The new limits would be among the nation’s most extensive for agricultural use of neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides used to kill plant-damaging pests like aphids. The highly potent pesticides have been shown to harm bees, birds, and other creatures.

Aimed at protecting bees that pollinate crops, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s proposed rules would restrict four closely-related neonicotinoid chemicals: imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and dinotefuran.

Unveiled in February, the rules would limit when and how much can be applied, depending on the specific chemical, the crop and, in some cases, the presence of honeybees or other pollinators. California’s pesticide regulators are still evaluating public feedback and there is no specific timeframe for finalizing the proposal.

Neonicotinoids are the most popular insecticides in the world—although not in California, according to the state pesticide agency.

More than a decade in the making, California’s reevaluation of neonicotinoids began in 2009, after the agency received a report from pesticide manufacturer Bayer CropScience that “showed potentially harmful effects of imidacloprid to pollinators.” A 2014 law set a series of deadlines for reevaluating their risks and adopting “any control measures necessary to protect pollinator health.”

In addition, a bill in the Legislature would ban use of neonicotinoids in homes, yards, and other outdoor non-agricultural settings, starting in 2024. A variety of consumer products are registered for use in California, such as BioAdvanced All-in-One Rose and Flower Care Liquid Concentrate, which contains imidacloprid.

The bill trails other states, including New Jersey and Maine, that have already banned outdoor uses in gardens and residential areas. New Jersey’s ban extends to commercial landscapes, like golf courses, too.

The European Union banned several neonicotinoids for all outdoor uses because of the risks to bees. And other states already have some restrictions on agricultural use, largely by allowing the chemicals to be bought or used only by those with specific training. Rhode Island has also barred neonicotinoids when crops are blooming.

If finalized, California’s proposal to restrict agricultural use could “significantly impact when and how” neonicotinoid products can be used in the nation’s No. 1 agricultural state, according to an analysis by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. 

“This is critical,” said Karen Morrison, acting chief deputy director of the Department of Pesticide Regulation. “Pollinators play a very important role in the ecosystem at large as well as for crops and being able to produce food in the state.”

California regulators anticipate the rule would reduce neonicotinoids applied to plants and soil by 45 percent. Seeds coated in neonicotinoids—a major use of the chemicals—would not be restricted.

California growers say the restrictions could hamstring their power to protect crops and could ultimately lead to worse outcomes for pollinators.

Limiting the use of neonicotinoids could force the citrus industry, for instance, to use other pesticides that are “not necessarily what the state of California wants” and could require “multiple sprays, something that may pose more risk to bees,” said Casey Creamer, president and CEO of California Citrus Mutual, a trade association of citrus growers.

Almonds, cherries, citrus, cotton, grapes, strawberries, tomatoes, and walnuts are major crops expected to be highly affected by the restrictions. These crops make up about half of the state’s agricultural exports and two-thirds of the acreage treated with neonicotinoids from 2017 to 2019. Fresno, Kern, Tulare, Monterey, and San Joaquin top the list of counties where the most neonicotinoids were applied.

Some replacement chemicals may be more toxic to pests’ natural enemies—worsening infestations, the California agriculture department warned in its analysis.

Such alternatives like pyrethroids, for instance, are also “very toxic to bees, in that they hit the bee, the bee dies. If they’re in the spray, they all die,” said Robert Van Steenwyk, a cooperative extension specialist emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the authors of the report. “So, that isn’t a great alternative.”

The regulation contains some exceptions to allow neonicotinoids for invasive pests like the Asian citrus psyllid, which spreads citrus greening disease.

Though the California agriculture department does not anticipate any crop losses, its experts do expect an increase in costs because of the price of replacement pesticides.

The eight highly affected crops collectively earned nearly $19 billion in revenue in 2019, according to the assessment by the California agriculture department. Had the regulations been in place, costs to the growers would have ranged between $13.3 million in 2017 to $12.1 million in 2019.

Representatives of pesticide manufacturer Bayer CropScience raised several concerns about the proposal in a letter to the pesticide agency, including that it “is not grounded in science.” In addition, the proposed pesticide application rates “are not efficacious and therefore will not provide control of target pests” on some crops, the company said.

