 |
| A once common sight |
I was struck by a piece in the FT yesterday (reference 1) about oil seed rape, the stuff which we use to make a lot of our cooking oil and a lot of our margarine.
It seems that the EU has been progressively banning the use of things called neonicotinoid pesticides because of the damage they do to honey bees - the decline of which is a source of major concern: no honey bees and all kinds of food crops will be in trouble. See references 3 and 4.
On the other hand, no neonicotinoid pesticides means lots of cabbage stem flea beetles in the oil seed rape causing a great deal of damage there (reference 2). To the extent that the crop in the UK is not much more than half what it used to be. And to make up the difference we are importing the stuff from places like the Ukraine who are not (yet) bothered about bees and are continuing to use the pesticides.
What will the Johnson response to all this be? Do he love honey bees more than he hates meddling regulations from foreigners from Brussels? What will all the cronies he has been promoting to the higher reaches think about it all? What would have the Corbyn response have been?
I suppose the lefty eco response has to be that we just have to eat less. To make do with less rape seed oil. Which fits in well with concerns about obesity.
PS: my guess is that eating and drinking are two of the things that people are doing more of in lockdown. At least the people that can afford it. We are all getting fatter! And having more babies. At least that is free - at least at the beginning.
Reference 1: Rapeseed decline raises post-Brexit fears for UK farmers: EU pesticide ban points to potential flashpoint in trade talks over food import standards - Judith Evans - 2020. FT, 28th July.
Reference 4: Crop production in the USA is frequently
limited by a lack of pollinators - J. R. Reilly and others - 2020. RSPSB.
No comments:
Post a Comment