Tag: pesticide

April 20, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Unapproved pesticide found in basil from Ewa farm

An Ewa farm has been ordered by the state Health Department to cease the sale of basil because it was using unapproved pesticide.

The basil will be destroyed today at FAT Law’s Farm three-acre farm in Ewa. The farm also maintains a farm in Kunia.

FAT Law’s Farm, Inc. was notified Tuesday to cease the sale of all suspect basil after test revealed the presence of the pesticide methomyl. There is a zero tolerance for methomyl on basil, a pesticide that is not approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use on basil.

Basil samples were collected on FAT’s Ewa farm on April 12. The results received from the state laboratory on April 16 indicated a range of 0.045 to 3.49 parts per million (ppm) of methomyl.

Additional samples from the Kunia farm were collected on Tuesday and analyzed for the presence of methomyl. Results received on Thursday indicated a range from non-detectable to 0.507 ppm of methomyl on the basil.

No basil will be allowed to be sold by the farm until subsequent samples indicate zero levels of methomyl.

The Health Department believes that the basil crops tested on April 12 and 17 may have been distributed to consumers in Hawaii. However, since the pesticide is allowed in greater amounts on other crops, the department does not consider the situation to be a significant threat to public health. Methomyl is approved by the EPA for use on a variety of vegetables and has an allowable range from 1 ppm for tomatoes up to 6 ppm for parsley leaves. There is a zero tolerance for methomyl on basil.

Unapproved pesticide found in basil from Ewa farm – Hawaii News – Honolulu Star-Advertiser

April 11, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Grave threat of pesticides to bees’ billion-pound bonanza is now clear

How valuable are bees? In the UK, about £1.8bn a year, according to new research on the cost of hand-pollinating the many crops bees service for free. If that sounds a far-fetched scenario, consider two facts.

First, bees are in severe decline. Half the UK’s honey bees kept in managed hives have gone, wild honey bees are close to extinction and solitary bees are declining in more than half the place they have been studied.

Second, hand-pollination is already necessary in some places, such as pear orchards in China, and bees are routinely trucked around the US to compensate for the loss of their wild cousins.

The new figure comes from scientists at the Reading University and was released by Friends of the Earth to launch their new campaign, Bee Cause. Paul de Zylva, FoE nature campaigner, said: “Unless we halt the decline in British bees our farmers will have to rely on hand-pollination, sending food prices rocketing.”

So what’s the problem?

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March 29, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

New bee research details harm from insecticide

A pitched battle about why bee populations around the world are declining so rapidly has been joined by two new studies pointing directly at the harm from insecticides most commonly used by grain, cotton, bean and vegetable farmers.

Pesticides were an early suspect, but many additional factors appear to be at play — including a relatively new invasive mite that kills bees in their hives, loss of open land for foraging, and the stresses on honeybee colonies caused by moving them from site to site for agricultural pollinating.

The new bee research, some of the most extensive done involving complex field studies rather than simpler laboratory work, found that exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides did not kill the bees directly, but changed their behavior in harmful ways. In particular, the insecticide made the honeybees and bumblebees somewhat less able to forage for food and return with it to their hives.

While the authors of the studies published Thursday in the journal Science do not conclude that the pesticides are the sole cause of the American and international decline in bees or the more immediate and worrisome phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, they say that the omnipresent chemicals have a clearly harmful effect on beehives.

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March 11, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

A bugged life: Warm winter could mean more insects

Awakened from hibernation underground, in rotting wood and the cracks of your house, bugs are on the rise. Ants, termites, mosquitoes, ladybugs and ticks are up early and looking for breakfast.

Orkin, the pest control company, recently said its agents nationwide are reporting a 30 percent increase in calls to treat ant infestations compared with this time last year. Termite swarms do not normally show up until the end of March, but Orkin received 85 termite-control calls in February.

An Orkin branch in Montgomery County, which serves the District, has already responded to mosquito sightings this year. And the National Pest Management Association, based in Fairfax, issued an early warning of ticks, possibly carrying Lyme disease, lurking in back yards.

County agricultural extension agents across the country are sending out bug alerts to farmers.

“These things are coldblooded,” said Mike Raupp, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland. “Whenever we have a warm winter, they’re going to be out earlier. How do you stop them? You pray for cold weather.”

A mild winter is not great for all bugs, including some highly beneficial insects. Some were up and about when they should have been idle and hibernating, burning less energy, experts say. When this happens, they gobble the food they stored for the winter and emerge into a world where food is scarce. Many starve.

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August 10, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Amid anger over tainted food, China says it’s cracking down

By Keith B. Richburg,
BEIJING — “Bodybuilder” pigs given illegal growth hormones in their feed. Harmful additives to make pork taste like beef. Outdated steamed buns painted with coloring to look new. Formaldehyde in a popular Sichuan dish. Exploding watermelons treated with plant growth chemicals.

These are just some of the many food scares in China in recent days and weeks that have made local newspaper headlines and caused growing public anxiety — and anger — among Chinese consumers about the quality of what they eat and drink.

“I’m really worried about food safety,” said Li Suhua, 57, who is retired and was shopping for her family recently at a fruit and vegetable market. She said she now comes to the market two or three hours before cooking, to give herself time to soak leafy green vegetables free of pesticides. As for meat, she said, “I’m even more worried. We haven’t eaten chicken for a long time, because I heard they gave hormones to chickens.”

“It’s really horrifying,” she said.

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May 13, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

India’s top court imposes ban on ‘toxic’ pesticide

NEW DELHI – INDIA’S Supreme Court imposed a temporary ban on Friday on the pesticide endosulfan, which the government has resisted restricting despite curbs in 60 other countries around the world.

India is the world’s biggest producer of the chemical, which is widely sprayed on crops like rice and cotton even though it has been linked to birth defects and other health problems.

The Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia, declared that it was ‘the risk that is bothering us’ before imposing an eight-week temporary ban. ‘Even if one child suffers we do not want it on our heads. That is why we are imposing an all-India ban on the use and production of endosulfan.’

India’s top court has asked the Congress-led government to produce a report in eight weeks on whether the sale and production of endosulfan should be permanently restricted.

Representatives of 127 governments meeting in Geneva last month agreed to add endosulfan to the UN’s list of pollutants to be eliminated worldwide by 2012.

India, which supplies at least 70 per cent of endosulfan globally, initially strongly opposed the global ban. But it went along with the move after winning agreement for a phase-out period of 11 years to give give scientists and farmers time to find alternative pesticides and endosulfan producers scope to adjust.

India’s top court imposes ban on ‘toxic’ pesticide