Birds, Bees, and Aquatic Life

Inspired by the toxicity of nicotine, neonicotinoids coat crop seeds, are sprayed on plants and drench the soil in fields. The chemicals suffuse the plant and its pollen and nectar, attacking the central nervous systems of insects.

As their use has climbed, so too have studies revealing that they threaten birds, bees, and aquatic creatures. Potential human health risks remain under investigation.

Wild bees living and foraging near crops grown from neonicotinoid-treated seeds showed large population die-offs in a study funded by pesticide manufacturers.

Honey bees are reared and managed for their honey production and ability to pollinate crops, among other services. Research shows the insecticides kill worker bees, reduce immunity of the hive and leave colonies without their queens.

The insecticides also decimate zooplankton and therefore the fish that feed on them. Birds stop eating, and delay migration. In an assessment of three of the chemicals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found they are likely to harm between 67 percent and 79 percent of federally endangered or threatened species and between 56 percent and 83 percent of their critical habitats.

Part of the problem is that the chemicals don’t stay put. They “can move from treated plants to pollinators and from plants to pests to natural enemies,” wrote entomology professors Steve Frank at North Carolina State University and John Tooker of Pennsylvania State University in the journal PNAS in 2020. “We believe that neonicotinoids pose broader risks to biodiversity and food webs than previously recognized.”

The chemicals are turning up in groundwater and surface water, including 93 percent of water samples pulled from creeks, rivers, and runoff in Southern California and 97 percent of samples drawn from agricultural stretches of the Central Coast and Southern California.

Jacob Cecala learned that neonicotinoids are far more toxic to bees than he anticipated during his graduate research at the University of California, Riverside.

A month after he treated native plants from a California nursery with the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, following the label instructions exactly, Cecala discovered that all his bees were dying—their little bodies still on the flowers.

His goal had been to study the non-fatal effects of the pesticide on a species of bee used for pollinating alfalfa crops. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, what am I going to do? How am I going to complete my dissertation?’” Cecala said.

It took him another year—and cutting down the amount of pesticide by two-thirds—to find out that although more bees survived, the survivors still stopped foraging for food as much and their reproduction dropped drastically.

“Bees are insects—they’re just as susceptible to these compounds as an aphid or some other insect pest would be,” said Cecala, who is now a postdoctoral scientist at the University of California, Davis. “That’s where the problem lies.”

‘Some Very Concerning Gaps Remain’

“As is often the case, California is leading the way with the first state regulatory system for neonics in the nation,” said Daniel Raichel, acting director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s pollinator initiative. “It’s an important first step—especially in regards to pollinator protection—but some very concerning gaps remain.”

California does not address, for instance, crop seeds coated with neonicotinoids, which permeate the plant as it grows but also seep into water, soil, and other plants. Coated seeds “may introduce a significant contribution of pesticide mass that remains unreported” in California, state officials said in a November workshop.

But the state doesn’t regulate treated seeds as pesticides and found that the seeds don’t pose a significant risk to pollinators, Morrison said, although she added, “this is an area that we’re actively looking at.”

Environmentalists also raised concerns that the proposal is primarily aimed at reducing risk to carefully tended hives of honeybees—not its native bee species and other pollinators.

But state officials said even though their assessment analyzed the risks to honeybees, the rules would protect wild bees, too.

The proposal bars spraying plants and drenching soil with neonicotinoids when crops that are attractive to bees are blooming, and sets a cap for seasonal application. It also establishes crop-specific restrictions on application rates and timing that, for crops moderately attractive to bees, only apply when hives of honey bees or other managed pollinators are on the field.

“Honey bees are actually pretty odd as far as bees go,” Cecala said. They make honey, for one thing, and live in hives. The consequences of pesticide exposure can be much more drastic for California’s solitary bees. If a solitary mother bee “gets exposed to a pesticide and she is not able to reproduce, that essentially ends her entire genetic line,” Cecala said.

