Food & Climate
While evidence shows there are no significant yield losses from planting neonic-treated seeds and they threaten pollinators, birds, aquatic organisms, and mammals, and may pose risks to humans, they are planted on millions of acres in U.S.
Approximately 90 million acres of corn fields and more than 40 million acres of soybean fields each year in United states, according to a report that seen by “Food & Climate” platform.
And farmers are paying extra for insecticide seed coatings they may not need.
Farmers can spray them on fields, but these insecticides are also attached to seeds as an outer coating, called a seed treatment. As the seeds germinate and grow, the plant’s tissues become toxic to certain pests.
Neonic-treated seeds effects
Neonic-treated seeds impact beneficial insects, like bees and other pollinators.
Newer research also shows neonics threaten birds and some mammals, suggesting potential human health impacts.
In 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the three most common neonics were each likely to harm more than 1,000 endangered species.
Also, neonics move through soil into groundwater, contaminating rivers and streams in the Midwest and beyond. Data from 2015 to 2016 showed about half of Americans over three years old were recently exposed to a neonic, according to “Civil Eats“.
A significant portion of that use may be for nothing. In corn and soy fields, new research and evidence accumulated over the last few years suggest that widespread use of neonic-treated seeds provide minimal benefit to farmers.
One study from Quebec helped convince the Canadian province to change its laws to restrict the use of neonic seed treatments. After five years and a 95 percent drop in the use of neonic-coated seeds, there have been no reported impacts on crop yields.
“The way it often gets marketed to [farmers] is, they get one chance a year to get it right,” explained Mac Erhardt, co-owner of Albert Lea Seed, a small, family-owned seed company based in Minnesota and Iowa.
“The big chemical companies have been pretty successful at distributing counter-information where they show, ‘Well, if you plant naked seed, you’re giving up five bushels an acre.
’” Six or seven years ago, before his company made a full switch to selling non-GMO and organic seeds, Erhardt said his contracts with big seed companies required him to treat corn seed with neonics before selling it.
No other options available
But based on conversations with farmers and other industry insiders, agrichemical companies that sell seeds and pesticides continue to steer farmers toward using neonics on their seeds—and sometimes, there are no other options available.
“They scare the farmers and say that you’re going to lose your yield, that you’re going to have crop failure, and the whole grain sector will just collapse,” said Louis Robert, a Canadian agronomist who previously worked for the Quebec government, where he revealed pesticide-industry meddling in research on neonics’ environmental harms. “They go very far in terms of misleading people.”
One Iowa farmer compared soybean seed selection to a car wash. Instead of exterior, interior, and a wax, it’s neonicotinoid, fungicide, and a nematicide.
From a farmer’s perspective, we want a seed to be protected, so we just trust that whatever potion they put on the seed, it’s going to be okay. They’re not in the business of selling seed that will yield less, so we just put our trust in them,” she said. “If we had real choices, those that know insecticides like neonics are harmful, we’re not going to push that button.”
Pesticide companies are so entrenched in the culture of agricultural communities, asking questions about insecticides and their merits or detriments also can feel taboo. One reason this farmer did not want to be named was because she thought, with all of the seed contracts she’d signed over the years, that it was possible she had signed a non-disclosure agreement without realizing it.
For others, it’s much more personal. After Frank Rademacher, who has been farming corn and soybeans with his dad in east-central Illinois since 2018, talked about neonics to a reporter at a farming publication, another farmer yelled at him in public and accused him of hurting agriculture.
Rademacher said that many farmers he encounters have a vague, visceral sense that there may be risks associated with the colorful dust that blows into the air as the high-powered vacuum system shoots seeds into the ground and the tractor shakes and bumps around. But pesticides are so commonplace that at a forum he attended, farmers laughed about which ones cause rashes and which lead to headaches. With neonics, he said, they’re grateful to have insecticides that are not as acutely toxic as the ones their parents handled. If they try not to touch the seeds with their bare hands or breathe too much of the dust in, it feels like enough.