But they don't use twice as much per acre. Home gardeners might use twice as much pesticide per fruit tree, but they don't have that many trees. They don't grow crops like soybeans and corn and cotton. They also use way too much chemicals on their lawns, but I doubt that even
*that* comes to 1/100 of the amount you are saying. Being able to scale a dubious statistic and convert to different units or measure doesn't magically give it credibility.
I have found that non-chemical controls are better at reducing the insect levels to the point where they might be tolerable. Then when you have a major infestation, the chemicals are more effective because they bugs aren't used to them. I'm trying to figure out how this principle relates to apple production in the Upper Midwest.
'much snipping of stuff, to allow for a short response posting...
I must agree with the point of Paggers posting, since I have left my garden to the "critters" I have noticed that it is much happier, less bug damage and no issues with me getting stung, since I keep my attitude towards my friends in that mindset, and so the yellowjackets that are constantly in my garden gobbling up those bugs that I don't want, don't even notice me other than to stay out from under my feet ;^)
I really do feel that we spend way too much time trying to stop what our EarthMother has given to us from doing us good, and instead seem to want to destroy it, sigh...
FWIW Paghat try a more positive/encouraging reply to others postings, and you may find them more willing to listen to you...
That isn't going to fly here, Bob. It's a non-argument.
Please don't be coy. Twice as much per tree is still twice as much, whether it's on an acre or not. It all adds up.
Pardon me for saying so, but that's a silly comment. I converted the units because I know that Americans are not familiar with kilograms, and acres are more meaningful to most people than hectares. Whichever units it's described in, the numbers add up to the same amount. I wasn't hiding anything.
I was looking for an overall statistic of pesticide use. Since that doesn't satisfy you, you can go the USGS site where they list close to 200 pesticides and their estimated rate of application, complete with useage maps:
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've gone to the individual pesticide useage pages on the USGS site and just added up some of the totals (broken down by crop). I chose the ones that sounded familiar to me. I don't know which are, or aren't, the most heavily used.
These figures represent the total estimated amounts, in lbs, used on all crops (for agricultural use) in a year (1992) in the US. Since not all counties reported, and it is now 12 years later, I expect that the numbers are much higher now. The maps show the distribution of the application if you're interested.
Atrazine: 63,947,512 lbs per year
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25,647,683 lbs per year
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3,774,667 lbs per year
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1,066,220 lbs per year
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2,689,831 lbs per year
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2,808,304 lbs per year
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904,832 lbs per year
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's just 7 of almost 200 pesticides listed by the USGS as being used for ag purposes. Together these pesticides alone come to 97,064,382 lbs of pesticide per year ... almost a BILLION pounds from just 7 pesticides.
Home growers were not surveyed. Also not factored in are the pesticides that people apply to their lawns or for insect control in and around the home. Now, if home gardeners use 2 to 6 times as much pesticide as commercial growers ... even if they constitute a fraction, in acres, of commercial production, it's still a significant amount.
I, too, thought that the figure of 1,410 lbs pesticide per acre sounded high. But when you look at the total use of just 7 or hundreds of pesticides, it doesn't really seem all that implausible.
That's the basic idea behind IPM. So if home growers feel compelled to use pesticides, that's the way to go.
various resources:
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Midwest Tree Fruit Pest Management Handbook ... Integrated pest management (IPM) disease management guidelines for organic apple production in Ohio. ... Integrated pest management for apples and pears. ...
Thank you for your response. They say that ignorance is bliss, so I'm guessing you must be very happy. :)
Couldn't you have come up with something pithy, dear girl, rather than just a rallying cry to your cronies? Did you expect them to rush out, gang up on me, and pummel me with their words?
I'm sure the USGS (FYI that's the US Geological Survey) is pushing some liberal agenda with their survey of pesticide use too. Why don't you check out their survey of pesticide use? They have nearly 200 commonly used pesticides surveyed and mapped. To get a total of all pesticide use per you'll have to do the math. I'll make it a bit easier for you by providing the link. No need to thank me.
