“Organic production contributes to a high level of biodiversity and the preservation of species and natural habitats.”

A misleading statement, and part of the European Commission’s official organic campaign. Organic production can in fact lead to the destruction of natural habitats; and a loss of habitats will usually result in a loss of species.

The ‘preservation of natural habitats’ is a common claim made in favour of organic agriculture; it is an argument put forward by organic enthusiasts who misunderstand the relationship between agriculture* and the European ‘natural’ environment.

Let’s firstly consider the fact that Europe has little in the way of ‘natural habitat’; centuries of extensive land use (mainly farming) have created a patchwork of cultural landscapes – a rich and diverse collection of habitats and species that we call the ‘countryside’. Many of Europe’s natural habitats are the direct or indirect result of human intervention – most notably – agricultural practices. Europe is essentially a very large – in places intensively managed – garden. When we venture outside of our urban spaces into the ‘countryside’, we are not entering ‘wilderness’ or ‘virgin territory’, what we see is diverse, beautiful and ‘natural’, but very much of our design.

The most serious threat to nature (without exception) is land use change that results in the loss of natural areas and precious habitats.

Biodiversity needs space to survive, areas for habitats that support the wildlife upon which agriculture relies. Europe uses around 40% of its land for agriculture, so it is not surprising that demand for agricultural land is cited as the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss in Europe.

If the biggest threat to biodiversity is the loss of habitats to agricultural land, then perhaps the key focus for biodiversity conservation should be to support the implementation of modern agricultural practices that maximise output on the existing agricultural land base – in other words, to adopt farming practices that reduce the need for expanding farmland in to natural areas.

Fact: inefficient farming practices require more land to produce the same yield.
Fact: crop protection products (pesticides) improve crop yield per land area.

Pesticides can be harmful to biodiversity if overused or misused; but, they also provide a means to save biodiversity by making better use of existing agricultural land and therefore avoiding continued loss of natural habitats.

As populations continue to grow, demand for food rises, and so too do concerns about food security. Pesticides and other agricultural technologies offer solutions for sustainable agriculture and provide means for us to ‘produce more, with less’. A trait of timely importance as today farmers are required to increase productivity and at the same time protect nature and biodiversity, all whilst making more efficient use of natural resources.

This is an incredible challenge, and whilst modern agricultural practices offer solutions, political and cultural barriers can inhibit progress. The tendency for certain political or interest group campaigns to uphold organic agriculture as the ‘green’ way, or the answer to our biodiversity conservation problems, is essentially counterproductive. Organic agriculture is an important facet of a necessarily diverse array of agricultural practices, but it is too hungry for land to be the only solution to halting the loss of biodiversity.

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*This is the second in a series of posts we’ll be making, examining the misleading nature of parts of the EC’s organic campaign. We examine the campaign with crop production in mind – livestock and other agriculture is not considered.

Living in Europe, malaria and DDT are a distant worry. People often fail to realise how deadly the disease is and that pesticides are used as one of the most effective tools for destroying the carrier of malaria – the mosquito.

It takes one bite

Malaria was only identified as a cause of death only at the end of the 18th century. People died suddenly and very painfully not knowing what was it that was killing them. It appeared as if they were dying from fever and the only association made at the time was the connection to the “bad air” (MAL – bad, ARIA –air) as the disease hit mainly in hot and humid parts of the world.

In 1897 the link between the mosquito, the parasite that it carries, and the cycle of bite – infection was made. When a person is bitten by a mosquito he is infected with the parasite Plasmodium that finds home in the liver where it multiplies. If not treated it infects red blood cells and prohibits the transmission of blood to vital organs, causing a very painful death. All it takes is just that one bite; once infected, the parasite stays in your body forever.

No cure, only prevention

Understanding the behaviour of malaria paved the way for medical and chemical innovation and modern ways of prevention. Regrettably a cure is yet to be discovered. The most effective management of the disease is prevention; attention is focused on preventing mosquitoes the opportunity to bite humans.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends two main approaches for reducing the level of malaria transmission. They are called the vector control measures.

The first is the long lasting insecticide treated bed nets (LLINs) that create a protective barrier against mosquitoes. They play an important role, particularly when you are asleep as the mosquitoes- like burglars – work best at night. How does it work? You hang the net above your bed, tuck it under the mattress so there will be no way in for the mosquito to enter and have a good night sleep. Your work is done. The net is made with holes too small for mosquitoes to pass, but the real magic is an insecticide that coats the material, keeping the mosquitoes away and ensuring the long term effectiveness of the net.

