I would respectfully add to this, by pointing out the contradiction in
requiring proof of "bee-pocalypse", yet we willingly parrot the
unsubstantiated claim that modern agriculture will fail if neonics (or any
class of agrichemical) goes away.  Going back and reading through some of
the claims, my gosh apparently the world's crops would all fail and we'd all
starve if neonics were restricted or prohibited.  

That claim has been made before.  As just one example, the world's supply of
strawberries was supposedly doomed without access to methyl bromide, a
potent fungicide that was forcibly retired from service in the US a few
years back.  Yet we still have strawberries growing in this country, because
farmers adapted with other practices, products and disease control measures.
Free market conditions work both ways - if a product is suddenly unavailable
for whatever reason, the enterprising business owner won't just sit around
and pine away for the good old days.  They'll get out there and figure out
some other solution.

An even larger, unintended experiment in sudden loss of access to
agrichemicals, was in Cuba in the 1990's.  Cuba was like any other
reasonably developed country in the late 80's, having fully embraced
chemical ag for all their disease, weed and pest control challenges.  And
thanks to the geopolitical issues of the day, they relied entirely on the
Soviet Union for all their agrichemicals, because they didn't manufacture
any of their own.  So when the Soviet Union collapsed, suddenly Cuba was cut
off from all such products, almost overnight.  For awhile folks were
concerned that the entire island would simply starve to death, because
surely such chemical intensive agriculture would collapse.  But what
happened was they worked around that sudden loss, they adopted a wide range
of new (and/or traditional) practices using sustainable and organic farming
principles, and voila they're still here.  The ongoing embargo continues to
strangle their access to things like modern farm chemicals, supplies and
equipment, and even supplies such as replacement parts and antibiotics.
They are one of the few remaining islands in the modern world which is
almost entirely cut off from modern global trade.  No, their quality of life
isn't what it was under the Soviet regime.  Yet they're forging ahead with
farm methods which don't rely on those products anymore.  No signs yet, 20
years later, that their agriculture has imploded in on itself, and they had
far fewer national resources to work with than countries like the USA.

In fact this is a pattern which repeats over and over again with every new
class of wonder agrichemical.  Once the market starts to rely on it, all
sorts of claims of doom go up if/when someone proposes either restriction
and/or removal of that chemical from the marketplace for any reason.  Yet
many such products have been removed or retired from the marketplace, and
we're all still here.  Our crops are all still here.

I would propose using the same Occam's razor for agrichemical usage as we do
for bee populations - study the problem, weigh the evidence, consider the
possibilities, and evaluate the options using a judicious amount of history
and data, without jumping to alarmist, unsubstantiated conclusions about
"we're all doomed".  I agree that the case against neonics is weak at best.
However, if neonics went away tomorrow for whatever reason, modern
agriculture would find a way to continue.  
Kathryn Kerby
Frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA

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