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<DIV><FONT size=2>From <EM>San Francisco Chronicle</EM></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/MNBR107C59.DTL"><FONT
size=2>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/MNBR107C59.DTL</FONT></A></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3><STRONG>Farm bill complicates plight of
honeybees</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=byline><A href="mailto:clochhead@sfchronicle.com"><FONT color=#000000
size=2>Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau</FONT></A><FONT
size=2></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=byline><FONT size=2>Saturday, April 19, 2008</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV id=articlecontent><SPAN class="georgia md" id=bodytext>
<P><FONT size=2><STRONG>(04-19) 04:00 PDT Washington -</STRONG> -- The hand of
nature, usually unseen and unappreciated, is coming down hard on California
agriculture. The honeybees that pollinate its $21 billion bounty of almonds,
avocados, berries, melons and other produce that make it the nation's farming
giant are disappearing from an unexplained cause. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>The hand of Congress works in equally mysterious ways: A new
five-year farm bill under negotiation may spend a few million dollars saving
bees, but definitely will spend billions on farm subsidy policies that
contribute to their destruction. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>The Bush administration is pushing hard to cut commodity
subsidies and divert more funds to environmental and nutrition programs in the
farm bill. Congressional negotiators are pushing back to expand subsidies at the
expense of these programs and want to raise more tax revenue to do it. Unable to
reach agreement and facing a White House veto, they have extended the
negotiations until Friday of next week.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Domesticated honeybee colonies suffered a 35 percent decline
last winter. Wild pollinators such as native bees, wasps and butterflies are
suspected to be in sharp decline, too, according to scientists, beekeepers and
others at a symposium organized by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who is
struggling to get $20 million in the bill to research the cause of the honeybee
decline. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Likely culprits of so-called colony collapse disorder are new
systemic pesticides that are safer for humans but intentionally disrupt insect
neurology, causing memory loss and navigation failure.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>"It's all correlative at this point," said May Berenbaum, one of
the nation's top entomologists.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Troy Fore, head of the American Beekeeping Federation, said the
new pesticides "don't so much kill them outright. They affect the things insects
need to be able to stay alive and make a living. They're safer for mammals, of
course that's humans, but they're pretty bad on bees."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Other suspects are habitat loss, exotic pests and diseases, and
the rise of vast monocultures of single crops that create "floral deserts" when
not in bloom. </FONT></P>
<H3 class=subhead><FONT size=2>Wild bees also hard hit</FONT></H3>
<P><FONT size=2>Wild bees have also been "hard hit, but it is impossible to
determine" how badly, Berenbaum said. "There is evidence of decline in the
abundance of ... bumblebees, some butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, but for
most pollinator species, the paucity of long-term population data and the
incomplete knowledge of even basic biology make definitive assessment
difficult."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Most terrestrial plant life requires pollination. Without it,
plants cannot exist. For some species, Berenbaum warned, "extinction is a
possibility."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>On Capitol Hill, House and Senate negotiators are hammering out
final details on a farm bill that will supercharge the industrialized crop
production that scientists believe weakens vital pollinators. To do that, they
are looking to trim existing farm conservation programs known to help
pollinators survive.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>"We don't really know what all problems are with honeybees,"
said Judith Redmond, a partner at Full Belly Farm, an organic produce grower in
the Capay Valley (Yolo County) north of San Francisco that has hosted University
of California bee researchers. "But what we do know ... is there are 4,000
species of native pollinators. They are very efficient at pollinating specific
crops. They need habitat. Very clearly from our farm experience and the research
done on our farm, the habitats that we've installed here have made a difference
to the pollinator population."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Instead of expanding these efforts, Congress is adding a new
program costing as much as $5 billion that will almost certainly intensify the
push to plow fragile prairie land in Montana and the Dakotas where beekeepers
rest their bees when California's nut and fruit crops are not in bloom.