The other suggested way of reducing malaria’s spread is Indoor Residual Spraying. These three letters IRS save the lives of millions. WHO approved 12 insecticides for use in IRS including DDT. Insecticides are sprayed on house walls to prevent settling of the mosquito. The substance repels the insect from a room, irritating it enough to find an alternative location for a feed. However if both of those actions fail and the mosquito is still there flying around like a superman the long-term contact with DDT should result shortly in his death. Once sprayed, DDT remains effective up to 12 months.

Better safe than sorry

The use of DDT is a controversial topic, but what is often forgotten is the fact that IRS involves spraying with very low quantities. To give you an example it’s 2 grams* of the active substance per meter square. That’s how little you need to use to make it 100% effective. The total amount of DDT used for fighting malaria is merely a fraction of what was used once in agriculture sprays.

The indiscriminate spraying of DDT posed unnecessary risk to humans and the environment. However, this mistake of the past should not cost lives today. DDT used in negligible doses saves lives and limits the spread of disease. Continued calls to ban the use of DDT are irresponsible and threaten the health and wellbeing of millions.

DDT causes minimal or close to zero possibility of contaminating the wider environment, because the substance does not escape to the wildlife. Many “green” groups in Africa have recognised that malaria and poverty are far worse than the quantities of DDT in the environment and now they are full supporters of responsible use of the substance for IRS.

Join

There are many ways that one can contribute and help in fighting malaria. You can donate a bed net, you can organise an event, there are tweets you can follow to raise awareness. There are plenty of ways to participate in this important cause. The aim is to eradicate the disease by 2015. Ambitious but not impossible!!!

http://www.malarianomore.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pacPN6AW_Yc

http://www.fightingmalaria.org/

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*Correction: on first publication (12:49 CET 21.04.2011) this article incorrectly stated that the active ingredient of DDT is applied at 0.02g/m²

New scientific research suggests that pesticides have a lesser effect on bees than first thought. The debate took to the airwaves last week on BBC’s Radio 4, here’s the full transcript…

Charlotte Smith (Farming Today, BBC Radio 4): Insecticides may not be as bad for bees as previously thought, according to the American researcher who’d linked bee deaths with a type of insecticide, neonicitinoids. Dr Jeff Pettis from the US Agricultural Research Service now says the chemicals don’t appear to have as big an effect on bee health as he first thought. In the US honey bee numbers have fallen by a third and here too there’s been a decline in the bee population. Well as we’ll hear in a moment environmentalists and the pesticide industry disagree on the safety of neonicitinoid insecticides which are applied to seeds and so are taken up by the growing plant…

Dr Pettis first made the link between these chemicals and bee deaths after lab tests.

Dr Jeff Pettis (US Agricultural Research Service): In the lab it seemed clear there was this interaction between very low levels of one of the neonicitinoids and the pathogen. The pathogen went up when they were exposed. Surprisingly though when we went back to those colonies in the field and we had a number of replicates, ten replicate colonies of each one, and we looked at those colonies over time, ‘cause we continued to feed them the pesticide in the field, we didn’t see any change in nosema levels.

CS: So can we conclude that neonicitinoids are safe for bees?

JP: They’re safer than some of the older chemistries certainly. There’s one, one caveat to are they safer, they actually move systemically in the plant so plants, they can either treat the seed or you can treat the soil, the plant will take this up, the bees could be exposed in their pollen and nectar.

CS: Is it really that we don’t know enough about the effects of these insecticides so perhaps there’s an argument for applying the precautionary principle when it comes to using them on farms?

JP: The bulk of evidence over the past ten years in, in a variety of crops has been that bees in some cases are doing better next to crops that used to have other heavy pesticide use.

CS: Knowing what you know would you use a neonicitinoid insecticide?

JP: I might use it in place of a conventional, more conventional one that I know has higher toxicity. So in that sense yes, I think the, the prudent approach is to try to produce food using the, the best methods available. These compounds, they have replaced these more harsh chemicals that were really detrimental to bees, so it really is a balancing act.
I’m doing the research because I’m concerned, I’m highly concerned about pollinator health. But right now I think the balance has to tip in, in favour of their continued use in agriculture, mainly just because of the food production demands that we’re under.

