Farm bill complicates plight of honeybees

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/MNBR107C59.DTL


Excerpt

"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.

"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."
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.

Billions for farmers

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."

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