Europe's beekeepers take on the big agrochemical companies

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

At issue is the EU's announcement of a two-year suspension of neonicotinoid applications on all crops judged attractive to bees, including canola and corn, which one think-tank says
could cost 50,000 jobs

by NORMAN DUNN

European farmers generally try to avoid butting heads with the beekeeping community. After all, bees boost yields by up to 30 per cent of some 90 commercial crops, including canola, corn and soybeans.

But most crop growers also depend on insecticides for acceptable harvests and so there's confrontation between beekeepers and croppers using neonicotinoid insecticides, which have been applied for some years in seed treatments and sprays by companies Bayer and Syngenta.  One of the best-known neonicotinoid products is imidacloprid, used against cabbage stem flea beetles on oilseed rape. And this spray family is increasingly blamed for high bee death rates, widespread loss of colonies and general reduction in honey production efficiency throughout the continent.

Quite rightly, honey bees have a very powerful lobby – one so strong that after only two years' consideration the Health and Consumer Policy Commission of the European Union (EU) has announced it wants a two-year suspension of neonicotinoid applications in Europe on all crops judged attractive to bees, including canola and corn.

What's more, the commission wants to see this ban in place by July this year. Now, anyone that's used to the usual speed of the European Union's bureaucracy will recognize that this is lightning-fast for Europe. Remember, we're talking about a legislative body that started discussing a ban on stalls for dry sows about 20 years ago, introduced a 12-year introduction period in 2000 and, even after the absolute deadline in January this year, still found itself unable to apply the ban fully in over 50 per cent of European hog farms!

Much better reaction times are more often to be found with agrochemical companies. They're well-used to facing down serious – but sometimes also spurious – consumer protection or environmental safety campaigns. So when the proposed neonicotinoid ban was first discussed, agrochemical businesses lost no time in opening up with their big guns.

First to fire away was the Bayer-financed Humboldt Forum for Food and Agriculture (HFFA). This is an international think-tank described as independent and non-profit-making. It reckons that removal of neonicotinoid treatments could cost as much as €17 billion (C$ 22.7 billion) over the first five years in European crop yield reductions, plus at least 50,000 lost farming jobs. On top of this, the HFFA warns of probably not insignificant ecological costs in countries increasing cropping area to supply resultant shortfalls in Europe.

Farmer unions and co-operatives throughout Europe joined in this spring with a barrage of similar fears for the cropping world if neonicotinoids disappeared from the agchemical  dealership shelves.    

There's no argument, however, that the health and survival of bee populations are crucial. In North America, as well as in Europe, colonies are disappearing under a range of afflictions, including the varroa mite and what appears to be a growing number of viruses. Precise figures are hard to find, though. Hive losses during the 2009-2010 winter were put at up to 30 per cent in some European countries by the International Bee Research Association which terms the results "substantially up on the previous year."

But this association is the first to point out that there have been similar fluctuations in the past. Nevertheless, popular feeling is that the neonicotinoids must bear a proportion of the blame for current bee diseases and deaths. The campaigning organization Avaaz (which calls itself a global democratic web movement) has collected 2.2 million petition signatures against their use in just a few months.

Of course, there's scientific backing too. In 2012, two published reports agreed that hives with bees in possible contact with these pesticides suffered an 85 per cent greater reduction in queen bee losses and a doubling of bees that lost their navigation abilities when foraging and never returned to their respective hives.

The immediate result has been the aforementioned decision of the European Food Safety Authority that the three most commonly applied neonicotinoids – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam – are now "unacceptable." The proposed ban is to last for two years, not only for spring-sown crops attractive to bees such as corn but also, it would appear, for spring flowering rapeseed sown in the fall.

France and the Netherlands accept the initial two-year ban. In fact, France has already stopped neonicotinoid applications on oilseed rape. One EU country, Slovenia, has already imposed a complete ban of the pesticide for all crops.  But Britain and Germany are asking for an exemption, at least for oilseed rape protection. In return, both countries undertake to impose updated application regulations so that bees will be less exposed to the neonicotinoids. In 2015, the situation is to be reviewed with either new legislation for the pesticides being introduced or the ban becoming permanent throughout the EU.

This threat has already got the agrochemical giants working hard on alternative crop health strategies, while the bee protection lobby are examining the current health disasters even more closely to see what other factors may be involved.

If the new legislation encourages advances down both these roads, it has to be welcomed with open arms! BF

Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.