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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been telling everyone I know. The number 1 concern we should all have are pesticides!

The number of insects have dropped dramatically and that has impacts on the entire food chain. Particularly, the ability for plants to reproduce. The pesticides themselves also make it all the way up the food chain.

Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain. I live surrounded by corn fields and I basically only see wasps, Japanese beetles and some ants. Growing up we saw a ton of different insect species and numbers.

Finally, all these chemicals interact and frankly we have no idea of the long term impacts when combined.

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Since we bought our house, we're saturated in ads for pest control companies who want to spray our entire property to kill bugs. It's unbelievable that this is actually legal.

I think that the use of pesticides should be strictly limited to acute infestations -- or small specific things like a barrier placed on the foundation of the house for termite prevention.

A time when cities had trucks drive around dousing entire neighborhoods in pesticide is well within living memory.

That's definitely still a thing in Michigan where I grew up. There are county departments dedicated to mosquito control.

Yep, it's just lovely living in an apartment complex that sprays poison everywhere on the property every month.

No. The point is the number 1 concern is we're destroying insect ecosystems to anthropoform the world.

Pesticides are a problem, but almost always secondary to wholesale habitat destruction in order to make farmland (mostly to grow feed for cattle in this country) and suburbs. Pesticides are just a tool to make those new "more profitable" landscapes.

Modern commercial farming leaves no room for nature, and suburbans folks seem to think ants and spiders shouldn't exist. Turns out the same things that kill "pests" and "weeds" generally make it tough for the cute things we like.

We're reshaping the world, often in ignorance on how much we actually depend on these ecosystems we are destroying.

In the developed world, total acres of farmland have been shrinking for about a half century. And in North America, suburbs are usually overpopulated with cute things (e.g. deer, squirrels, raccoons), not underpopulated.

The issue IS pesticides. There is broad consensus that this is the case among experts. Harmful pesticide overutilization is a LOT more practical to fix than getting rid of farms and suburbs.

> The number of insects have dropped dramatically

Are you referring to the 2017 "Insect Apocalypse" paper? It has not done well under subsequent examination.

https://ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2019/12/20/moving-on-from...

"From a scientific perspective, there is so much wrong with the paper, it really shouldn’t have been published in its current form: the biased search method, the cherry-picked studies, the absence of any real quantitative data to back up the bizarre 40% extinction rate that appears in the abstract (we don’t even have population data for 40% of the world’s insect species), and the errors in the reference list. And it was presented as a ‘comprehensive review’ and a ‘meta-analysis’, even though it is neither."

This was clear within weeks after publishing it. Years later it’s still cited or paraphrased in every article about bees or other flying insects. Sigh.

Anyone with eyeballs can tell there are far far far far far fewer insects than there were thirty years ago. This isn't a fuddable topic.

I'd prefer actual science, human memory is extremely unreliable and often tends to be self-serving.

When does preference for "actual science" become satisfied, given we on HN skeptically pick apart all presented evidence of anything? The above is in Nature for goodness sakes, is that too weak of a journal? If so I'm weaker than a weak scientist who publishes there.

I'd say entomologists should judge what is actually good science, the rest of us? We do have valid if flawed memories of more insects previously. Combined with the invasive species, widespread pesticide use, and all this evidence, I don't think it's wise to slow-walk our response to such a pivotal biological foundation's crisis.

We slow walked cigarettes, millions died. We slow walked climate, and we're on a path of worst outcomes. Shall insects be another failure of humans to respond? When do the skeptical technicians lay down their doubtful instincts and push for change?

"Anyone with eyeballs" is clearly below the threshold.

I think this is interesting because it's such a common issue on this board.

You can tell when people are requesting evidence to shut down a discussion vs. to broaden a discussion by the way they reply - if they bring in their own counter evidence and address the points being raised they're probably engaging in good faith and using evidence to find nuance.

I think it's OK to say "hey we need to really think about our usage of pesticides" and less ok to say "anyone with eyeballs can tell".

