Thoughts on neonicotinoid insecticides?

M

Makintrax73

Member
I've been of a mind that much of the incredible decline in pheasant and quail hunting East of the Miss might be related to to widespread use of RoundUp. It's use seemed to coincide with the decline, and we don't really see bird numbers in many areas even if there is habitat. I had a couple theories about downstream affects.

Two years ago I re-leased the farm to a rather unconventional farmer. This has been lucrative financially, paying rents equal or above the market, but he actually shows some care about what chemicals go on the ground, and what habitat is maintained. In any case he disagrees with me about RoundUp being a driver of bird pop decline. He sent me some comments yesterday:

"In good news for hunting, the cover crop biomass and no use of neonics or other insecticides seems to be improving beneficial insects on the property. Brooding birds rely on insect larvae for the high protein diet they need. Neonic seed treatments have a 5 year half life, are water soluble and research has shown they are taken up by subsequent crops and adjacent plants!!!

99% of all seed contains neo nic insecticide. We have to seek out seed that does not have them and it’s not easy to do.

In addition, we do not add insecticides to herbicide passes and do not spray fungicides or insecticides this time of year. All have an impact on food sources, breeding and life expectancy of birds. I recently made a post on Facebook about environmental side effects of fungicides.

In checking the corn last night with the handy driveways through the field compliments of the power company, there is zero leaf tissue disease. Soil health, the plant nutrients and biologicals at planting have greatly help prevent diseases. Then we will foliar apply a nutritional and biological that will continue to keep the plant healthy and resistant to disease. Unfortunately no other farmers do this approach yet. I hope they would, but thick heads are hard to penetrate!

I hope you begin to notice the changes in the eco system at your farm. I can tell by residue decomposition, insect species, and weed species that it was farmed very traditionally with conventional inputs and seed treatments. It wasn’t intentional, it was just not knowing any different. The Nutrien’s of this world are not often interested in doing or selling less. It is beginning to shift now and hope you begin to notice differences in the next couple of years."


Interesting thoughts. Certainly there are a lot of problems in the corn belt with loss of habitat and overall fragmentation. I have to wonder if this is part of the puzzle also. A little light digging into the research seems to indicate that neonics do happen to be pervasive in the environment, damage certain insects at low concentrations, and spread. In any case he has the lease wrapped up for a couple more years, and the rents are good, so he has no reason to sell me on snake oil.
 
Very interesting comments from your tenant. Our tenants are also very traditional farmers. Someday I'll probably change tenants and I hope to find one like yours. Did you "luck" into him or did you set out to find one like that?
 
Don't get me wrong, I use roundup often to kill stuff I don't want. I use it more around the house than anywhere. I don't own a weed eater! But I think even if round up is not toxic to quail, it obviously has had its effects. Quail and pheasants need wild seeds and cover/nesting habitat. I don't think it's a coincident that birds started to decline at around the same time it became the norm. At around the same time also It became the norm to clear out and plant everything possible. The quail didn't have a chance. I thought for years that they would survive in small pockets. But now I'm thinking genetic isolation is getting them.
 
matto said:
Very interesting comments from your tenant. Our tenants are also very traditional farmers. Someday I'll probably change tenants and I hope to find one like yours. Did you "luck" into him or did you set out to find one like that?
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No, it certainly took a bit of effort. I had never been familiar with alternative practices other than hearing the word "organic". I saw a "cover crop" demonstration field on I-39 and it sparked an interest. When my original farmer retired I began by seeing who was researching cover crops and contacted an Ag professor at Western Illinois Univ who was researching cover crops among other things. I told him I was looking for a farmer implementing some of these practices both for birds and long term soil health (traditional tillage on our rolling property had caused degradation of the hilltops for one thing). Eventually after some interviews I found a farmer who was a good fit.

Don't get me wrong, I use roundup often to kill stuff I don't want. I use it more around the house than anywhere. I don't own a weed eater! But I think even if round up is not toxic to quail, it obviously has had its effects. Quail and pheasants need wild seeds and cover/nesting habitat. I don't think it's a coincident that birds started to decline at around the same time it became the norm. At around the same time also It became the norm to clear out and plant everything possible. The quail didn't have a chance. I thought for years that they would survive in small pockets. But now I'm thinking genetic isolation is getting them.
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I have a lot of agreement with what you said. My concerns about RoundUp - I guess the jury is still out - does it have a negative affect on gut microbiome of the food chain?

We know it chelates - so does it reduce availability of nutrients in the seed? We know there are some essential nutrients birds need to be healthy/reproduce. I suspect it might bind those in the soil and reduce availability in the food source, but I'm no scientist, just speculation.

At the end of the day it might be as simple as reduction in the dirtiness of the field causing birds to be more prone to predation during the winter. In any case from an overall perspective it sure doesn't seem "safe" to hose down millions of acres with a chemical that kills (almost) every plant it touches and expect no downstream effects.
 
Here is an article on NeoNic affects on birds from Cornell Univ he sent over

www.allaboutbirds.org

Neonic Nation: Is Widespread Pesticide Use Connected to Grassland Bird Declines?

Neonicotinoids are America's most used class of pesticides, found in the vast majority of the nation's corn crop and nearly half of soybeans. Given such pervasive use, their effects on songbirds—impacting critical functions like metabolism, reproduction, and migration—are troubling.
www.allaboutbirds.org www.allaboutbirds.org
 
Glad you put quotes around "safe" in reference to Roundup/glyphosate. We all know California thinks it causes cancer, but California thinks that about a lot of things. At some level of exposure I wouldn't be surprised. I still use it, both on our farm ground and around the house. Hopefully very light exposure, gloves, and handwashing will keep me away from the oncologists.

