A new Silent Spring?

 Times of Tunbridge Wells

Slipping towards a new Silent Spring?

By Kent Barker

As the weather gets warmer I’m able to breakfast outside and look across the garden to the fields beyond.  It’s not a particularly inspiring sight.  A weeping willow completely obscures the view of a couple of colourful shrubs and a bank of rhododendrons.  (Thank heavens for the spell checker – I’d never have got that last one.  Should you need to know, it’s Latin from Greek: rhodon – rose + Dendron - tree!).

The fields themselves are dullish too.  There’s no oil seed rape this year -which is a sadness and a blessing in equal parts.  Sad because my bees love it and it provides an early supply of food for them. A blessing because it might be killing the bees and, anyway, I hate it.  It’s such a garish colour and transforms swathes the landscape from bright young green to brash, visceral yellow.  And I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to native and traditional plants.  It’s why I’m none too fond of those rhododendrons. I’ve always considered them unwelcome 19^th century imports from China, totally out of keeping in the garden of a medieval house.

I had, likewise, always assumed that oil seed rape was a modern interloper to our fields, but apparently it was around in England in the 14^th century – pre-dating my abode.  Plus it’s used for production of bio-diesel which must be A Good Thing since it’s a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.  So I’d better amend my prejudice. 

Anyway there I am, sitting on the back terrace, sipping coffee and railing against the bloody immigrants (rhododendrons and OSR – not the other kind – you kip if you want to, I’m staying awake!) except that there is no rape this year.  In fact I don’t know what the farmer has planted.  I’ve lived most of my life in the country but still can’t always tell one crop from another.  A hawk from a handsaw, yes, barley from wheat when it’s just a few inches high, no. (Incidentally Shakespeare’s handsaw wasn’t that carpentry tool, it was a “heronshaw”. But nevertheless I’m pretty sure I could distinguish a heron from a raptor.)

Suddenly there’s a mighty roar of diesel engines.  This is not unusual. Loads of tractors pass during the day.  But this one is not on the road. It’s going up and down the field spraying copious quantities of chemicals over the unidentified crop.

For years I’ve been concerned about spraying.  It’s bad for the river which is only just beginning to get fish back in it.  And it’s bad for my bees if the pesticides are carried by the wind to their hives.  It’s probably also none too good for my health either, though the chemical companies will probably tell you their stuff is absolutely safe.

But that’s what they said about DDT.  It was even marketed as being ‘good for you’ until we began to realise it was killing off the birds as well as the bugs and poisoning the waters, and causing birth defects among wildlife and even getting into our bloodstreams alongside PCBs.  It took Rachel Carson and her seminal 1962 book Silent Spring to wake us up to what was happening, but even then it took a decade to instigate even a partial ban of the chemical which wasn’t restricted globally until as recently as 2001.

The question is, have we learned from our mistakes over DDT?  The current debate over Neonicotinoids would suggest not.  Neonics are systemic pesticides - a relatively new type of insecticide - used in the last 20 years to control a variety of pests, especially on oil seed rape.  But there’s a large body of evidence showing they are lethal to bees.  And so they’ve been banned across Europe since 2013.  But now the National Farmers Union is seeking a derogation to allow them to be used again in the UK. 

OK, I’m sorry about the problems arable farmers have managing their crops, but really, how short-sighted can you be?  The farmers need bees to pollinate their plants.  They’ve been told that a chemical they’ve been using on that crop is killing the bees.  So what do they do?  Go back to what they were using before? Find a non-toxic alternative?  No, they dispute the research and mount a PR campaign to be allowed to use the bee-killer again. 

The problem, ever since DDT, seems to be one of vested interests and a lack of effective regulation.  Guess when the US Department of Agriculture reported that DDT was “one of the most menacing” insecticides ever developed?  1945.  That’s right, 56 years before it was finally banned worldwide.  I have remarkably little confidence that we are not knowingly continuing to poison our planet.  And all in the name of profit. Now there’s something to really get exercised about.