</FONT></P>
<H3 class=subhead><FONT size=2>Billions for farmers</FONT></H3>
<P><FONT size=2>Taxpayers have invested billions of dollars paying farmers to
protect this land under 10- and 15-year contracts, but high grain prices, driven
in part by federal ethanol subsidies, have created pressure to allow farmers to
break those contracts without penalty to grow more grain.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Even if the contracts simply expire, Ducks Unlimited, a
conservation group, warns of an "astounding" loss of wetlands and wildlife,
including little-understood pollinators, in the northern prairies. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>"It's looking like we're going to lose about two-thirds of the
(protected) land in our area," said Jim Ringelman, director of conservation
programs for Ducks Unlimited in North Dakota. "Most birds won't use cropland to
reproduce in. It's just not habitat that works for them."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Or bees.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>As beekeepers haul more than a million hives to California nut
and fruit crops from as far away as Florida and the Dakotas, "one of the reasons
they are having so much difficulty is as they drive across the country, there is
nothing for them to eat," said UC Berkeley biologist Claire Kremen, who is
conducting bee research.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Farm bill negotiators may have to trim these programs to make
room for billions of dollars in automatic payouts to a few big commercial farms
growing a few grain crops whose market prices are shattering records.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>The 91 percent of California farmers who grow produce and are
struggling against urban encroachment and environmental regulations will get
none of that money. The farm bill throws a comparative pittance to the organic
farming that shuns pesticides and rotates crops in a traditional method that
attracts wildlife. Organic farming remains just 0.5 percent of U.S. agriculture
despite soaring demand. Buyers are forced to look to China for organic
produce.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>The rise in grain prices is threatening U.S. organic markets.
Conventional grains that are easier and cheaper to grow than organic grains are
fetching eye-popping prices and luring farmers away from organics. Shortages of
organic feeds are filtering down to organic livestock and dairy producers. That
is driving organic retail prices sky high and threatening the growth in organic
markets that have proved beneficial to wildlife and conservation
efforts.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Research in the farm bill is likewise a sideshow. Boxer will be
lucky to get money for emergency bee research. Instead, farm bill negotiators
are likely to include a costly depreciation write-off for racehorses, and a
pesticide provision that opponents fear could prohibit the Department of
Agriculture from promoting safer farming methods. Boxer is also fighting that
provision.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>The farm bill "is literally the largest public investment in
conservation with private landowners for wildlife habitat that Congress ever
does," said Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis. "And we have only one shot at it every five
years. We have to try to get it right." </FONT></P>
<H3 class=subhead><FONT size=2>'Permanent disaster'</FONT></H3>
<P><FONT size=2>Farm bill negotiators want instead to pour billions of dollars
into a giant new "permanent disaster" program. It will go mainly to the very
grain growers in the Dakotas and Montana who are now plowing virgin prairie and
marginal land set aside for conservation. The program is all but guaranteed to
produce crop failures, while providing an enormous financial incentive to
destroy pollinator, bird and other habitat.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Other programs that share costs with farmers to encourage
conservation also are at risk. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>In California, UC Berkeley biologist Kremen is convinced that
crop diversification and "hedgerow" plantings of different types of plants
between fields could help both domesticated honeybees and wild
pollinators.</FONT></P>
<H3 class=subhead><FONT size=2>Almonds bloom in burst</FONT></H3>
<P><FONT size=2>Pollinator declines are "linked to industrial agriculture in
multiple ways," she said. Large monocultures of almond crops planted in the
Central Valley on farm after farm bloom in one explosive burst, creating huge
demand for honeybees, which then mix by the millions in a perfect setting to
transmit pests and diseases. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Their food is limited to one type of blossom, a thin diet that
Kremen compared to a person living on just rice or chocolate pudding.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2>Wild pollinators who need food the rest of the year cannot
survive. Monocultures "reduce the populations of wild pollinators, reducing the
number of species and their abundance," Kremen said. "You've taken a native
ecosystem and replaced with a single crop blooming at a single time. The rest of
the year there is nothing blooming on those fields, there is nothing for
pollinators to eat."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2></FONT></P>
<P><I><FONT size=2>E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at </FONT><A
href="mailto:clochhead@sfchronicle.com"><FONT
size=2>clochhead@sfchronicle.com</FONT></A><FONT size=2>.</FONT></I><FONT
size=2> </FONT></P></SPAN></DIV><!--/articlecontent -->
<P id=pageno><FONT size=2>This article appeared on page <STRONG>A - 1</STRONG>
of the San Francisco Chronicle</FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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<DIV><FONT
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<DIV><FONT size=2><STRONG>The Xerces Society for Invertebrate
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