CS: This is though something of a U turn on your original findings which linked neonicitinoids to damaging bee health.

JP: When I was asked about them a few years ago I was surprised by the level of response in, in the lab at very low levels. And with a bit of time in looking back at the colonies as a whole in the field and not seeing the same response, which I definitely would have predicted from the lab studies, it meant that things just aren’t as simple as sometimes they appear.

CS: So from your own research do you conclude that it is a good idea to use neonicitinoids or not?

JP: In light of the evidence that I have to date I would say their use on certain crops is still justified. I think we have to look almost crop by crop. I really can’t give a yes or no answer. It’s, it’s a gradient.

CS: Dr Jeff Pettis from the US Agricultural Research Service.

Listening to that are Matt Shardlow from Buglife, the invertebrate conservation trust, and Dr Julian Little who’s from Bayer Cropscience.

So Matt Shardlow this is all a balancing act.

Matt Shardlow (Buglife): One of the difficulties here is a scientific difference in how easy it is to do lab work and how easy it is to do field work and there’s an awful amount of evidence showing a range of effects in lab work where bees that are exposed to really tiny quantities of neonicitinoids, smaller than they would encounter in the field in pollen and nectar are, are massively impacted in terms of their health. The difficulty with field studies is that it’s much harder to get the information and to control the condition so that your results are scientifically valid. And Jeff Pettis’s …

Dr Julian Little (Bayer Cropscience): But that’s the reason why you have to do those field studies, because if we were just to take laboratory studies as Dr Pettis said earlier, if we’d have just taken the responses from the labs then we wouldn’t have insecticides out there. It’s not surprising in the end that insects …

MS: Julian if I could just finish, as I, as I, Julian …

JL: … are affected by an insecticide (indistinct).

CS: Dr Little you’ve, you’ve made your point, let Matt Shardlow finish his.

MS: So a lot of the studies haven’t been published, they haven’t been peer reviewed. They’re often done over two days and they’re not going to show chronic effects. The work that has been published has now been scientifically reviewed by James Cresswell of Exeter University and he found that even the published work wasn’t able statistically to show the impacts that you would predict from the lab work. And we also have to consider that some of the invertebrates that we’re looking at, for instance moths and butterflies which are also pollinating insects, are orders of magnitude more sensitive to these chemicals than the bees are.

CS: But what Dr Pettis made very clear is that there is no clear yes or no answer here. It’s shades of balancing. So given that we have to feed an increasing number of people don’t we have to just accept that we manage this risk and get on with it?

MS: Well I think those are very similar arguments to the arguments that were used just a few decades ago about DDT aren’t they, you know? And it does take a bit of time for the science to come about through independent means that shows the impacts are big on wildlife and on pollinators. Only yesterday we revealed that in the UK the numbers of incidents involving mass bee deaths from neonicitinoids is on the rise. It’s gone up from nought per cent in 2008 …

Dr Julian Little: No that’s (indistinct) clearly not true and …

MS: … to twenty seven per cent last year in 2010. And when we …

CS: But that’s tiny figures you’re talking there, isn’t it? You’re talking about fifteen incidents altogether and maybe three or four of them might be linked to neonicitinoids.

JL: The idea of saying neonicitinoids, you know, if we were to suspend their use we’d see a big improvement, well that was tried in France for nearly ten years. The result, no improvement whatsoever in bee health.

CS: I’m going to have to bring this discussion to a close. Dr Little do you have any concerns that you are taking risks with something we don’t fully understand yet ‘cause we haven’t given it enough time?

JL: What’s really interesting is that all of the work that’s being done in the field suggests that if used appropriately these products do not pose a risk to insects, important insects such as the honey bee.

CS: Matt Shardlow?

Matt Shardlow: When we put together the Buglife report in 2009 summarising the evidence Bayer and others in the agriculture industry were very keen to point out that there weren’t any mass deaths of bees as a result of these neonicitinoids, but we found out that there are. So you’ve got this accumulation of laboratory studies, very, very weak field studies that aren’t conclusive and then the incoming of new information about increasing bee deaths being reported through the Government. So we think there’s a picture here of, of a chemical where the evidence is building and building that these are causing a damage to the environment and to pollinators.