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Did you actually read any of my earlier post? The excerpts about the presence of pesticides in human breast milk are from the USGS, as well as a respected American college. Even pesticide pushers, who don't give a crap about other lifeforms, get concerned when it comes to their own children. Be concerned. Be very concerned.
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exposure to organochlorine pesticides has been documented by studies detecting these compounds in various human tissues, including breast milk. Consumption of contaminated food (including fish and shellfish) is a major route of human exposure to organochlorine pesticides. [] Organochlorine compounds tend to be stored in high-fat tissues within the body, but can be mobilized during lactation or starvation. Levels of some organochlorine compounds in human tissues in the United States do not appear to have declined, at least through the early 1980s. Examples include DDT in breast milk and dieldrin in adipose tissue (fat). []
--------------------------------- Oraganochlorines in human breast milk:
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(as DDE, a breakdown products from DDT) also appeared in the fatty tissues of seals and Eskimos, far from any area of use, indicating that, because of its persistence, it was being transported for long distances in the atmosphere and then being washed from the atmosphere by rains. It also showed up in human breast milk at remarkably high concentrations -- so high that the milk couldn't legally be sold through interstate commerce if it were cow's milk! DDE is the most widespread contaminant in human milk around the world. When you think about it, human breast fed babies are way up there on the food chain, and are thus very susceptible to the effects of biomagnification and bioconcentration. For persistent compounds like DDT (or other persistent compounds, such as dioxins or PCB's -- see "POPs," below) human milk is the most contaminated of all human foods. Typically, concentrations of organochlorines (such as DDT) in human milk are 10 - 20 times higher than in cow's milk, and prevailing levels are often greater than those allowed in commercial food stuffs. []
The problem is the same. The more pesticide that's used, the more resistant the insects become. That is the main reason for the development of IPM. The commonly used pesticides lose their efficacy after a while. They're running out of pesticides that are toxic enough to kill bugs, but not people.
I don't know where you got your information, but it's not correct, I'm afraid. Emile Frison is one of the world's leading banana researchers, and according to Dr. Frison:
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[] Bananas are threatened by the rapidly spreading fungus Black Sigatoka that has been undermining banana production for the past three decades. It has reached almost every banana-growing region in the world and typically reduces yield by 30 to 50 percent. Other diseases and pests that cripple yields include a soil fungus, parasitic worms, weevils, and viruses such as the Banana Streak Virus, which lurks inside the banana genome itself. Commercial growers can afford and rely extensively on chemical fungicides, often spraying their crops 50 times per year?the equivalent of spraying nearly once per week, which is about 10 times the average for intensive agriculture in industrialized countries. Chemical inputs account for 27 percent of the production cost of export bananas. Agricultural chemicals used on bananas for diseases and pests have harmed the health of plantation workers and the environment. ?If we can devise resistant banana varieties, we could possibly do away with fungicides and pesticides all together,? said Frison. ?In addition, resistant strains are essential for small-holder farmers, who cannot afford the expensive chemicals to begin with. When Black Sigatoka strikes, farmers can do little more than watch their plants die. Increased hunger can swiftly follow.? []
Lady beetles are carnivorous. They prefer soft bodied insects such as aphids, but will also eat other bugs, including their own kind. I've documented them in the larval stage cannibalizing one another. Ladybugs don't eat fruit or vegetation of any kind ... and that's a good thing. :)
I've additionally heard the domestic banana really is endangered because its own genetic material has narrowed to a couple strains developed for large size & toughness in shipping & physical apeparance (not so much for flavor) while wild bananas have vanished with loss of habitat. Some worry that eventually corn will will follow for the same reasons. Without careful preservation of a series of wild forms, the selectively bred & genetically altered crops eventually meet a disease that takes them down. Without the original seed stocks which can restore genetic strength, that's the end of a staple crop. At best there'll be massive if temporary crop die-offs equivalent of the Great Potato Famine.
You're describing the old European lady beetles we all know and love. The imported Asian lady beetles certainly eat fruit. I've seen them by the hundreds in my apples; I don't think they will attack a perfect apple, but once yellow jackets or birds or something make a little hole in the apple, the ladybugs go after it. They enlarge the hole, which then attracts more ladybugs.
