals everywhere.

Photo: nikonvscanon on Flickr

Republished with permission from Grist

Syndicated eco-columnist and Master Gardener Annie Spiegelman (AKA “The Dirt Diva”) offers practical tips on organic gardening, composting and planting along with guidance and gripes on marriage, motherhood and “having it all.” A cynically optimistic horticulturist, Spiegelman offers positive reinforcement and moral support as a gardener who’s made all the mistakes, and has lived to tell how to make peace with snails, fungi, bacteria (and your boyfriend). Civil Eats caught up with the Dirt Diva to dish about her new book, Talking Dirt: The Dirt Diva’s Down-to-Earth Guide to Organic Gardening.

CIVIL EATS: You’re a master gardener, garden columnist and gardening author. Is it true you started out in the movie business in Manhattan as a production assistant on the movie Staying Alive?

ANNIE SPIEGELMAN: Yes and I’m proud to say that I was hired as a “parking” PA. I watched parking spaces all day and night while Sylvester Stallone was directing.  I was so good at it that I got hired on my next movie, Moscow on the Hudson, with Robin Williams. I was hired as “assistant to the Craft Service person.” Basically I was the low man on the totem pole. I was the garbage girl. Now I work as a First Assistant Director in film production and write gardening books. I spend my days dodging bullets from the maniacal movie industry and the demanding publishing world, and I rarely take medication.

CE: Why this book on organic gardening?

AS: It’s different than other gardening books because I was a really bad gardener and then I slowly evolved into a very good gardener. I was raised and hardened in New York City and thought that flowers simply came from the flower shop on 86^th and Lexington. When I moved to California in my 20s I was introduced to my first garden. I watered the weeds thinking they were flowers and polluted the entire zip code with chemical fertilizer and pesticides until the soil had not one nutrient left in it. It wasn’t soil anymore. Soil is alive. It was dirt. Dirt is dead. Nothing grows in dirt. Since I became a Master Gardener and got rid of the old garden chemicals sitting in my shed, I fertilize with compost religiously. I now have healthy, happy soil. If I can do this, trust me, anyone can.

CE: What is the one thing you hope readers will appreciate about organic gardening after reading the book?

AS: That gardening with chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides is old school. That should have gone out with Beatle-bangs and B&W TV’s with aluminum foil on the antenna. Some pesticides have saved us throughout history but now it’s overkill. Since we’ve been marketed to death for the last 50 years, farmers and homeowners are now hooked on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides instead of learning the basics about soil; just one tablespoon of soil can contain up to 10 billion microbes—that’s one and a half times the human population. These microorganisms breakdown organic material for us for free and feed our plants (for free!). Many chemical fertilizers and pesticides destroy the life in the soil. They pollute and deplete the land without giving anything back to Mother Earth. Organic gardening is working with Mother Nature, not against her. We take and we give back. Organic gardening is about creating a safe, healthy, long term and symbiotic relationship with the land. Not hit and run, or a one-night stand.

CE: What about your book will surprise your readers?

AS: That American agriculture uses 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides annually; that’s about 4 pounds per every man, woman and child. Here in the Bay Area, where we’re supposedly a bunch of iPhone-toting treehuggers, every single creek is contaminated with high levels of pesticides, especially Diazinon, a pesticide that was banned for home use almost 10 years ago because of its toxicity to mammals. If our waterways in California are so polluted, it’s frightening to think what’s in the water in other states where environmental laws aren’t as stringent. Enough with the chemicals before we all end up in the wacky shack! Mostly, I want to do this for my son. If we don’t clean up our act environmentally, the next generation will think their parents were so lame.

CE: Why aren’t you a fan of the lawn?

AS: As my soil scientist pal, Professor Stephen Andrews at UC Berkeley, says, “If you’re growing a lawn in California, God help you!” We have no water to waste on lawns in California. The water department’s new slogan is “Brown is the new green.” They’re asking homeowners to stop watering their lawns in the summer. (I promise they will come back to life with the winter rains.) Not only are lawns a pollinator’s (birds, honeybees, beneficial insects) desert, but they’re also giant pesticide guzzlers. They consume 90 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides annually. For a piece of turf! In the 1940s, the government asked its citizens to grow victory gardens to help feed the country. There were 250 victory garden plots in Golden Gate Park alone. Then came the 1950s; suburbia, gigantic front and back lawns, DDT spray trucks, chemical fertilizer dependence and the beginning of fast food restaurants. I took out my front lawn a few years ago. I planted natives and drought tolerant plants and I’ve never been happier. For more on organic lawn care or to get rid of your cranky, rusty lawn, visit: http://www.safelawns.org and http://www.lawnreform.org.

CE: Any tips for novice homeowners growing organic vegetables this spring?