CS: Matt Shardlow from Buglife and Dr Julian Little from Bayer Cropscience in a rather echoey meeting room, apologies for that. It’s a subject I’m sure we’ll be coming back to.

Their tiny size and underground existence keeps them out of sight and out of mind; their other-worldly appearance, their crawling, squirming, gnawing, conspire to render them unattractive; but what they lack in beauty, they make up for in numbers and worth. The mites, lice and bacteria that inhabit the world beneath our feet are vital for maintaining balanced ecosystems and agricultural production – quite simply, we could not live without them.

Soil biodiversity is a fascinating subject, but one that is frequently (and literally) over-looked. We ignore the services provided by soil biodiversity at our peril – responsible for more than US $760 billion a year in ecosystem services, soil biodiversity deserves our full attention.

When setting foot on soil, most people are unaware that they stand on trillions of organisms, an amazingly diverse community of plants, animals and microbes. Check out this photo- and fact-packed publication on soil biodiversity and agriculture…

There’s a summary version, for lighter reading…

On behalf of our yellow and black striped friends, the European press has rolled up a copy of the evening edition to take a swat at the agrochemical industry. Unfortunately for bees, chasing pesticides around the room with a newspaper is not the answer.

There’s growing concern about bees. For one reason or the other bees seem to be suffering. On both sides of the Atlantic there are numerous reports of honey bee colonies ‘collapsing’ due to the mysterious death of most of a hive’s population. This phenomenon has been referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Scientific agreement

In spite of the volume of recent press suggesting pesticides are responsible for CCD, there is, in fact, a consensus amongst the scientific community that there are several culprits, none of which is singularly responsible for the as yet unexplained incidents of colony collapse.

The usual suspects include beekeeping and husbandry practices (how bees are feed, transported, medicated), environmental factors (climate, biodiversity), chemical factors (such as pesticides) and biological agents (Varroa, Nosema, and other parasites and diseases). Scientists believe it is possible that these factors together create stress and weaken bees’ defence systems allowing pests and pathogens to kill the colony (e.g. one or several parasites, viruses, etc.).

Regulated

Of all the bee-killing suspects lined up by scientists, pesticides can claim to be the most studied, scrutinised and regulated. There’s a whole raft of European and national controls on pesticide approval – these ensure that when approved products are used as directed, there should be no adverse effects on bee health or populations.

At the European level, the key legislation goes by the catchy title ‘Directive 91/414/EEC of 15 July 1991 concerning the placing of plant protective products on the market’. If you’ve run out of paint to watch dry, you can read the full text of Directive 91/414 here and in amongst the pages you can find a frequent mention of bees and what should and should not occur with them in relation to pesticide product registration, labeling, and use.

If you are looking for some practical guidance on bees and the use of insecticides, the UK Crop Protection Association’s booklet ‘Bee-Safe Bee-Careful; when using insecticides’  (pdf) is a good place to start. It is produced with support from the British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA) and the National Farmers Union (NFU).

Media waggle dance

While running in circles works for bees we humans just find ourselves right back where we started. Singling out one potential cause of CCD fails to address the entirety of the problem, and this failure is the real danger to bees. The ‘bees and pesticides’ story makes good copy for editors on slow news days, but it misses the point (over and over again).

Bees and other pollinators are essential for agriculture; they are an important part of the process of growing much of the food that we eat. This is a fact known first and best by the agricultural industry; the media at large often overlook this, giving the voice of the bees to ‘greens’ and activist groups. Conservation organisations consider bees to be environmental ‘indicators’ – the agricultural industry thinks of bees as ‘partners’, with staggering economic value. In the UK alone, bees are said to be worth around £200 million per year to the agriculture industry.

So, note to editor: the agriculture industry has a lot of love for bees.

This week in Germany, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) released the findings of a survey studying consumer knowledge about pesticides – the result – people don’t know much about pesticides. In the very same week ‘green’ activists Greenpeace Germany embarrassed themselves by publishing false claims about pesticide levels in food. A member of the public can be forgiven for missing the point about pesticides – but Greenpeace?

