CropLife America (formerly known as the American Crop Protection Association) is the industry lobbying group financed by what are known as the “Big 6”: Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Dow, BASF and Syngenta. These six global corporations have acquired 74 percent of the global pesticide market and 49 percent of the proprietary global seed market—not to mention apparent controlling interest in the EPA. The Big 6 business model is deviously simple. They sell seeds and pesticides—seeds coated with their insecticides (such as Bayer’s Ponchotreated corn) and seeds biologically engineered to grow crops impervious to their herbicides (such as Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans). To no one’s surprise, last year the Big 6 contributed $21.5 million of the $45 million spent on the “No on 37” disinformation campaign that successfully defeated California’s Proposition 37, which would have required that genetically engineered food be labeled. These days, CropLife America and its Big 6 backers are busy presenting themselves as the true friend of honeybees. On CropLife’s “Protecting Our Pollinators” webpage, the reader learns that “bees are responsible for more than just honey; the list of crops that bees help grow is extensive, and includes grapes, strawberries, avocadoes, and cucumbers.” As for the disappearing honeybee? CropLife explains: "Many of the recent studies which attempt to link neonicotinoid pesticides to [honeybee colony collapse disorder] CCD fail to recreate practical in-field solutions of pollinator exposure to pesticides or pollinator behavior, and ignore the many possible threats that bees face. Scientific literature examining the potential causes of CCD is incredibly varied and will need additional research. So what can you do to save honey bees and other pollinators? CropLife encourages people to go out and plant flowers. “I compare that to planting buffalo grass to bring back the buffalo,” says beekeeper Tom Theobald, who for 38 years has been a beekeeper in Boulder County, Colorado. “If we don’t have the bees, it doesn’t matter how many flowers we plant.”
He goes on to say, “Habitat is only a part of the issue. Widely used, systemic pesticides like neonicotinoids have, quite literally, poisoned the earth. The bees are an indicator species of much larger problems.” To save the honeybees, concerned citizens might want to organize at the grassroots to prohibit neonics from being applied in their city or county. CropLife, however, is working to prevent that through its membership on the Agriculture Subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC, known for creating volumes of cookie-cutter, right-wing legislation, has prepared “The State Pesticide Preemption Act,” which would prohibit local governments from regulating pesticides. It appears the only way things will begin to change is if people begin to ask: “Why are the honeybees dying?” And then go on to question the sustainability of the industrial agriculture model on which the profits of the Big 6 depend.
Source:
In These Times, February 21, 2013
by Joel Bleifuss, a former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Bleifuss is the editor & publisher of In These Times, where he has worked since October 1986.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/14598/a_deadly_disorder_at_the_epa/
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