Charlie, we must be careful about making blanket statements. Beekeeping
can be completely sustainable in many areas. In my own operation, I've cut
way back on trucking, and could likely remain in the black even without
almond income. There is no need for me to own all the land that my bees
forage upon, as there are many willing landowners who are happy to have my
hives there. This has not changed much for generations, and looks to
continue, thus sustainable.
Agriculture as it is currently practiced in clearly unsustainable in some
areas of California, and thus unsustainable in the number one U.S. farm
state. And water use is primarily by agriculture, not by other humans. In
our desert state of California, it takes up to four feet of precious water
to be applied to every crop acre to grow something.
Re energy, current US agriculture is largely dependent upon cheap
petroleum. It may be a difficult transition as the price of oil climbs.
Not to mention the unsustainability of most pesticides. Our current
overuse of them--Roundup is a good example--shortens their effective life,
due to pest resistance (e.g., glyphosate-resistant weeds). It is getting
more and more difficult to develop new pesticides that meet our
environmental standards. So I feel that we could call our heavy reliance
upon pesticides, rather than agroecological IPM to be unsustainable.
Other unsustainable practices are pollution due to farmers. As a kid, we
could not breathe when the smudge pots were burning in the orange groves,
or rice farmers were burning their fields. And Californians got tired of
farm runoff poisoning our rivers.
As far as your estimate that 85% of farms are family farms, I'm not sure.
The 2012 Ag Census says that over 80% of the market value of farm products
is produced by less than 8% of American farms. It is those 8% that likely
have the most impact upon American farming practices.
And as far as honey bees being unnecessary for pollination services, I find
it difficult to believe that the farmers who pay huge amounts for
pollination services year after year are just willingly throwing away money.
The above said, you and l are likely in agreement as to the unrealistic
agendas of a number of activist groups. The American public demands
plentiful, cosmetically perfect, inexpensive food, and the American farmer
responds to produce it.
The market and the farmer will quickly respond to demand--how the
housewife/consumer votes at the grocery store, rather than what some
activist group tells them they "should" do.
And Eugene, the concept of "ownership" of land is ridiculous. The Native
Americans in California "owned" the land until the Spanish Crown took it.
The Spanish Crown owned it until it granted it to ranchers. Those ranchers
"owned" it until the U.S. claimed it. The concept of ownership is based
solely upon who has the force to back up their claim to temporary
stewardship. In countries without a strong legal and police system such as
ours, one's "ownership" of land can be taken with impunity by those with
guns or bribes. But I digress from beekeeping.
In the past week, we've taken over 250 mite wash samples in order to
perform some experiments on mite treatments. We also graded 30 colonies
for strength today for an ongoing nutritional study. And started a
different trial yesterday with 36 carefully equalized colonies to test for
negative effects of a common miticide.
--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
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