Legislators are considering closing one gap environmental groups have identified in California’s draft regulation: non-agricultural use of the pesticides, including in gardens and commercial landscapes like golf courses. These account for 15 to 20 percent of known neonicotinoid use in California, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.

The bill, which contains exceptions for veterinary use and indoor pest control, is set to be triaged by the Senate Appropriations Committee in August, when it decides which bills will survive and which will die.

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from San Ramon and author of the bill, said other states have already taken the lead on banning the use of these chemicals in households and neighborhoods.

“We’re not leading the way,” she said. “We’ve got to get our act together!”

This article originally appeared in CalMatters, and is reprinted with permission.

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“This is something we can all agree on,” Representative Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), who introduced the bill in December, said at the event, which was hosted by the advocacy organization Food Tank. “There’s no reason not to do this.”

Experts and advocates say the bill will make it easier for businesses and organizations to donate surplus food, thereby mitigating the climate impacts of food waste and providing food to communities in need. And it has garnered strong bicameral and bipartisan support: Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Dan Newhouse (R-Washington), Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana), Grace Meng (D-New York), Carolyn Maloney (D-New York), and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-District of Columbia) all spoke or shared statements at the event. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) introduced a companion bill in the Senate last fall, and Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) provided a statement of support.

During his remarks, McGovern was bullish on the bill’s prospects. “Whether we attach it to a bill like the Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) Act or whether we have to bring this separately, I just want to get it over the finish line before the end of the year,” he said. “We have to focus on what we can get done in the next couple of months.”

And while the immediate focus was on the practical over transformational, McGovern also said that he and Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine)—who was absent due to a COVID-19 diagnosis—were spearheading a broader push to cut food waste and food insecurity through upcoming CNR and farm bill negotiations and the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.

Pingree has introduced and championed several other bills to tackle food waste by changing practices in school cafeterias and inconsistencies with “use by” dates on food labels. Several provisions she introduced during the last farm bill cycle were also included in the 2018 bill.

Unlike contentious food issues like SNAP that inspire party battles, simultaneously stopping food waste and increasing food donations comes with a moral halo that appeals to both sides of the aisle (and to the many nonprofits and businesses in the room, including Weight Watchers, GrubHub, and Bowery Farming). Every day, the U.S. wastes the equivalent of 1,000 calories of food per person—enough to feed more than 150 million people each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

That waste of resources also produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and food sent to landfills becomes an additional climate liability. Landfills are the country’s third-largest source of methane, a powerful climate-warming gas. Wasted food is the single largest category of material that ends up in landfills.

Still, the EPA’s research shows that preventing waste reduces significantly more greenhouse gases than donating excess food, and ReFed ranks strengthening food rescue behind many other climate solutions. But experts at the EPA and organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council say that some surplus food will always exist, so eliminating the methane emissions it would create in landfills is a no-brainer. During the event, Emily Broad Lieb, founder of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, said her team gets frequent calls asking about liability issues with food donation. “The issues being addressed in this bill are things we talk about more than once a week,” she said.

The Food Donation Improvement Act would act as an update to a 1996 law that was meant to protect companies that donate surplus food from liability for illnesses that could result from improperly handled food—something that companies of all sizes regularly cite as an impediment to making food donations. Congress passed the earlier law without putting an agency in charge of fleshing out the details, and the update would require the USDA to release regulations clarifying the protections that exist. “The whole point was to try to make it easier and make people feel more comfortable in being able to donate food. It turns out that we need it to be clarified,” McGovern explained.

It would also extend liability protection to food businesses and farms that want to donate food directly to people in need without going through a registered nonprofit. While they were not covered in the past, for example, a restaurant shut down by the pandemic serving community meals would be protected, as would a school that wanted to send surplus food from meal programs home with low-income families. Finally, it will also cover organizations and companies that want to take surplus food and not just give it away for free but also sell it at a very low cost—such as nonprofit grocery stores that accept donations.

All of the changes are modest tweaks, and advocates see them as low-hanging (ugly) fruit in the fight against food waste.