Also, I was talking to one of our tenants yesterday about the wheat he planted on our ground. Like a lot of fields in Kansas, this field is a near total loss due to drought. However, it did start raining about 5-6 weeks ago, albeit too late for the wheat. That rain has produced a serious crop of weeds in the thin, short wheat. This tenant was saying that weeds (pigweed and kochia in particular) are becoming resistant to roundup all on their own. He is looking for the right mixture of herbicides to control them. Obviously I'd prefer he let the weeds grow, but he has to make a living too and he rents the ground from us.

So, between safety concerns and declining effectiveness, perhaps glyphosate use will decline. Who knows what tactics for weed control might take its place. Other herbicides will have similar issues, but perhaps enough producers will revert to the methods that your tenant uses.
 
i'm glad you brought this up, even though its not getting the debate it deserves. it;s obvious that QF or PF is not going to touch this, and that none of our respective conservation departments will either. when you break it down to its simplest form, quail either don't have a safe enough place to hide, a safe enough place to feed and loaf, a safe enough place to mate, nest and brood, too harsh of weather, not enough water/moisture, not enough quality food, have too many predators trying to kill them, or maybe too much fungus, virus, bacteria, or disease. if that doesn't work, maybe they have lost the will or natural triggers to mate, breed, and nest.

in my little world, where the abundant quail population up until the early 1990"s was gone by 2000. our localized extinction in west central missouri coincided with no till farming, huge spike in turkeys, and noticeable increase of furbearers and avian predators.

30 years later i look around, and still don't see the massive loss of habitat that gets the major blame. yes, i can go 25 miles south and see large pockets of dozed out field edges planted to the road ditch, but thats not the issue here.

what causes quail to initiate the spring/summer mating process? is it temperature? rainfall? growth of nesting or cover plants? lately i suspect insect availability might be the key. maybe i read it somewhere. i guess its best for me to just be mad at the chemical companies for destroying our insect and bird populations in the name of feeding the world. some genius once said, killing off the bees will be the end of humans within a couple of years. don't want to be a felon for trying to even out the obvious predator overpopulation.
 
Your farmer is spot-on. Do neonic treated seeds and glyphosate alone kill quail? In the short term, probably no. Are expansive, commercialized crop fields, void of any annual weeds or insects, beneficial to quail? I would guess there’s not a bit of literature out there that would say “yes”.

I’ve yet to find a farmer that’s in the business to eradicate quail, or any grassland bird for that matter. We live in a day and age which most of the older generation of farmers remembered bird hunting growing up. And, if they were not bird hunters themselves, their parents or grandparents enjoyed the sport - just as they themselves have enjoyed the generational nature of farming passed on over the years. I fear we’re at the tipping point which the next generation does not appreciate a quail, or even know what the species is or represents. Quail are the model for healthy grassland and working land systems across their range. They require a delicate balance of habitat types, insect communities, and working land management practices to make a living. The same could be said for successful, regenerative-type farming operations.

Your farmer has found a way to make a living using farming practices and thoughtfulness not uncommon just 15+ years ago. In today’s age, those practices may not be cool or mainstream, but it still works and I hope he has a healthy bottom line. It is far easier to plant neonic-treated seed, it is far easier to spray insecticide with each pass of the sprayer across the field rather than using integrated pest management practices, it is far easier to let the local co-op or chemical salesman make all their management decisions to guarantee a fruitful crop, much as any other commercialized business turns the reigns over to those guaranteeing a profit.

I come from a row crop background and I by no means intend this post to degrade anyone trying to make a living off the land. I would rather challenge those doing so, from this land we inhabit, to leave it a better place than they found it. We are all simply tenants. Just because we can afford to pay $20k/ac for crop ground by no means makes it “ours”. There is one guarantee, we will all return to this earth which has blessed us with its presence…no matter if we own 5k sq ft or 5k acres. As caretakers of this land, we will all find ourselves ~6 ft from its surface at some point.
 
I know a guy who went to college to be a state game biologist. A couple years into the job he realized he was not going to have the time to pursue his rather lavish big game/waterfowl/ pheasant addiction. So, he became a farm chemical salesman. As he and I were standing on a hill looking at a 300-acer corn field with not a single weed or fence row in sight, I mentioned that it looked like 200 bushel an acer field. He summed it up pretty good. He said yeah, but it's a f###ing biological wasteland!!
 
lonejackfool said:
it;s obvious that QF or PF is not going to touch this, and that none of our respective conservation departments will either.
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My question is why not? It would be reasonably easy to test with a few field biologists and some volunteers. Pay a few farmers in diverse places $50 or $100ac to take part in a control experiment - certainly not outside of their budget. Get a rough estimate of beneficial insect abundance, and of population over time. Difficult to get precise answers because of weather from year to year, but if the trend is there perhaps it would trigger some wider research.

Perhaps a wider question would be a better starting point: Does the widespread use of ag insecticide cause a large reduction in insects? If so why would we let farmers use chemicals that seriously degrade the base of the food chain? I lean strongly libertarian in my politics, but I don't see how liberty includes destroying the commons.

Is QF/PF so concerned about backlash from big ag that they won't tell the truth? Maybe so.
 
seems several groups dedicated to bees, insects, grasslands, songbirds, grassland birds, hunting, waterways, food production, and the environment know that neonicotinoids are the likely the cause of species decline. hmmm. another smart guy said onetime. you can't change the policy of a government, institution, or agency, with data, facts, evidence, or logic. change only comes with the shifting of public opinion.

at this point in my complaining, i always get that gut punch of feeling like a hypocrite for getting my jollys following a setter around shooting the birds i wish could be saved
 
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