The BfRs representative population study included several revelations about the German public’s knowledge of pesticides and their use (a level of knowledge most likely found across Europe). One of the most significant findings – at least in terms of public perception of the safety of pesticides – is that 70 percent of those surveyed assumed that pesticide residues are not permitted in food at all. This is incorrect – pesticide residues in Europe are highly regulated and permitted at safe levels, up to Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs). The media, pro-organic and anti-pesticide pressure groups often exploit this misunderstanding, reporting on the discovery of pesticide residues in food as sensationalist and misleading ‘shock’ stories – enter Greenpeace.

In the very same week that the BfR established that consumer knowledge on pesticides residues is very limited, Greenpeace have been caught red-handed exploiting this lack of knowledge (or perhaps highlighting their own). Greenpeace issued a press release claiming illegal levels of pesticides are to be found in red-currants. The information was in fact false, and the German The Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety issued a statement – indeed the fruit was perfectly safe.

Top selling German newspaper, BILD, picked-up on the story and decided to grace it’s ‘loser of the day’ column with the current Director of Greenpeace Germany, Brigitte Behrens. The BILD has a daily readership of ca. 12 million – ouch! Clipping and translation below:

The full BfR representative population study (in German) can be downloaded (pdf) directly here.

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Update: 04.08.2010

The BfR have continued their investigation of false claims by Greenpeace, and published statistics based on true Accepted Daily Intake criteria. You can view the press release (English) via this link.

The buzz about the disappearance of bees continues – it’s a frenzy of speculation, finger pointing and occasionally, research. Here’s a brief round-up of some recent cyberspace chatter on the subject…

Sorry, wrong number

Radiation from mobile phones is under the spotlight once more, CNN reports (with video) on an Indian university research project that involved attaching mobile phones to a hive and powering them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day. After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced. Additional coverage has revealed that the experiment studied only 4 colonies – 2 of which were used as control subjects. All-in-all an unconvincing piece of research. Sorry, wrong number.
 

Nalo meli

Pests and disease have made the news in Ireland, Scotland and Hawaii. In Ireland a report warns of the potential impact on regional agriculture as the varroa destructor mite threatens to reduce bee populations (bees are a major contributor to pollination). The BBC has reported on an outbreak of American Foulbrood (a disease that kills-off honeybee larvae) in Scotland, adding that in June, experts claimed three of the UK’s 25 bumblebee species had gone extinct, while half had suffered declines of up to 70%. The varroa destructor mite was already identified as a problem in Hawaii, where the Nalo meli (that’s Hawaiian for honeybee) now has to deal with the recently found and highly destructive small hive beetle.
 

Bee friendly

In the UK, 9 research projects will share 10m GBP as part of the nationwide Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI). Projects will study the effects of various substances, including pesticides, that are believed to have potential influence on the survival of bee populations. Importantly, the studies recognise the need to make towns and cities more ‘bee friendly’, and aim to help identify the spaces and places where bees can thrive in the urban sprawl.  In the US, members of the public are being recruited to join a countrywide bee hunt. Bee hunters across the United States are asked to take pictures of pollinators and the plants they pollinate, and then upload them to the Discover Life website. An online database will keep track of trends in pollinator populations, hopefully illustrating the effects of climate change, pollution and invasive species.
 

Honey talks

The vast majority of bee coverage in the media focusses on the honeybee. This is no surprise when you consider that honeybee keeping (for agricultural pollination, honey and wax production) is a multi-billion dollar a year industry – money talks. But, let’s not forget the other pollinator species that help us grow our food and gardens – for example, the solitary bee.

The solitary bee is not commercially viable as it does not live in conveniently transportable colonies, but it is an important pollinator. As their name suggests, solitary bees live by themselves – they can do this because all females are fertile, unlike honeybees they do not serve and rely on a queen to produce eggs. Their solitary nature makes them an ideal species for at-home conservation projects – building a solitary bee house is as easy as drilling a few holes in a piece of wood (in fact, that’s how you make one). If you are feeling ambitious (and have a large garden) you could try to compete with this one (video) recently built in London…
 

 
If the reported decline of bee populations is news to you, no worries, click on our bee tag for a decent selection of info and news on bee decline and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD – a particular form of bee colony decline experienced in North America and Canada).
 