They are a big problem for grape growers because when they get inside the grapes, they stink up the juice when the grapes are crushed and they can easily ruin the wine. At least with a ladybug infested apple, you can see them.
Yes, I did look at the link, and I believe nationmaster just made up the statistic.
Yes, it does add up. But your original statistic was expressed in in kg/hectare. Home owners do not plant high-density stands of fruit trees. So using twice as much pesticide per tree does not translate to using twice as much per acre.
My point was that if the original statistic is wrong (and I think it is but I don't know (it looks ridiculous)), converting it to different units doesn't make it right.
[snip]
I will study this USGS link, and the others you posted that were in the rest of your message that I trimmed off. Thank-you.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of this. But I did find some puzzling evidence on my plums. The first time I saw them years ago, I thought they were ladybugs that had somehow died just before becoming fully formed adults. I thought they were must resting on the fruit to morph and had died. Then, when everyone brought up plum curculios as a big probelm on plums, I checked some sites to see what they looked like, and though my bugs don't look like the adult PC, I thought they might be a pre-adult stage not shown. Now I'm wondering again.
The stupid thing is that the asian ladybugs were imported as beneficials in vast numbers. Now, thanks to them, native ladybugs have been extirpated almost everywhere the asian has been introduced.
Good intention, very bad idea. I get the chills whenever I hear about another insect they want to release to combat some alien that was accidentally imported and has no natural enemies. Importing alien bugs to battle alien bugs or plants is a dumb idea at best.
New studies show that the main advantage that alien imports (insects, mollusks and plants) have is that their usual parasites don't exist here. Whereas they may be preyed upon by a dozen parasites on their home turf, here there are just a few at most.
This I know! :-D The first few times I transported ladybug larvae to the rose buffet by hand, the little buggers bit me. I transported them in plastic cups after that. They're now everywhere so I don't have to move them around. I didn't introduce them here. They were very well established when I moved here.
On their page they give their source as being: Source: World Resource Institute, World Resources 2000-2001, Washington, DC: WRI, 2000. via ciesin.org
I checked Ciesen org. It is the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University:
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I clicked through to here for the Environmental Sustainability Index page:
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downloaded a pdf file of their 2002 Environmental Sustainability Report--section 3, Annex 6, "Data Tables". It does confirm the statistic given by nationmaster. Here's the relevent excerpt from the section, plus the Canadian stat for the hosers.
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ESI: Annex 6 Variable Data Variable: PESTHA Name: Pesticide use Units: Kg/Hectare of Cropland Reference Year: 1996 Source World Resource Institute, World Resources 2000-2001, Washington, DC: WRI, 2000. [] Canada 644.00 [] United States 1599.00 []
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So the stat of 1599 kg of pesticide used per hectare of ag land really does come from a report by CIESEN at Columbia University, which is, as you know, a highly reputable institution of learning.
This is a moot point, Bob, and beneath a man of your obvious intelligence.
Americans are a ridiculous people. :) But if you actually download the pdf, you'll see that the US, eventhough it uses 1599 kg of pesticide per hectare, is far from the worst pesticide polluter in the world. That's the really scary part. Because there are no borders when it comes to wind/air and water borne pesticides.
You're very welcome. I'm glad that you're interested in being informed by facts and not by conjecture. Sometimes people take a side and stick with it, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
:) Lady beetles are carnivorous. They prefer soft bodied insects such as :) aphids, but will also eat other bugs, including their own kind. I've :) documented them in the larval stage cannibalizing one another. Ladybugs :) don't eat fruit or vegetation of any kind ... and that's a good thing. :)
Most are carnivorous. Mexican bean ladybug, aka Mexican bean beetle and the squash ladybug are plant feeders. ...I believe the reason the larvae cannibalize each other is to get a protein that triggers the the stoppage of the the juvenile hormone that now allows them to pupate and become an adult.
Lar. (to e-mail, get rid of the BUGS!!
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