I don't recall there being more/ less insects at any given point in my life, I haven't noticed anything at all in that regard. I'm completely willing to believe that insecticide use is bad and that there are less insects, fwiw.

we're soaked. rain was in the forecast. i say it's really coming down out here, you tell me to wait for the inches measured at seatac

If you want to make policy based on the rain, yeah, I'd prefer to wait for it. Otherwise your 'really coming down out here' might be my 'light drizzle.' Especially if you've ever lived in the midwest.

Okay, go nuts:

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

I've read it. There has been a huge backlash over that paper, from actual scientists critical of the methodology and conclusions. They make a compelling case that this one particular study should be taken with a grain of salt.

All of the backlash I've seen over the paper has to do with the precision and effect sizes measured - I haven't seen an argument, let alone a credible argument, that the effect itself is not real.

Follow-up research has confirmed that the effect is real and significant: Arthropod decline in grasslands and forests is associated with landscape-level drivers https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1684-3

The follow-up indicates that the effect sizes are greatest for agricultural areas.

This is hilarious. "Actual science", presumably meaning, "peer reviewed paper".

Science is not some elitist endeavor. It is available to all of us, to observe the world around us and form hypotheses and discuss them and test them, if we're motivated and it's possible.

This attitude is so, so bizarre. You won't believe the changes in the world around you, easily observed, are even happening unless there's "Science The Meme" being done about it.

This short youtube video succinctly explains the problem with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEhPFIlH3U

When people say this, my main gripe is that it's used to legitimise anecdote, rather than well structured citizen science.

The key thing that separates well constructed datasets from shoddy anecdote is a keen eye for potential confounders and proper data metrics and collection protocols.

Another datapoint is dead-bugs-on-windshield. It's so many fewer than there used to be.

There are confounding factors for this observation.

Many insects move very little (like dozens or hundreds of yards) over the course of their lives and increased salt usage has increased the number of roads with seriously disturbed ecosystems along side them and width of said disturbed areas.

I'm not saying pesticides aren't the cause or aren't part of the cause but roads have all sorts of other terrible stuff that can decimate insect populations going on. The sooner we switch to beet juice the better.

Another confounding factor is requirements for increasing gas mileage. One way to do that is reduce wind resistance, which could mean a more sloped windshield with less turbulent airflow. Insects could just be diverted more effectively now without striking the windshield.

Old cars are still on the road. Even very old ones.

Owned a sleek and sporty (styled, anyway) '98 sedan, around the turn of the millennium. Just as with my parents' cars in the 80s and 90s, the windshield got splattered all the time. Had to clean it on road trips.

Owned a far less-sleek '01 minivan... from like 2015 on, not when it was new. Near-zero "ew" bug impacts, even on road trips. I'm not sure I ever cleaned the windshield at a gas pump, which used to be routine.

That’s not how science works.

No. He's referring to direct observation.

It is not just pesticides. We are killing all flowering plants around us that are not crops or garden flowers.

Bees do not care whether it is a weed or crop. But they do care that there is always something flowering. When there is little variety in plants around bee nest they can't pollinate entire season but rather most of the time there is very little to pollinate and then suddenly there is too much and they can't keep up and make good use of it.

> Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years and we spray fields EVERY YEAR. So it’s building up in the supply chain.

Have they been in use less than 10 years? Or are we increasing the usage every year? Otherwise your conclusion doesn't seem to follow.

Okay, so with a half-life of five years, whatever you spray at year zero, you get about 87.0551% left by next year.

So, let's imagine we spray just one unit per year. Year zero, one unit. Farmer Brown shows up to do his usual one-unit blast, recommended by Monsanto, but 87% of the stuff is still there.

Year two, 1.870551 units are present. Year three, 2.628408673 units. Year four, 3.288162485. By year ten, you have 5.79376654 units present.

If the half-life is really five years, you should do an initial one-unit dump, then just thirteen percent of that every subsequent year.

