{"id":51530,"date":"2020-03-03T08:45:05","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T13:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51530"},"modified":"2020-03-03T08:45:13","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T13:45:13","slug":"bees-are-sentinels-mass-bee-die-offs-signal-the-wider-impact-of-brazils-pesticide-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51530","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bees are sentinels\u2019: mass bee die-offs signal the wider impact of Brazil\u2019s pesticide boom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/unearthed.greenpeace.org\/2020\/02\/27\/bee-die-offs-soya-brazil-pesticide-boom-biodiverisity-agriculture\/\">\u2018Bees are sentinels\u2019: mass bee die-offs signal the wider impact of Brazil\u2019s pesticide boom<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Brazil\u2019s vast plantations, agribusiness-friendly policies and tropical fecundity have made it an agricultural superpower \u2013 and, our data reveals, the world\u2019s largest user of highly hazardous pesticides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The footage is unpleasant to watch: thousands of bees writhe, disoriented, on the ground in front of their hive. The dead bodies of thousands more lie beneath them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the smell, said beekeeper Aldo Machado, is even worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDead bees smell like dead rats,\u201d he said.&nbsp;<strong>\u201c<\/strong>The smell is very strong, it really is. It\u2019s like any other meat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Half a billion bees are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-08-19\/bees-are-dropping-dead-in-brazil-and-sending-a-message-to-humans\">estimated<\/a>&nbsp;to have died from December 2018 to January 2019 in southern Brazil. Machado, vice-president of Rio Grande do Sul\u2019s beekeeping society, has been hearing reports of die-offs since 2013.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Machado sent samples of his bees for analysis, which showed that they were contaminated with an insecticide called fipronil, commonly used to control ants and termites on soy crops.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Brazil \u2013 home to as much as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.unenvironment.org\/news-and-stories\/story\/megadiverse-brazil-giving-biodiversity-online-boost\">20 percent of the world\u2019s remaining biodiversity<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;is a heavy user of pesticides. An<a href=\"https:\/\/unearthed.greenpeace.org\/2020\/02\/20\/pesticides-croplife-hazardous-bayer-syngenta-health-bees\/\">&nbsp;analysis by&nbsp;<em>Unearthed<\/em>&nbsp;and Public Eye&nbsp;<\/a>of more than $20bn of global agrochemical sales data for 2018 showed Brazil was the world\u2019s biggest consumer of pesticides classed as seriously hazardous to health or the&nbsp;environment. These hazards included acute toxicity to humans, chronic exposure risks like cancer or reproductive failure, and&nbsp;high toxicity to bees.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Brazil has long had agribusiness-friendly policies, thanks in part to its powerful congressional farming lobby, known as the Bancada Ruralista, and in part to a decades-long push to leverage its vast natural resources into global influence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have interference from the government, which has many people from agribusiness within it,\u201d Wanderlei Pignati, Professor at the Centre for Environmental Studies and Occupational Health at Mato Grosso\u2019s Federal University, told&nbsp;<em>Unearthed<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Bees are sentinels\u2019: mass bee die-offs signal the wider impact of Brazil\u2019s pesticide boom Brazil\u2019s vast plantations, agribusiness-friendly policies and tropical fecundity have made it an agricultural superpower \u2013 and, our data reveals, the world\u2019s largest user of highly hazardous pesticides. The footage is unpleasant to watch: thousands of bees writhe, disoriented, on the ground [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29144,29143],"class_list":["post-51530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-sofia-perpetua","tag-unearthed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51532,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51530\/revisions\/51532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}