Herbicides

Grosse Konzerne wie BASF, Bayer, Monsanto oder die Basler Syngenta mischen schon heute mit im Geschäft mit dem biologischen Pflanzenschutz. Der Markt ist momentan zwar noch klein. Er wächst aber rasant. Viren, Bakterien, Pilze oder Pheromone – sie sind die modernen Krieger im Kampf gegen Schädlinge. Die biologischen Pflanzenschützer sollen künftig deutlich öfter zum Einsatz kommen, denn auch die grossen Agrarunternehmen haben entdeckt, dass sich mit ihnen Geld verdienen lässt. Syngenta zum Beispiel ist vor drei Jahren in den Bereich «Biologicals» eingestiegen. Mehrere Produkte werden bereits verkauft, darunter Bodenbakterien, die Fadenwürmern in Sojabohnen zu Leibe rücken. Diese Schädlinge verursachen allein in den USA Ernteausfälle in Milliardenhöhe. Die wachsende Leidenschaft der Chemiekonzerne für die Biologie ist auch aus der Not geboren, denn der Markt für chemische Pflanzenschutzmittel ist stark unter Druck: Bei vielen Unkräutern, die jahrelang mit dem immer gleichen Gift traktiert wurde, zeigen sich Resistenzen, die Mittel wirken also nicht mehr. Prominentestes Beispiel ist das Unkrautvernichtungsmittel Glyphosat, besser bekannt unter dem Monsanto-Markennamen Roundup oder dem Syngenta-Pendant Touchdown. Das beliebteste Spritzmittel weltweit hat noch andere Probleme: Schon vor Jahren ist der Patentschutz abgelaufen. Seitdem wird das Mittel immer öfter von der asiatischen Billigkonkurrenz produziert. Zudem steht das Mittel bei der WHO im Verdacht, Krebs zu erzeugen. Kräftige Umsatzeinbussen gibt es bereits bei Neonicotinoiden. Diese Gruppe hochwirksamer Insektengifte gilt als mitverantwortlich für das Bienensterben der vergangenen Jahre. Deshalb dürfen Neonicotinoide auch in der Schweiz derzeit nur stark eingeschränkt verkauft werden.

For Tirso Gonzales, an associate professor at UBC Okanagan, the problems with the western world’s way of farming are clear. Current practices such as monocropping, pesticide use, and only using a select group of plant species are solely profit driven and unsustainable. These practices have largely ignored agricultural knowledge of more than 1.2 billion indigenous people and small farmers around the world, knowledge that will be the topic of discussion when Gonzales attends the second Indigenous Terra Madre (Mother Earth), a world conference on the subject in Shillong, India next week. Running from Nov. 3 to 7, the Terra Madre will see indigenous representatives from around the globe attend, and will include discussions, workshops and solution seeking sessions on how indigenous agricultural knowledge systems can be better used in local communities as well as on the world stage. “The dominant Euro-American view of food production is colonial in nature and has fundamentally ignored and disavowed the sustainable agricultural practices employed by indigenous peoples for thousands of years,” said Gonzales, who teaches Indigenous Studies with UBC Okanagan’s Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences.

L’organisation non-gouvernementale Greenpeace a publié un rapport sur l'impact environnemental des pesticides utilisés par l'agriculture industrielle dans l'Union européenne. Ce rapport compile les données d'environ 250 publications scientifiques. Afin de décrire « l'ampleur de la contamination de notre environnement par les pesticides et ses conséquences dramatiques pour certaines espèces vivantes », l’ING Greenpeace a publié un rapport sur l’impact environnemental des pesticides.

Industrial agriculture, with its heavy use of chemical pesticides, pollutes our water and soil and leads to loss of habitats and biodiversity, according to a Greenpeace report. With almost one in four (24.5%) vulnerable or endangered species in the EU being threatened by agricultural effluents, including the use of pesticides and fertilizers, species survival and crucial ecosystem services, like pollination, are at risk. Political and financial support is urgently needed to shift from chemical-intensive, damaging agricultural methods, to sustainable ecological farming practices. In Europe, a catastrophic decline of insects was signaled by the "IUCN Task Force on Systemic Pesticides" in 2015, after analyzing over 800 scientific reports. The impacts can be devastating, as 70 per cent of the 124 major commodity crops directly used for human consumption like apples and rapeseed are dependent on pollination for enhanced seed, fruit, or vegetable production. Dirk Zimmermann, Ecological Farming Campaigner at Greenpeace Germany said: "Europe's dependency on chemical pesticides is nothing short of an addiction. Crops are routinely doused with a variety of chemicals, usually applied multiple times to single crops throughout the whole growing season. Non-chemical alternatives to pest management are already available to farmers but need the necessary political and financial support to go mainstream."

Farmland is home to hundreds of plant and thousands of animal species, many of which are highly dependent on each other forming a complex food web. This was first revealed by our early work on the grey partridge in Sussex. The population of grey partridge was partially dependent on the survival rate of the chicks, which in turn depended on them sourcing enough protein-rich insects. The insects that were most important to the chicks were largely weed-feeding species, and as a consequence, insect abundance was controlled by the management of the crop, but especially by the levels of herbicide inputs. Thus, herbicides were identified as causing an indirect effect on the number of insects within the crop, but also ultimately on the population of grey partridge. Herbicides also reduce the abundance of vegetation and weed seed that are important food sources for insects, birds and small mammals. The indirect effects of pesticides are now a recognised phenomena and along with direct effects are considered responsible for the decline of many other farmland birds because all of them, with the exception of pigeons and doves, feed their young insects during the first few weeks. Autoecological studies have helped to identify the causes behind the decline of some farmland bird species, such as those conducted on grey partridge, corn bunting and yellowhammer. These revealed a strong relationship between invertebrate food availability during breeding and breeding success and this was consequently linked to population change. The majority of other farmland birds also feed their chicks invertebrates because they provide the necessary protein for growth and the energy to resist chilling.

Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 introduced new criteria for the approval of pesticide active substances, including hazard based exclusion criteria with regard to certain classification criteria, environmental concerns, and endocrine disrupting properties. The Regulation specifies criteria for substances with carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction properties (CMR), Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and substances that are persistent, bioaccumulable and toxic (PBTs) including those very persistent and very bioaccumulable. The Regulation also calls for specific scientific criteria for the determination of endocrine disrupting properties, and pending the adoption of these criteria, enacts the so-called ‘interim criteria’, based on classification considerations and ‘toxic effects on the endocrine organs’. Since 2014, EFSA has published 15 Conclusions on new active substances and 26 on applications for renewal that explicitly summarise the assessment of potential endocrine effects under Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009. For 24 active substances, including 3 microbial pesticide active substances, the available information has not led to the detection of specific concerns, however in the case of two substances EFSA has recommended additional studies to confirm this conclusion. Hazard or risk based concerns have been identified from the available information for 15 substances.

“Reading the emails make(s) me want to throw up” tweeted the Food Babe after reading a lengthy series of them posted online by the NY Times on Sept 5th. The emails in question result from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are posted in the side bars of a front-page article by Times reporter Eric Lipton (“Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show”). The article is highly disturbing, but, as the Food Babe implied, the Times buried the real story. The real scoop was not the perfidy and deceit of a handful of individual professors. Buried in the emails is proof positive of active collusion between the agribusiness and chemical industries, numerous and often prominent academics, PR companies, and key administrators of land grant universities for the purpose of promoting GMOs and pesticides. In particular, nowhere does the Times note that one of the chief colluders was none other than the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).