Presumably most of the pesticides get removed when the plants are harvested.

Some probably are still around, but if spraying less worked, the farmers would because it would be cheaper.

Not saying that pesticides aren't a problem, just saying that we're probably not just flooding our fields with more and more pesticides.

> the farmers would because it would be cheaper

As a person who just became a farmer at the start of covid, I think this is a mistaken conclusion.

Farmers are, in general, not out there a/b testing concentrations of herbicides or pesticides in their fields to find the exactly optimal level. If they're anything like most of the farmers I've met--who are absolutely really smart, well-intentioned folks--they talk to the guy at the extension office or weed control office and that guy tells them what to mix and how to apply.

If it works, the farmer is generally happy. If not, he'll complain. The definition of "works" is: the immediate problem is solved. So the extension office guy, who usually seems to be indirectly funded by Dow Chemical in some way, or just by chance seems to really love that concern's range of products, is motivated to maybe overshoot a little.

On my farm, we're doing things a little bit, uh, differently. Our food is expensive, but it's helping heal our soil and provides actual nutrition. https://mulligan.farm.

A quick scan says half-life can be up to 5 years, but also low as several days.

I don't think half-life means what you think it means. A substance with a half-life of five years will not be gone in ten years.

I know what it means, I was too lazy to do the math properly. The point was that with such a (relatively) short half-life the total amount stabilizes quickly.

Once you've hit the balance, you'll have saturation equal to 1 + 4/5 + 16/25 + 64/125 ...

It ends up summing to 5 (what a coincidence!). So 1 dose with a halflife of 5 years, applied yearly, hits equilibrium at 5x concentration.

I know is possible to use genetic engineering to 'knock-out' a species by introducing some genes that cripple the females but allow the males to carry the bad gene forward through the rest of the population.

Making species extinct on purpose sounds bad, but hear me out. What if we do the knock-out technique on the most economically destructive pests so that we no longer need broad insecticides? We should probably only do this to pests that exclusively feed on crops and not generalists. But there are a ton of specialized pests that feed on human agriculture.

For instance, if you make the corn borer moth extinct in the wild, would you still need to spray cornfields? Or what about the Colorado Potato Beetle, the Boll Weevil, etc?

Outdoor farming is still incredibly resource intensive. As we move into an age where unsalted water becomes more precious and rare we should focus on hydroponic growing tech to preserve water. It is indoors so it wouldn’t require pesticides.

Israeli farmers have shown that crops can be grown outdoors in a water efficient manner.

How have they done that? Encapsulating the soil with a barrier layer?

The Israelis invented modern drip irrigation and use it extensively. They also make good use of low-quality water, like treated wastewater and not-totally-desalinated seawater, by developing salt-tolerant varieties and carefully optimizing plant nutrition under their constraints.

Of course they do lots of hydroponics too, for the usual hydroponic crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.). The science in hydroponics and science in sophisticated soil culture aren't really that different--you'll see mostly the same chemical fertilizers, the same EC and pH measurements in the field, the same lab analyses by ICP, etc.

Some water still drains to the aquifer and is "wasted". It needs to be though, or else unwanted ions (from impure source water or fertilizer, including but not limited to Na+ and Cl-) would accumulate and kill the plant. Israel has a significant problem with salinization of their soils and groundwater, and lots of interesting work modeling that.

Pesticides are still widely used indoors. Pests will get introduced even with strong precautions (air showers at the entrances, etc.). At that point, if they're able to multiply then they will, potentially even faster than outdoors since there are no natural predators. There also tends to be less airflow, which encourages pests like spider mites.

Of course the greenhouse has advantages too--you can deliberately introduce beneficial (predatory) insects and they can't fly away, and if you do end up using pesticides then there's no risk to wild pollinators. For example, the EU banned certain neonics outdoors but still permits indoor use. It's more just different than strictly easier or harder.