However, critics have long questioned an emphasis on food donations as a solution to hunger, since it can deprive low-income individuals of agency and does not address the root causes of food insecurity. At the event, chef and anti-hunger advocate Tom Colicchio expressed concern that lawmakers opposed to more foundational changes like universal school meals, SNAP expansions, or a higher minimum wage would point to food donation as having addressed the much deeper issue of food insecurity.

During a panel, DC Central Kitchen CEO Mike Curtin expressed dismay at a recent Capital Area Food Bank report that found that 36 percent of Washington, D.C. residents experienced food insecurity in 2021, even though 77 percent of them reported being employed.

“This [legislation] is needed . . . but it is only a tool, and we cannot kid ourselves into thinking that this will change those numbers,” Curtin said. “This is one piece of the large, vexing puzzle we continue to work on.”

Read More:
Stopping Food Waste Before It Starts Is Key to Reaching Climate Goals
The Farm to Food Bank Movement Aims to Rescue Small-Scale Farming and Feed the Hungry
Op-Ed: Hunger Is a Political Decision. We Can Work to End It.

Speaking of Hunger… On July 6, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations released its 2022 report on the “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” and the findings are overwhelmingly alarming. After staying mostly steady since 2015, the proportion of the world population affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, reaching 9.8 percent. That proportion is equivalent to 828 million people, an increase of nearly 200 million people since 2019. “These are depressing figures for humanity. We continue to move away from our goal of ending hunger by 2030,” Gilbert F. Houngbo, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said in a press release. “The ripple effects of the global food crisis will most likely worsen the outcome again next year. We need a more intense approach to end hunger.”

Read More:
Hunger Continues to Plague Americans. Here’s Why—and What to Do About It
Op-Ed: It Takes More Than Food to Fight Hunger

Intentional Inflation? In the latest development related to power and concentration in the meat industry, major wholesale food distributor Sysco is suing Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef for illegally colluding to raise prices and cheat ranchers. The lawsuit comes on the heels of the Department of Justice failing to win convictions against poultry industry executives over similar price-fixing allegations. At the same time, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s work as part of the Biden administration’s “competition council.” In the statement, he cited recent actions to make it easier for farmers to report antitrust violations, updating enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, and funding for small and mid-sized meat processing plants. The agency received more than 300 applications for funding that totaled $360 million—more than two and a half times the funds available.

Read More:
Congress Grills Beef Industry Leaders Over Consolidation
Just a Few Companies Control the Meat Industry: Can a New Approach Level the Playing Field?

Roundup All Around. According to a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 87 percent of children and 80 percent of adults tested had detectable levels of glyphosate—the controversial and ubiquitous weedkiller—in their urine. Residue in food was the primary route of exposure. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Roundup. In 2020, Bayer, the company that manufactures it, agreed to pay $10 billion to settle lawsuits all over the country brought by individuals that claim the chemical caused their cancers. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as a “probable” carcinogen, while the EPA has resisted that classification. “The Environmental Protection Agency should take concrete regulatory action to dramatically lower the levels of glyphosate in the food supply and protect children’s health,” said Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist with the Environmental Working Group, in a news release about the analysis.

Read More:
Inside Monsanto’s Day in Court: Scientists Weigh in on Glyphosate’s Cancer Risks
Community-Led Efforts to Ban Glyphosate in Public Spaces Pick Up Speed

The post The Field Report: In DC, Lawmakers Push ‘Common Sense’ Food Waste Solution appeared first on Civil Eats.

Grocery prices have risen every month for the past year, driven by everything from the lingering pandemic, air pollution from fossil fuel particulates, farm labor shortages, and corporate price gouging. A world where droughts and floods regularly devastate crop yields only exacerbates these factors to ratchet up the cost of food.

For meat eaters, the pain is most acute, with the cost of animal products outpacing fruits and veggies. But vegetarians needn’t look so smug. With record-breaking floods threatening China’s grain harvest and Russia’s unconscionable blockade of Ukrainian wheat exports, the cost of staples such as cereal is also climbing higher.

Fortunately, there is an answer to the price shocks that have jumped from the meat fridge to the produce aisle. It lies in the lowly legume.

