Ontario to Cut Use of Insecticide Linked to Bee Colony Collapse
Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) — Ontario plans to reduce the use of an insecticide that has been linked to bee deaths, making it the first jurisdiction in North America to do so.
Ontario, Canada’s largest producer of corn and soybeans, intends to cut by 80 percent the acreage where the crop seeds are treated with the pesticide neonicotinoid by 2017, the government said today in an e-mailed statement. If approved, the new rules will be in place by July 1, in time for the 2016 planting season, it said.
“I don’t know of any other similar action in North America,” Bryan Bossin, a spokesman at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, said by phone from Toronto.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing how pollinators are affected by neonicotinoids and the European Union temporarily banned the chemicals. The actions come after studies showed a link to Colony Collapse Disorder, a syndrome marked by bees failing to find their way back to their hives and dying.
Canadian pesticide regulators have found a link between bee deaths in Ontario and planting corn and soybean seed treated with the agricultural insecticide, the province said. Beekeepers reported 58 percent of their bees were lost last winter in Ontario and many “suspected that chronic pesticide damage contributed to the winter loss,” according to a government survey.
‘Knee-Jerk’
The proposed rules may reduce corn and soybean yields by as much as 20 percent, Barry Senft, chief executive officer of Guelph-based Grain Farmers of Ontario, said today in a telephone interview.
“I think they made a knee-jerk reaction,” Senft said. “It sounds like they bowed to the pressure of special interest groups.”
Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal said his ministry will work with farmers and beekeepers “to implement a plan sensitive to their needs.”
“We know, and farmers recognize, there are risks associated with the use of neonicotinoid pesticides,” Leal said in a separate e-mailed statement. “We also know that, in certain circumstances, they are an important tool for farmers and help to increase production and maintain a reliable food supply for our province.”
Ontario produced 7.4 million metric tons of corn and 3.6 million tons of soybeans in 2014, Statistics Canada said in an October report.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jen Skerritt in Winnipeg at jskerritt1@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Millie Munshi at mmunshi@bloomberg.net Steven Frank, Simon Casey