I don't hate the idea of eradicating invasive pest species, but I do worry that the intervention might not work as intended.

I think the beauty of it is that we can keep an isolated unmodified population in a remote location and re-introduce them if need be. Not full extinction, just extinct-in-the-wild.

>Not full extinction, just extinct-in-the-wild

Or just "extinct where we grow crop X"

With how many insects there are of any species, there are bound to be many that have the genes to evade your genetic modification.

If you buy organic, does that imply that the crops aren't treated with pesticides? What else can a layperson do?

No, there are organic pesticides. Some on them can be better (e.g. less stable) than some synthetic ones, that's all. And them being organic also guarantees that they can't be improved, in terms of stability or targeting, so that is entirely stupid.

> And them being organic also guarantees that they can't be improved

Please explain this part.

I was under the impression that certifications for "organic" labeling was a threshold thing and nothing prevents one brand from trying to be more efficient within limitations compared to another brand, as long as it is below or above certain levels.

I had in mind a relatively broad definition* from the latest Swiss public initiative on the topic. Which was forbidding any chemical alterations to the compounds already produced by plants, etc. Not really familiar with labeling requirements in the US.

* intended by organizers, not spelled in the text.

I'm European and have not heard of something like what you are alluding to. I know certain specific categories of pesticides are either forbidden (e.g. Propargite), or limited. But given your response I still do not understand what it has to do with artificial limits of "organic" labeling of certain categories of compounds, especially since it is often NGO:s which are responsible for many of these labels and their verifications.

The list of pesticides allowable in organic farming is (at least under OMRI rules) determined by naturalness, not safety. For example, pyrethrin occurs naturally in chrysanthemums, so it's allowed, even though it's highly toxic to bees. Tau-fluvalinate is a synthetic pyrethroid (pyrethrin analog), so it's forbidden, even though it's sufficiently nontoxic to bees that it's used as a miticide in commercial hives.

Synthetic pesticides are designed and screened in the same way as small molecule drugs, a long and uncertain process that's still far easier than discovering a new natural product. At least in theory, these synthetic compounds can be optimized for whatever we want. It's just that absent regulation, the commercial incentive is for better short-term yield regardless of the ecological cost.

One could imagine a certification similar to organic that forbids the most ecologically damaging practices--even if they're using natural products--and permits safer use of synthetic products. Probably a hard sell to consumers, though. I've occasionally seen produce marketed as "IPM" (integrated pest management), which isn't quite that but goes in that general direction.

As the name neonicotinoids implies, nicotine itself is a fairly effective natural pesticide. Subsistence farmers in the American Southeast used to dust their gardens with ground up tobacco. Probably some people still do.

It depends on where you live and honestly eating healthy is a little science and takes time these days. However I focus on regional regulations and specific labels. Ex. I know that we (Swiss) do not allow pesticides in late growing phases but the EU does. I know that the region I live in further limits the use and comes with their own label. Organic here does at least quarante no direct use of glyphosat (there are still small traces allowed because neighbors fields might use it). And so on. There is a lot more food I would not buy than there is that I feel ok with, but whatever it's worth it.

I don't now where you live, but perhaps you're not looking very hard? Where I live the wild plants, which is to say weeds, are showing absolutely no problem reproducing whatsoever and when the clover blooms there are so many bees it's uncomfortable to be outside. And while I'm no entomologist, I see far more insect species than can be counted on both hands.

The upgoing issues people have with wheats could be linked to the pesticides and not the wheat itself. (According to a recent documentation from Arte) I personally believe the reason I can't drink beer today is glyphosat. The more I can be sure it's glyphosate free the less likely I get a headache.

Honestly one of the worst things we face these days in my opinion

> Neonicotinoids have a half life of 5 years

This is nonsense. When exposed to light, which most of it is, the half-life is 39 days. It may last 1 year in the soil.

Any claim that makes farmers stupid or wasteful is immediately suspect. They are neither. They can't be on those margins.

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