AS: Wherever you live, before planting vegetables or fruit, find an area that receives 6-8 hours of sun. (Leafy vegetables can be happy with less sunlight, 4-6 hours.) If this is a new plot of soil that has never been amended, you might want to do a soil test first. This will tell you the pH of your soil. Most vegetables grow best in a ph of 6-7, which is a bit on the acidic side. You can find a simple soil test kit at your local plant nursery. Your new mantra should be “compost, compost, compost.” Compost will slowly feed your plants and retain water as well. A thin layer of mulch (leaves, straw) on top of that will keep your crops warm in the early spring and cool in the summer. If you’re not using compost in your yard, I’d rather you don’t garden at all. Try knitting or namedropping instead. Plant some herbs and flowers such as nasturtium, Shasta daisy and yarrow, nearby your food. This will help to invite beneficial bugs to eat up any pests that come to visit your crops. Be prepared to be a doting parent. Growing vegetables requires patience and attention. Keep an eye out for pests and make sure you’re watering consistently. Using drip irrigation is best. If all else fails, go support your local organic farmer at the farmers’ market who works to hard 24/7 to grow healthy, safe food for you and your family.

CE: What’s your organic gardening dream?

AS: To see compost bins in every backyard and in every community, instead of overfilled landfills spewing out methane like it’s going out of business. There’s always a wild garden party going on in a compost pile. And, to get those kids off of screens and outside learning how to grow their own food and flowers. I want to help create organic school gardens in every school in America!

The Ecologist reported recently that three French farmers have successfully sued chemical companies for cancer and Parkinson’s disease that resulted from their occupational use of pesticides–an issue as widespread as it is under-reported. A cereal farmer with 100,000 hectares of land in in the Vosges region, Dominque Marchal was the first farmer to have his leukemia associated with his daily pesticide use. His wife was determined to get to the bottom of the issue. From the Ecologist:

She employed a lawyer to help her gather the scientific evidence and herself set about gathering invoices and receipts to list which pesticides her husband had been using in previous years. Then, from their own pesticide stocks and with the help of neighbouring farms, she was able to gather samples of each of the potential cancer-causing substances. Her lawyer helped her find a laboratory willing to analyse the contents, and when the results came back they showed that 40 per cent contained benzene, a substance not marked on any of the contents labels but that is known to increase the risk of leukaemia.

No farmer has succeeded in taking on Big Chem for their illnesses in the U.S. because it is especially difficult to get medical recognition for the disease-occupation correlation, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence that exposure to certain pesticides increases the risk of illness. (See Washington University in St. Louis’ epidemiological study that shows high rates of Parkinson’s disease in the Midwest and Northeast, where agriculture and metal processing–two occupations that use chemicals associated with Parkinson’s–are most prevalent. And the long term Agricultural Health Study focused on Iowa and North Carolina, which began in 1994, has found elevated risk for farmers of multiple myeloma and cancers of the lip, gallbladder, ovary, prostate, and thyroid.)

However, many farmers and rural Americans are taking note of the increasing rate at which their family members and neighbors are diagnosed with cancer and other diseases. Sandra Zellmer, who lost her mother, father and uncle, all farmers, to cancer between 2004-2008, wrote recently about the link between the herbicide atrazine and the pesticide DDT to the types of cancers that killed her family. Her findings echo the blockbuster piece on atrazine in the New York Times last summer, which brought attention to the issues posed by heightened exposure to and weak regulation of the weed killer, noting that “Laboratory experiments suggest that when animals are exposed to brief doses of atrazine before birth, they may become more vulnerable to cancer later.”

The EPA is currently re-assessing atrazine, which has been found in the drinking water of 33 million Americans. A recent report by the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) and the Land Stewardship Project entitled The Syngenta Corporation and Atrazine The Cost to the Land, People and Democracy [pdf] includes the stories of five farmers who’ve decided to stop using atrazine for health and safety reasons, and also draws attention to the possibility of a link between atrazine and breast cancer. From the report:

Atrazine increases the activity of an enzyme called aromatase that can, in turn, increase levels of estrogen. According to Dr. [Janet] Gray [Board Member and Acting Science Adviser to the Breast Cancer Fund], “This is of great concern when it comes to breast cancer because we know that increased exposures to estrogens are one of the major risk factors for increased incidences of breast cancer.”

Here is Zellmer’s response to these disturbing facts:

No wonder farming is considered one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. Who knew that farmers’ families, their neighbors, and their neighbors’ neighbors were at risk, too. If we miss this opportunity to delve deeply into the potential link between a widely used chemical and the health of our food producers and their communities, anger—not acceptance—is the appropriate response.

Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, Senior Scientist at the PANNA said that the problem with making these connections is related to the structural failure of our regulatory system:

Farmers, farmworkers and their families have been on the frontlines of pesticide exposure for decades. Parkinson’s, asthma, birth defects and childhood cancers are just a few of the diseases farming communities suffer in disproportionate amounts. Each year new studies come out further substantiating the links between exposure and disease. In the U.S. though, these studies have not amounted to policy change because — unlike in much of Europe — our legal frameworks for regulating toxic chemicals and pesticides is effectively designed to protect chemical companies over public health. So people continue to get sick and die, while pesticide companies get rich and our public agencies look the other way.

At present, the U.S. system is set up to allow two means of addressing environmental and public health harms: litigation and regulation, and both require levels of proof inadequate to the task of protecting public health. For instance, FIFRA [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act] & TOSCA [the Toxic Substances Control Act] are the two legal frameworks governing pesticides and toxic chemicals — both treat chemicals as innocent until proven guilty (it takes decades to ‘prove’ a chemical guilty). The head of the EPA states flatly that TOSCA is toothless from a regulatory standpoint, and FIFRA makes it nearly impossible to take legal action against a pesticide company or applicator.

What we need is a comprehensive re-orientation of the U.S. government’s approach to public health. We can follow Europe’s lead here by adopting the “precautionary principle” as a guide.

Many farmers are changing their practices, sparing themselves from routine chemical exposure and thus risk. Mary Howell Martens and her husband Klaas Martens run a 1300 acre organic farm in upstate New York, where they grow corn, beans and grains. Here is what she had to say in an article she wrote about her farm’s transition away from chemical agriculture:

…after a long and successful day of spraying, Klaas would invariably come in the house with clothes reeking of pesticide despite the Tyvek suit, his head aching and a queasy stomach. We wanted to believe that it was due to ‘just a germ’ since he had been working such long hours, but we knew better. My husband was slowly being poisoned.

How do two people so apparently committed to the agribusiness ideal of American farming end up operating over 1300 acres organically just 10 years later? We truly believe that we were like many conventional farmers, using the chemical fertilizers and pesticides simply because we saw no other alternatives, but hating what it might be doing to us, our family, our land, and our environment. We farmed conventionally because we had been told so often that it was the only way to survive in agriculture today.

One evening later that year, we read a small classified advertisement in a regional farm paper looking for organic wheat. Immediately Klaas was on the telephone and we were excited – was there really a market for organic field crops? We quickly decided that we would leap at this new challenge. If there was a way to grow our crops organically, we were going to figure it out!

In her article, which is geared towards helping other farmers, Martens goes on to describe the changes they had to make in farm management, and how they learned to adapt to new soil fertility and weed control practices.

In order to decrease the risks from routine pesticide exposure in farming, it is going to take both rebuilding rural communities, so that farmers will have new markets and support, along with recognition from policy makers that chemical agriculture has some serious fallout: aside from destroying the productivity of the soil, damaging the environment, and supporting the production of unhealthy food, it is costing human lives.

This information comes to light as the industry struggles to position itself as providing environmental benefit through use of bt technology — insecticide producing seeds — savings from which are diminished in light of a six times greater herbicide usage.

Farmers have become increasingly critical of both GM seed as it goes up in price, and herbicides like Roundup, also known as glyphosate, as ‘superweeds‘ become prevalent in treated fields. The growth of pigweed, which can quickly reach widths of 6 inches at the stalk, and other invasive, glyphosate-resistant species increases farmers reliance on more high-risk herbicides, including 2,4-D, dicamba and paraquat, and has resulted in a return to hand harvesting and even abandoning of fields.

Dr. Benbrook used the USDA’s National Agriculture Statistics Service data and publicly available Monsanto information to ascertain these findings. The report states that it became increasingly difficult to get such information from the USDA as it ceased collecting thorough data on pesticide usage in the US in recent years. Furthermore, the USDA has never conducted research on the relationship between GM crops and increased pesticide use, resulting in a lack of in-depth information to inform regulators. (I wrote about the need for more such research here, where Dr. Benbrook also chimed in.)

The report challenges researchers and regulators to consider the following:

Herbicides and insecticides are potent environmental toxins. Where GE crops cannot deliver meaningful reductions in reliance on pesticides, policy makers need to look elsewhere. In addition to toxic pollution, agriculture faces the twin challenges of climate change and burgeoning world populations. The biotechnology industry’s current advertising campaigns promise to solve those problems, just as the industry once promised to reduce the chemical footprint of agriculture. Before we embrace GE crops as solution to these new challenges, we need a sober, data-driven appraisal of its track record on earlier pledges.

With glyphosate producer Monsanto encouraging farmers to diversify their herbicide use to control superweeds, this research shows that we could be at a turning point for Roundup Ready technology. As farmers realize the cost effectiveness of conventional seeds which deliver similar yields and allow seeds to be saved for reuse in future seasons, GM crops could prove a technological experiment gone wrong as we move toward creating a more durable and diverse food system.