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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

(1) Stop using neonicotinoid pesticides. There are plenty of alternatives for protecting food crops from insect infestations, such as neem oil applied as a foliar spray or a soil soak in response to infestations. Neonictoninoides are based on the tobacco nicotine molecule structure, but are typically chlorinated and modified to make them more persistent and toxic to insects relative to animals. There's a good argument for banning the entire class due to their persistent ecological effects on beneficial native insect populations.

https://organic-center.org/research/neonicotinoid-pesticides...

(2) Have undisturbed habitat set aside for wild bee populations. This can be something as simple as maintaining undisturbed hedgerows on the sides of agricultural fields, but in general means maintaining a fair amount of undisturbed native habitat.

https://www.planetbee.org/planet-bee-blog//native-bee-series...

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Is neem realistic for large scale farms?

We use it in our personal garden, but you need to continually re-apply every 4-5 days with really good coverage for a period of time for it to be effective. It has been hit or miss for us. If neem doesn't work then its oh well, plant something else, but we aren't selling a crop.

It seems to have worked without many problems in France, they had a ban in 2018:

https://cen.acs.org/environment/pesticides/France-bans-uses-...

but there has been a recent exception made for the sugar beet crop:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-sees-no-easy-fix...

But did the ban have the hoped for results?

When I checked this last, it doesn't seem to have made any difference to insects. Is there new data?

neem in my experience is most effective when applied to both sides of the leaf as well, since most critters like clinging under the leaf.

There was the documentary 'nicotine bees' (2010) too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnAoOPiimfw

Colony collapse to some degree is also supposedly normal, see 'beepocalypse nah' (sarah taber) https://soundcloud.com/farm-to-taber-podcast/farm-to-taber-0...

Demonization of neonics is misplaced. You can spray at night when bees aren't active. You can spray when your plants aren't in bloom and attracting bees. Oh well, the 2 minutes hate have emerged against neonics and farmers pivot like they ways do.

If we're talking about trying to stem the destruction of wild species here (The problem really isn't about domesticated honeybees), then you should definitely consider the fact that spraying at night won't help those wild bees which are nocturnal [1], nor does your point of view on these address the fact that these pesticides have a degree of environmental persistence. [2] This isn't demonization, it's just straight facts when there's plenty of alternatives out there which aren't feeding the giant agri-industrial complex behemoth.

[1] https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/do-bees-fly-at-night.html

[2] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06388

You're mistaken. only big ag can pivot. The smaller your are, the harder it is to keep up with all the regulation. Notice also the phenomenon of regulatory capture.

If you want to stop getting downvoted try refuting my central points directly, I'm not really sold

Down vote to -infinity. I don't care about your internet points.

> Demonization

This is a dramatic overstatement. You’re disagreeing about neonics, I’m sorry if that’s hard not to take personally but it seems like something than could be discussed without the vitriol.

I don't understand how you can parse my sentence and think that the object being demonized is either me or farmers. Yes, neonics are being demonized.

They don't think that. They're saying that your use of the term 'demonization' is over-dramatic and unhelpful.

The word "demonization" is an apt description of the rhetoric being applied to this topic.

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