One of the highlights of 2023's Groundswell Festival was a lecture by Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex. Author of several popular science books on wildlife gardening and bumblebees, Goulson also gives many public talks aimed at ensuring his vital scientific research reaches as wide an audience as possible. After the lecture, I bought a signed copy of his latest book, Silent Earth - Averting the Insect Apocalypse.
As you may suspect from the title (which gives a nod to Silent Spring), at times Silent Earth makes very difficult reading, especially for those of us who work in farming. In it, Goulson retells the story of how scientists proved bee declines were related to neonicotinoid insecticide use, despite denials by the agrochemical companies that produced them. In 2013 the EU restricted these neurotoxins, prohibiting their use in flowering crops. However, their use was still permitted as a seed coat.
Around this time, studies began to suggest that certain sublethal effects were also contributing to bee declines by interfering with bees’ memory, messing up their ability to navigate, reducing their immunity to disease, and impacting reproduction and life expectancy.
It was only after Goulson and his team went on to prove that, even as a seed coat, the insecticides persisted in soil and water and were finding their way into wildflowers some distance from cropped fields (the very flower-rich margins and hedgerows farmers had been establishing and tending for years to support pollinating insects - often using public money through environmental stewardship to do so) that the EU brought in a blanket ban of neonicotinoids in agriculture in 2018.
For me, the most shocking learning was that, early on, one of the agro-chemical companies’ own research had reportedly indicated that only 5 per cent of the seed coat was taken up by the target crop, and yet for years the regulators had overlooked the question of where the other 95 per cent might be going, not to mention the possible environmental impacts it might be having. A six-year study (started in 1992) proved that as a seed treatment, imidacloprid (a neonic) broke down very slowly in soil and accumulated over time. Again this was overlooked by regulators.
Unfortunately, it appears that for decades we had been failed by the regulators: missold - and oversold - environmentally disastrous chemicals which were widely used to grow feed crops. Goulson asks, ‘How can we have faith in a system that has let us down so many times in the past?’
He further points out the cumulative impacts of pesticides in real world settings, in which multiple chemicals are used in the same field and layers of impact build up and erode the resilience of organisms over time - whereas regulatory tests for new pesticides only test them in isolation. This is known as the ‘cocktail effect’. For him the message is clear. We must help farmers move away from chemical agriculture - and fast.
To lighten the load, the book is punctuated with delightful one-page vignettes of various insects from around the world, from the aromatic ‘orchid bees’ to the bizarre ‘bombadier beetle’ and from the ingenious ‘trap building ants’ to the macabre ‘mantis fly’. The book acknowledges that the problems we face are the collective responsibility of all of us. For farmers, Goulson suggests that an effective way to achieve change is peer-to-peer learning. He also highlights the importance of quality, independent advice for farmers and the need for farmers and conservationists to come together. He lists the actions we can all take to help avert a human-induced insect apocalypse.
Overall, we get a poignant sense of the man behind the book; an earnest, hardworking scientist making an impassioned plea - and frustrated to near exhaustion from having to shout so loud to communicate his vital life’s work into ears that will not hear.
Jilly McNaughton, FWAG East
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