Save the Bees!

Started by Big Insect, 13 January 2021, 12:38:15 PM

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Heedless Horseman

OK done. Cannot be bothered with another pro/against Brexit argument...the EU DOES want to preserve fish stocks...right? LOL!  ;D  So...signed, and let's see...  ;)
(40 Yrs ago. I should have been an Angry Young Man... but wasn't.
Now... I am an Old B******! )  ;)

Big Insect

The 'Sugar Beet' argument - e.g. that as sugar beet doesn't flower before it is harvested, spraying doesn't harm useful flying invertebrates is more than a bit tenuous, as sugar beet is also one of those crops where flowering weeds are left to flourish by farmers as they have little or no impact on the end crop.
So you end up with quite a high level of plant (wild flower/weed) bio-diversity in a sugar beet field as opposed to the monoculture of a wheat field (for example). That actually attracts more insects (bees) onto the crop and so they get effected by the residual effects of this poisonous insecticide.
Apparently the advice to farmers is to spray their fields with weed-killers to reduce the levels of wild flowers and weeds - so the insects (bees) are not attracted onto the crop!
So in effect our sugar beet fields are being blasted by a double dose of poisons.

Of course the organic answer to the problem is proper crop rotation - a couple of years of alternative crops to sugar beet and then maybe a replanting with a different strain of sugar beet. But that reduces the value of the yield on the land. Intensive plant production tends to produce similar issues to intensive meat production - year upon year of growing the same high yield crop on the same land allows pests (& viruses) to proliferate. We've seen it in viniculture for hundreds of years - we just don't seem to learn the obvious lessons.

But I do also agree that there is far too much refined sugar in our food anyway. But that is for another thread!
Cheers
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

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mmcv

Quite so. Of course organic options are expensive. Sugar beets produce 50% of the UKs sugar, but if the prices rise imported sugar will become more attractive. Reducing overall demand for sugar would take some pressure off the intensity, but I don't see that happening. And even if we do, no doubt we'll manage to screw the bees and ecosystem over another way. Look at the intense pollination of almonds in California and the problems it's causing to colonies, along with the syrup adulterated honey from China flooding the market putting legitimate beekeepers out of business.

So it is definitely worth signing the petitions to at least try and reduce one avenue of ecosystem destruction, or at the very least discourage any additional expansion to who can use the dangerous pesticides.

Shedman


Techno II

Quote from: Big Insect on 14 January 2021, 07:27:40 AM

But I do also agree that there is far too much refined sugar in our food anyway. But that is for another thread!

Where do you think I get most of my calories, to keep my finely honed physique in shape ? :o  =O =O =O =O

Weird....I take four heaped sugars in each of the umpteen cups of 'coffee' I drink everyday......But it's very rare that I eat sweets. 

Cheers - Phil.

FierceKitty

Quote from: Techno II on 14 January 2021, 10:11:27 AM
Where do you think I get most of my calories, to keep my finely honed physique in shape ? :o  =O =O =O =O

Weird....I take four heaped sugars in each of the umpteen cups of 'coffee' I drink everyday......But it's very rare that I eat sweets. 

Cheers - Phil.

You just drink them!
I don't drink coffee to wake up. I wake up to drink coffee.

Techno II

YUP !  :)

After I eat 'din dins'.....I eat a complete load of cr*p......twiglets, onion rings, and anything else that I can force down my neck....

Cheers - Phil  :)

Leman

We'll send you food parcels.
The artist formerly known as Dour Puritan!

Orcs

Quote from: Techno II on 14 January 2021, 02:06:19 PM
YUP !  :)

After I eat 'din dins'.....I eat a complete load of cr*p......twiglets, onion rings, and anything else that I can force down my neck....

Cheers - Phil  :)

That makes me really jealous, I only have to think of eating stuff like that to put weight on.
The cynics are right nine times out of ten. -Mencken, H. L.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. - Robert Louis Stevenson