In order to prosper on American farmland and in American stockpots, however, beans are going to need a lot more help from the US government. What the agriculture sector needs right now is a Bean New Deal—large scale investment in legume production, and a snazzy brand campaign to boot.

Beans are a staple of diets across the globe. They’re rich in protein, use far less water and land than other crops, and even act as a natural fertilizer to replenish the soil they’re grown in. The United Nations went so far as to call pulses, a legume’s dry seed, the “food of the future” because of their low carbon footprint and high nutritional value.

But a sustainability scorecard won’t be enough to convince American farmers to plant more beans. Agriculture insurance companies predict an anticipated decline up to 15 percent in bean acreage planted compared to last year. This is quite possibly another consequence of climate change: as the West’s drought reduces the amount of soil available to till, farmers have to weigh which crops will yield highest profits. Dry edible beans, the kind you’d use to cook a nice casserole, don’t usually fetch the same prices as other farm commodities. Legumes may be cheap for consumers, but this makes them less attractive to planters.

That is, unless the government steps in to incentivize bean growth for the benefit of the planet and for consumer’s pocketbooks.

Agricultural subsidies are the most powerful tools the federal government has to shape what Americans consume year by year. Since 2015, the feds have spent $119 billion to underwrite the agriculture market, mainly to support growers of just five crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice. These subsidies help farmers weather freezes and droughts—increasingly intensified by climate change—and ensure a healthy supply of domestic crops to the market.

But Jefferson’s agrarian ideal, this is not. Many of the subsidies go to the harvesting of enormous monocultures at factory farms—from 1995 to 2020, 78 percent of the $187 billion the federal government dished went to the top 10 percent of farms. These monocultures drain soil of its nutrients—increasing the use of fertilizer, which pollutes local waterways with nitrogen—and diminish the genetic variability of the crop, leaving it susceptible to pathogens. Instead of financing environmental degradation by corporate titans, the government should help out the little guy.

What’s more, because farm commodities like corn and soybeans are often used for livestock feed, subsidies for monocultures are effectively subsidies for the meat industry. Animal agriculture is already a horror show of labor abuses and unimaginable cruelty. If the days of the $4 Big Mac are over, so be it. With prices for poultry and beef continuing to rise, the government should ease spending on meat and pay farmers to plant beans.

Getting more beans to the market, of course, doesn’t mean that consumers will buy them. Let’s be honest: Beans have an image problem. The United States did experience an uptick in bean sales early in the pandemic, likely as a result of their reputation as an essential of emergency preparedness. But that’s just it—beans are reliable, not sexy. “Hard pass,” an 18-year-old told The New York Times at COVID’s onset. You can imagine her wrinkling her nose at a can of garbanzos.

The government can do a lot more to tout the virtues of the bean. The California Milk Processor Board, after all, once used an iconic slogan to buoy dairy sales in the state. During the Great Depression, the Department of Agriculture gave Uncle Sam a wife and a radio program to share easy, nutritious recipes with the public. You can equally imagine that same 18-year-old discovering a tasty bean recipe on TikTok.

Investing in bean science would also make foods made from beans tastier. Much of the corn and soybeans that the country grows isn’t meant for human consumption. It’s meant to fatten up animals for human consumption. The plants are grown to maximize crop yield at the expense of protein content. And protein content, researchers suspect, is the key to developing the perfect meat substitute, according to a new report from Wired. With more research and development into legume breeding, beans could very well be the future of meat.

But right now, the United States is ceding ground to other countries when it comes to a centralized effort to scale up alternative proteins, including beans. While the Netherlands, Israel, and China invest billions of dollars in finding the food of the future, the US spends billions propping up an industry responsible for 20 percent of global emissions. That’s the argument that Alex Smith and Ariel Ron make in a recent white paper. Their solution? Ramped-up federal investment to commercial alternative proteins, coordination nodes between agencies and industry, and additional university research into the science of bean breeding.

Sounds like a Bean New Deal to me.

The post Op-ed: With Food Prices on the Rise, Is a ‘Bean New Deal’ the Answer? appeared first on Civil Eats.