Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by superpermutat0r on Sunday August 11, 2019 @08:25AM (#20667835)

Not that we do nothing. We can ban pesticides, return back to heuristic based agriculture where mistakes are localized and inventions are robust and of limited scale.

Pesticides are mostly used for crops that humans do not eat directly. Food safety was never about beans or sweet potato or other efficient plant sources of protein and calories, it was about wheat, soybean and corn.

Their introduction, just like the introduction of GMOs is a result of a livestock agriculture lobbyists that made sure to increase yield of meat and other animal based products by promoting the use of aggressive compounds. These products are not a strategy for food safety but for luxurious and wasteful eating.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by gravelc on Sunday August 11, 2019 @08:39AM (#20667906)

Ban all pesticides? Every single one of them, synthetic and organic alike? That would be interesting.

Pretending that biotic stresses simply don't exist is....umm..novel.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by slips on Sunday August 11, 2019 @11:28AM (#20668568)

Like the article touched on, there are regenerative practices that do not require pesticides. Frankly, pesticides are a human convenience. Utterly unnecessary for survival. If we weren't focusing on mass producing food, largely unused to directly feed people, we wouldn't need to spray everything with poison to keep things easy and profitable.

Trying to find a "smarter" way to poison things is exactly the status quo and it will lead nowhere good.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by avip on Sunday August 11, 2019 @01:23PM (#20669218)

I think OP is right suggesting this could be possible. But (my addition) only within scope of deconstructing the entire agriculture system as-is (and was for decades), and replacing it with something else. IMO this will be forced upon us (read: our children) anyhow. So better start early.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by hoseja on Monday August 12, 2019 @04:46AM (#20673643)

Most of China, India and Africa will then starve.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by danmaz74 on Sunday August 11, 2019 @08:43AM (#20667918)

Actually, wheat has been the staple for peoples living near the Mediterranean for thousands of years.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by superpermutat0r on Sunday August 11, 2019 @12:56PM (#20669045)

Interestingly, they have raised it without pesticides for that many years too.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by bryanlarsen on Sunday August 11, 2019 @01:28PM (#20669246)

They have used pest control measures for that entire time. Primarily tillage which contributed heavily to the desertification of the area.

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Re:Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in tox... by superpermutat0r on Sunday August 11, 2019 @03:32PM (#20669944)

Yeah, of course there are going to be pests. They used trial and error and the errors were local.

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