Farmers have limited ability to avoid neonic-treated seeds due to the near-monopoly on seed. A small number of seed companies now control the entire industry, leaving farmers with few or no choices. Seed companies also limit the crop insurance a farmer can get when using untreated seed. Yet a 2019 meta-analysis by EPA scientists and economists reached the same conclusion as in 2014: Neonicotinoid-treated soybean seed “provide negligible benefits to U.S. farmers.”
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- A majority of soybean, corn, canola and sunflower seeds planted in the U.S. are precoated with neonicotinoid insecticides, also known as “neonics.” More than half of garden plants attractive to bees sold at garden centers are also pretreated with these toxic pesticides
- Neonics have been shown to threaten the entire food chain, having toxic effects not just on pollinators such as bees, but also invertebrates, birds and other wildlife
American agricultural land is now 48 times more toxic to insects than it was two decades ago, and between 1992 and 2014, neonicotinoids accounted for 92% of the total acute insecticide toxicity load - Neonics affect migration behavior of songbirds by affecting their feeding patterns and fat stores. The chemicals act as a rapid appetite suppressant
- Research by the EPA in 2014 and 2019 concluded that neonicotinoid-treated seeds provide no significant financial or agricultural benefits for farmers
Unbeknownst to many…
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This country is ruined.
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Trace, I get it’s hard to expect much from a country founded on mass genocide and chattel slavery.
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They managed to destroy a continent and now the world in a little less than 150 years
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al americans amd american vets use neonics on their pets for fleas without giving it a second thought. tens of millions of pets and livestock. they are omnipresent. no way to justify this insanity
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I wasn’t are of their use in flea spray, Gloria. Oh joy.
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All flea treatments are neonics because they are so potent. A drop on the neck of an animal lasts a month and kills all eggs for a month or more. Advantage, nitenpyem, etc. That is what veternarians precribe for fleas on cats, dogs and other animals
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