Pesticides are used to kill the bugs and diseases that destroy agricultural crops. These bugs and diseases are part of ‘biodiversity’, the variety that exists between life forms. Paradoxically agriculture needs biodiversity – relies on it in fact. Biodiversity pollinates plants, it purifies water, prevents soil erosion, it even helps control the climate through the sequestration of carbon dioxide. Without biodiversity there would be no agriculture, but left to the mercy of biological diversity, and the hard knocks rule of survival of the fittest (Darwin’s ‘natural selection’) we would struggle to feed ourselves – pests and plant diseases taking food from our mouths.

Lost

By controlling the impacts of pests and diseases pesticides allow us to maximise agricultural productivity and ensure food supply meets the demand of a rapidly growing population. As much as 40-80% of crop yields can be lost to pests and disease – this is the reality of pesticide free agriculture. Organic farming might be considered proof that an alternative to pesticides exist, but in reality organic crops are also protected with pesticides – without them yield loss is too great.

Plant more

If we want to farm pesticide free, but still produce the required quantities of food, we simply have to plant more crops to compensate for expected losses. If we want ten potatoes, we will have to plant 20 because we anticipate pests and disease will claim up to half of them. This approach could theoretically rid us of the need to use pesticides, but at what cost?
 

Space, the final frontier – not least for biodiversity

Biodiversity needs space to survive, areas for habitats that support the wildlife upon which agriculture relies. Europe uses around 40% of its land for agriculture, so it is not surprising that demand for agricultural land is cited as the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss in Europe.

If the biggest threat to biodiversity is the loss of habitats to agricultural land, then perhaps the key focus for biodiversity conservation should be to support the implementation of modern agricultural practices that maximise output on the existing agricultural land base. Fact: inefficient farming practices require more land to produce the same yield.

Save biodiversity

So we return to the paradox of pesticide use. Pesticides can be harmful to biodiversity, but they also provide a means to save biodiversity by making best use of existing agricultural land and avoiding continued loss of natural habitats.

As populations continue to grow, demand for food rises, and so do concerns about food security. Today, farmers are required to increase productivity and at the same time protect nature and biodiversity to ensure we have continued means to feed ourselves.

Pesticides are frequently cited by environmental groups as something nature and biodiversity could do without – but is the opposite true – could modern agricultural practices be the savior of biodiversity?

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One last thing…

It is important to note that the presence of agriculture does not always result in less biodiversity – in many cases the opposite is true, for example, land abandonment of extensive farmland in Central and Eastern Europe has resulted in a regional loss of biodiversity.

Everyone has heard of Malaria, a disease that is estimated to claim between one and three million lives every year. Young children account for 90% of the deaths, the majority of victims are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria is caused by a tiny single-celled parasite called Plasmodium which is transmitted to humans through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Malaria is not necessarily deadly in every case of infection, but if not treated the disease can quickly become life threatening. There are a number of Malaria medicines available, although in some parts of the world parasites have developed resistance to them (this has been attributed to misuse of malaria drugs), and for the parts of the world most effected by malaria, drugs for treatment are not readily available, or just too expensive.
 

Prevention better than cure

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) one of the main objectives of malaria control is to significantly reduce the rate and number of cases of both parasite infection and clinical malaria. This is achieved by controlling the malaria-bearing mosquito – basically preventing contact between infected mosquitoes and human beings.

The indoor spraying of insecticide is reported by the WHO to be the most effective means of rapidly reducing mosquito density. A practice known as ‘indoor residual spraying’ can protect a living space for three to six months. The WHO claims that the highly controversial DDT offers a longer term solution, offering up to 12 months of protection – although it’s ongoing effectiveness has been called into question.

Another favoured preventative measure is the use of long-lasting insecticidal nets (mosquito nets). Fine-mesh nets treated with insecticide offer personal or group protection and typically remain effective for three – five years.
 

A closer look at the pesticides

Yes, pesticides – because an insecticide is a type of pesticide. Let’s take a look at those most commonly used in mosquito prevention – permethrin and deltamethrin.

Permethrin is a synthetic chemical and commonly used as both insecticide and insect repellent. It’s effective because it functions as a neurotoxin (it does unpleasant things to insect nerve cells). Permethrin is a favourable deterrent to insects because it is not known to rapidly harm most mammals or birds, and is poorly absorbed by the skin. On the down-side, it is toxic to cats.  Permethrin is an effective agent in the battle against malaria, albeit one perhaps better suited to dog-lovers.

