by SUSAN MANN
The powdered fluency agent designed to help with seed flow in planters and developed by Bayer CropScience along with a new polymer seed coating that goes on after neonicotinoids are applied to field crop seeds are showing promise in planter dust reduction, says a University of Guelph scientist.
But it’s too early to have “actual data,” says Prof. Art Schaafsma. He will be presenting the plant agriculture department’s neonicotinoid research to farmers at the Ridgetown Campus, where he is based, on Thursday.
Schaafsma says “there’s a very good chance that we can pretty much clean up the dust problem.”
Neonicotinoids have been linked to bee deaths. But Schaafsma says “it’s not that all the bees are being wiped out in Ontario.” This is a very complex discussion because there are “so many confounding factors.”
The scientist describes a polymer coating that is applied after the neonicotinoid insecticide is put on the seed and has dried as “somewhat like” nail polish. “It looks really interesting from what we’ve see so far.”
He expects that “we’ll have some good data to share with the seed industry hopefully in time for their production cycle” this fall, when farmers order their seed, either with neonicotinoid seed treatment, or without.
The pressure to churn out results quickly highlights a problem. “This issue is flying faster than the science and the data can keep up,” Schaafsma says. “The science needs to catch up to the rhetoric and we need some time to make that happen.”
Earlier this week, Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Minister Jeff Leal said in a national newspaper the province intends to move away from the widespread, indiscriminate use of neonicotinoid-based pesticides. During the next few months, Leal plans to consult with industry, farmers and environmental stakeholders on practical options, including considering some type of licensing system.
But where does that announcement leave Schaafsma’s and other researchers’ work? Schaafsma says “it would have been nice to have made that conclusion and directive when we had all the answers.” The government “ haven’t let science catch up.”
The fieldwork for this year of the four-year research project that started last year has been done and samples were collected but researchers must now process the samples “to get the numbers. It’s inappropriate to say: ‘these are the conclusions’ without having the numbers to go with it,” he says. “We’re scrambling to get all of this done.”
Schaafsma says another promising piece of their research work is dust deflectors added to the newer vacuum corn planters that have been blamed for dispersing the seed treatment. The deflectors divert the dust to the ground rather than allowing it to blow into the air. “Some of the seed treatment was being abraded in the process of moving” the seed through the planter equipment and that dust has a very high concentration of insecticide, Schaafsma says, adding “that is the cause for concern.”
Dust is one consideration while another is the build up of neonicotinoid insecticide residues in the soil, air and water and how long those residues stay in the environment, Schaafsma says.
Lab results have shown that lower levels of insecticides affect insect behavior without killing them “but what we don’t know really well is what’s happening in the environment at lower (insecticide) levels and that’s the focus of the debate at the moment,” he says.
On average last year, scientists found about three parts per billion of neonicotinoid residues in surface water near or in cornfields. That is a really small number, he says. “The question is: what does that mean?” Many people are jumping to the conclusion that because it’s there it is causing a problem. “We don’t know.”
More than $2 million in funding from the provincial agriculture ministry, Grain Farmers of Ontario, the trade association CropLife Canada, and the North American-wide Corn Dust Research Consortium has been earmarked for the research. BF
Comments
This is way too promising science, good for farm papers but doesn't stand a chance of making the major news media, no negative slant to it.
Again,its the perception of people, we tolerate insect parts and larvae,maggots,mold,and rodent hair and feces to microscopic levels in our food but tell someone there is 3 parts/per billion of insecticide residue near a corn field and they think farmers are poisoning the earth and we all are doomed.
First comes 3 parts per billion, then 3 parts per trillion, then no herbicides, fungicides or insecticides permitted period. It is a slippery slope folks and there are a bunch of folks wanting to push the sled over the cliff. What's next? Let's see now, perhaps no salt, no sugar and no cholesterol allowed, even 3 parts per billion not allowed in any food.
Thx Art, nice to read a well balanced report and interpretation of the next steps. This is a very good thing and in terms of R&D and corporate time scales it has been fast. This may well eliminate the acute bee deaths in which no one seems to discount the role of neonics. The as yet not definitively proven suspicion in the Ontario context is if the winter losses in excess of what has been typically attributed to mites and management, and the in-season losses thru dwindling and queen loss, are due to neonics. But if it is, it could be from residues arising from dust which persist and find their way to the hive, and/or from residues arising from the seed coat in the ground. So eliminating the seed dust will pave the way to better understand what role and how, if any, neonics play in the above mentioned losses. Greg Hawkins DVM Everton
The EU has banned neonicotinoid pesticides because the evidence of harm to bees was clear. PMRA confirmed the linkage to bee deaths last year. We can't continue to more research at the expense of bees and other pollinators. OMAF's own crop specialists say that no more than 10 - 30% of acreage actually needs neonics so what's going on the other 70% - 90% is doing farmers no good. It's just profit for pesticide mfrs.
I think that we all care about bees, this is a complex issue and needs to be understood fully . The use of foliar insecticides will rise if this treatment is lost .
I think hive health is a much bigger issue then this treatment.
I see the Sierra Club has the only Veromite treatment chemical for bees on there list of products they are also targeting.
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