underXposed

Last year I posted several entries on the colony collapse disorder suffered by (so far mostly) commercial beekeepers. At that time few people were aware of the serious threat to human existence that bee die-off poses. One of every three mouthfuls of food we eat grew with the assistance of pollinators such as honeybees, bumblebees, and wasps. The latter two populations are also dwindling. Personally I would rank this emergency right up there with global warming, peak oil, and nuclear disaster. The implications are truly frightening, and I’m not just talking about the enormous loss of food industry profits.

This from Wikipedia:

From 1971 to 2006, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of feral (wild) honeybees in the US (now almost absent); and a significant, though somewhat gradual decline in the number of colonies maintained by beekeepers. This decline includes the cumulative losses from all factors such as urbanization, pesticide use, tracheal and Varroa mites, and commercial beekeepers retiring and going out of business. However, late in the year 2006 and in early 2007 the rate of attrition was alleged to have reached new proportions, and the term “Colony Collapse Disorder” was proposed to describe this sudden rash of disappearances. Read it all>>

Since beekeepers first discovered the dwindling of their hives, the honeybee die-off is spreading. The following from The Seattle Times:

Bees are in trouble, and in Washington, that could mean agriculture is, too.

Last year, many Washington beekeepers were relieved that they avoided a mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder that silenced hives all over the country. But this year, some beekeepers are reporting a devastating new pathogen — with no reliable cure — is killing their bees in droves.

Some beekeepers are helping to pay for a crash research program at Washington State University to figure out what is going on.

“It’s a major disaster in Western Washington. We are into a huge emergency situation,” said Yakima beekeeper Eric Olson, who runs the state’s largest commercial pollination business.

While his hives in Central and Eastern Washington have survived, Olson said he has lost 80 percent of his Western Washington hives — more than 4,000 in all — to the new pathogen. Other commercial pollinators with bees in Western Washington were just as hard hit. “I’m scared, and I don’t mind saying so,” Olson said.

But there’s plenty of evidence that organic farming is a means to turn this disaster around. One example is Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder. And the Organic Consumer’s Association has posted a goldmine of insightful links on a Honey Bee Health & Colony Collapse Disorder page.

However, even organic farming is in deep trouble since the USDA has deregulated labeling terms. “Organic” is fast becoming as meaningless a term as “natural,” which means absolutely nothing. And with genetically engineered seeds cross-pollinating with organic seeds (the penultimate deregulation), we are facing a the end of the world as we know it.

And more and more often now we’re learning of food contamination with salmonella and other potentially lethal bacteria coming out of industrialized food production (this week it was Malt-o-Meal’s puffed cereals). Here’s an eye-opening and stomach-turning revelation about the FDA’s acceptable levels of filth in food. They’re talking about the “allowable” percentage of molds, maggots, rodent hairs, animal crap, and insects allowed in foods.

The industrialization of food production was, since it began, a disastrous undertaking, and we’re reaping the disaster these days. Industry and science were implemented in food production followed the Malthusian assumptions of the green revolution. Industry and science may be useful for building cars and space ships, but they have no place in food production. We depend on the complex interrelationships of nature for our food. We don’t eat metal and we need more than pills to stay alive. The advent of the green revolution was made possible by the discovery and use of cheap and plentiful fossil fuel (oil). And now that the Peakniks have shown the dwindling supply of cheap oil, we are caught in a downward spiral of everything the industrialists/technocrats took for granted in a boom of seemingly limitless growth.

We’re already seeing the beginning of mass starvation and revolt around the planet (Thailand, Philippines, China, Africa for which rice is a staple for life). Here are two examples of the beginning of global die-off:

• Rising Rice Prices in Thailand Fuels Fear of Food Shortages and Starvation
• Starvation Stares Chin People in the Face
• Rising rice prices spark concern across Asia

And America, now a third world country thanks to the idiots in power, has all those brilliant ecoheads growing corn for ethanol instead of wheat for bread, there is a growing wheat shortage in America.

Let’s just sleep on. Someone will take care of things for us…yeah right. And what a good job they’ve done so far.