Deltamethrin is also a neurotoxin, and while it is used for insecticidal nets, it is also a widely used household insecticide for dealing with pests including bedbugs, cockroaches, ticks and fleas. Deltamethrin of one of the safest groups of pesticides, with mammalian exposure considered to be safe.

Pesticides save lives

Pesticides save lives, something you won’t read every day, but fact non-the-less. The Red Cross reports growing scientific evidence to demonstrate that combining mosquito net distribution with follow-on support and training at household level increases net usage rates and significantly reduces incidence of malaria.

It’s World Malaria Day on the 25th of April, which means I’m a little early with this post (hey, it’s the weekend… I’ve got plans) but in perfect time to share a few links if you feel like learning more about malaria, World Malaria Day, and how you can help efforts to eradicate a disease that takes a life every 30 seconds.

For your consideration

> World Malaria Day 2010 (coordinating body official site) follow @malariaday2010 on twitter

> World Health Organisation (WHO) hub for malaria

> International Medical Corps (NGO) fact sheet on malaria

> Malaria No More (NGO) follow @MalariaNoMore on twitter

> Office of the United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for Malaria follow @Malaria_Envoy on twitter

This list is not exhaustive, so please feel free to drop links and info in the comments section below.

In ‘Food for Thought: Organic Grub Worth Buying?’ we hear that as US organic sales increase, so do consumer questions about what ‘organic‘ actually means. Answers to this same question in the UK met with surprise early this year, as a report explained that organic does not mean ‘pesticide free’ – perhaps as shocking to some as an earlier report published by the UK Food Standards Agency, claiming that organic food ‘has no health benefits‘ over conventionally grown produce. Essentially this is good news for the consumer – you can receive the same health benefits from conventionally grown (and mostly cheaper) fruits and vegetables.

 

Organic pesticides

It is true that organic farmers, faced with the loss of their crops, often use ‘conventional’ pesticides, but there are more tools in the organic farmers toolbox, so called ‘organic’ pesticides (sometimes referred to as ‘green’ or ‘ecological’ pesticides). Organic pesticides are claimed to be naturally derived rather than synthetically produced, but this does not tell us anything about their relative safety or impact on the environment. We must also remind ourselves that the most toxic substances known are found in nature: in other words, natural does not always equal safe. Steve Savage, who keeps a blog at eatdrinkbetter.com last week posted ‘The “Pesticide From Hell” (oh, by the the way, its “Organic”)‘, an interesting article on one the oldest and still most used ‘organic’ pesticides – Sulphur (sulfur). Steve points out that sulphur compounds must be used in considerably higher quantities than effective and highly targeted ‘manufactured’ crop protection products; in addition to being one of the most common causes of pesticide user health complaints, there is also an association with bird mortality. Copper sulphate, another commonly use organic pesticide, combines copper and sulphur in a form that is permanently destructive of soil if overused. In terms of the regulation of use of crop protection measures, in the European Union organic pesticides are subject to the same strict regulations as conventional products.
 

Overlooked

The fact that organic farming often makes use of pesticides (of the organic and conventional varieties) is largely overlooked or poorly communicated – reinforcing misconceptions about crop production and crop protection. Recent media coverage of organic agriculture does suggest that the public is beginning to question their understanding of the term ‘organic’. The current economic crisis will have no doubt contributed; with less disposable income it is perhaps no surprise that consumers pass on some of the more expensive items on their shopping list. Rightly or wrongly, organic is often considered something of a ‘niche market’ – with products being more expensive than their conventionally grown alternatives they are unlikely to feature in a ‘recession diet‘.
 

Unsustainable

The reality of agriculture is that pests must be managed to avoid devastating loss to crops, something independent of the ideology of farmer or consumer. Whilst some loss is indeed expected, without crop protection measures a loss of over 40% yield is possible – this is unsustainable.
 

An ecological way

Integrated pest management (IPM) is a good practice approach to crop protection. IPM is an integrated strategy for crop management, designed to solve ecological problems when applied in agriculture. Performed in three main stages: prevention, observation, and intervention IPM combines pesticide use with biological and sophisticated management techniques to manage pest populations in an ecological way. IPM can be used by both conventional and organic agriculture.

In the video below, Professor Sir Gordon Conway of the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, explains Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and how it helps farmers. He goes on to tell us how pesticides can be used in conjunction with natural enemy controls, such as parasites and other predators, to help protect farmers’ crops from losses.