If readers,  please excuse my passion on this topic.   It gets very frustrating listening and reading the comments and innuendos of well intentioned,  but completely ignorant people.  We have many out there Like Michele Colplay (public figure)  spreading mistruths and fear mongering in order to pass some whacky agenda,  which will more than likely cause more harm than good.  So when I hear people I respect, like Pete and Randy parrot these misconceptions  I get a little vocal.

I have lived here all my life with a  few excursions to other locals for career.  I have spent the greater part of my life working and dealing with farmers and Ranchers daily.  From Grain harvesting with Case New Holland,  to my own personal adventures. I have made it a point to venture around different crops and farmers,  from tobacco to grapes, and most points in between.

Farmers and Ranchers spend more time and effort on conservation than any of us can imagine.  Not just thinking,  but doing.  From not cutting hay until the pheasants hatch,  to calling in the night when bee trees fall over.  Leaving the brush for the rabbits, joining pheasants forever voluntarily, and as of late even learning more and more about pollinators.  All the while toiling the land for little pay or chance to pass on the heritage,  to feed the masses of this world.  Some would claim personal greed is the driver.  Those people are fools.  Farming is a huge investment low return life choice.  If in doubt,  do the math.


Much respect to Randy for the discussion.  It helps us both narrow the field and trade information.

But back to the topic,  Randy,  a lot of parsing going on here on both accounts,  lets define "vast monoculture" per your descriptions.  Is that an acre?  Like a lawn?    Should we suddenly start demanding football fields be planted in wildflowers?  Nothing worthwhile grown on a baseball diamond,  not even food.  Complete waste of space those are.  And popping up everywhere! While AG land use has gone down,  I bet if you do the math the increase in soccer/football and baseball fields has grown exponentially.  

Silly you say?  (using your idea of extremes) then maybe its 100 acres.  Like city parks or golf courses again,  I would bet exponential growth. Never heard a presentation on the vast golf course conspiracy.

A square mile?  Maybe.  But how many actually square miles are single crops with nothing else?  And of course we should add that there can be no benefit for natural wildlife in that monoculture for it to properly qualify.  Do almonds qualify with the millions of tons of early spring pollen,  or the nuts the squirrels and critters thrive on?   Compare that to the 200 mile drive to Vegas.  Its not really a monoculture,  but it's more barren of life than an almond orchard.

We have Marla constantly reminding us of corn in MN but what about the millions of acres of grass in the western OK plains?  Or the vast sagebrush flats of Wyoming?   The argument that that’s not the productive land  keeps popping up.   That argument doesn’t hold water at all.  What grows here when we don’t farm?  Grass,  miles and miles of a very low value grass,  sure there are weed patches,  but the grass dominates  for miles and miles.  Creating a huge monoculture that is very low quality habitat for any creatures that are not highly mobile.  There is the real key  that the city dwelling environmentalist doesn’t comprehend.  What was in the grassland before we switched it to corn?

So now we switch to corn,(or beans) and we produce tons of protein per acre,  high quality proteins that feed not only the humans,  but a large number of rodents and birds,  as well as insects.   Who are we to say that an acre of butterfly flowers is so much better than an acre of weevil food?  Well right now a lot of people who are clueless are trying to force these agendas.  Yesterday I drove thru IL and IN  Terra Haute right now is home to around 300,000 crows,  not to mention the millions of ducks and geese in the area, All feeding on those "vast monocultures" alongside the local deer and turkeys.   Who gets to decide that a few Monarch are more important than flocks of birds???  I am not qualified,  I am sure of that.

To do this,  there is the accompanying cry of distress about single species.   Monarchs seem to be one,  Rusty patch bumbles,  and lately the honey bee is trying to be used as a club,   but who defends the millions of unemployed and starving rootworms and aphids?

Keep in mind we also in order to accept this agenda,  have to refute the existence of the bugs who do live and breed in those fields, as well as the tons of pollen and nectar from the plants that do grown there. Yes,  we did shorten the window,  but one could very well argue that 100 acres of corn pollen is a lot more nutritious than 100 acres of grass pollen. Not to mention aster, morning glories and pigweeds that abound.

As beekeepers we want to infringe on other people's property, and then whine when we don’t make a ton of honey.  Never mind we put out to many hives,  let the mites run amok and had no clue how to really manage them properly. And to do this  we go to meetings and public forums( like here and  face book) and complain about "vast monocultures" and lack of "biodiversity"  when the reality is we don’t even actually know a thing about the land and what its really like.  We are not standing there when a flock of 30,000 blackbirds swirls and lands to pick bugs and seeds, so it didn’t happen, we didn’t see the deer feeding at night, or the flock of turkeys or quail so they must not exist, we ignore the details that snow geese are overrunning the tundra because of too much Midwest food because someone claims the monarchs did not make it to Mexico like we thought.  We completely ignore the 1000s of dead deer, coons owls and hawks (which was very rare when I was younger)possums, mink, turtles and snakes,  all because are cars are more aerodynamic, and we don’t see as many bugs on them.

Why?  As Randy like to point out,  so we look smart.  Instead of being able to say "I don’t know",  we have to say  " oh its bad farmers are fools destroying things.  Loss of habitat is the key!  Huge monoculture made my honey yield drop.... the list goes on.

And we always defend with a "yea but"

The truth is the 1% who farm and feed and work at this have made it possible to have a great environment,  clean water, soil conservation, and a place to put our bees,  all the while feeding more and more people, on less and less land. And they have been doing this voluntarily on their own for at least the last 6 decades.  
Even now  who is it that’s working on modifying spray practices,  improving planting techniques, and even more and more soil and water conservation items,  the farmers of those vast monocultures. They have no intention of quitting.   Ask any good farmer now  and he can tell you more about the biome of the soil than most beekeepers can tell you about queens.

But many of us  think we should pay more for food,  and organics will solve the problem,  while completely and blindly ignoring the facts. Organic yields are still 1/3 of conventional.  There is not enough shit (organics require natural fertilizer) in the states to fertilize the amounts we would need,  and the increase in acres needed to feed people would in fact be not only impossible,  but a complete disaster. But that doesn’t stop us from jumping up and claiming it would be GREAT  if everything switched.   Never mind the fact the bacteria levels on organics is 100 fold conventional farming.

So how about we actually get the facts and start supporting those monoculture farmers who give us places to set our bees,  and mow around swarms and spray at night to accommodate us?? Maybe we quite feeding uninformed platitudes to the masses,  and holding up the failures as a symbol?  

Neonics are a perfect example of this,  every beekeeper knows how the use has increased and how bad they are for bees,  Dang few have any clue hoe organophosphates have vanished or how much Pyrethroids get sprayed when they vanish. That doesn’t fit the story line.  I would like to see us be smarter before we say anything.  Know what we are talking about first. When it comes to farming and land use.  Darn few actually look before speaking. This picture of Global habitat and feeding the world is a lot bigger than the local population of milkweeds dipping.

Charles

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