Toxic chemicals - A menace to bees and farmland | DW Documentary

can we farm in a way that protects the soil and the environment that's the question swiss agricultural scientists are tackling in a long-term experiment skipped kind of growth there are no major calamities no mass occurrence of pests or of weeds [Music] the soil is home to billions of beneficial creatures this symbiosis is very important for the soil's immune system you can think of these mycorrhizal fungi as a dense network in the soil but the vast majority of our soils are sick because for decades industrial agriculture has used highly toxic pesticides to maximize yields the practice is killing bees and many other beneficial organisms among the poisons in the spotlight is a type that's been on the market for a long time neonicotinoids this is the throat you see this red dust that's what's rubbed off the coating that's no longer on the grain of corn has gone into the environment how can we better protect soils and insects [Music] [Music] runs an organic farm in fraizing in the german state of bavaria his 22 cattle are given species appropriate treatment and get only the best feed their hay includes herbs such as ripworth yarrow and meadow sage this is for one thing this is really like medicine for the cows besides that you can imagine that the milk tastes different than it would if i just fed them corn and soy and that sort of rubbish by feeding the cows this whole food diet with species rich hay i have healthy cows and therefore healthy manure which keeps the soil healthy and leads back to healthy plants again and at the end of the day healthy people mentioned until 1988 zep pran used pesticides and mineral fertilizers on his fields but the chernobyl disaster and the construction of the new munich airport made him think twice today he knows that there are more living organisms in a handful of soil than there are people on earth for me the soil is really a living being comparable to our plants animals or even our fellow humans so i handle it very very carefully soil is a veritable kingdom of organisms many of them microscopic most of them have just one role to decompose dead material like leaves roots or even animals the soil is like a giant stomach that digests everything wood lice and springtails break up larger pieces round worms and single cell organisms take care of smaller ones bacteria and fungi colonize the material earthworms eat dig tunnels fertilize and aerate the soil all this results in particularly fertile humus containing minerals and nutrients important for plant growth about 10 percent of germany's arable land is cultivated to organic standards including zeb prawns farm most of the rest are monocultures their soils are often nutrient poor with vulnerable crops that need pesticides to protect them from pests these products are safe according to the manufacturers this is the fertile priceguard region near freiburg in germany's southwest there's abundant pollen and nectar here no wonder christoph koch has been bringing his bees here for many years [Music] coch is a sixth generation beekeeper fantastic creatures every bee here knows what its role is imagine it's pitch black inside and they make such precise honeycombs accurate to the millimeter and they're such small animals each one knows what to do no one complains they dance for joy when they're allowed to collect honey when they're working bees are so undemanding the beekeeper almost never had problems with pesticides until one spring day in 2008 a new pest was threatening the huge cornfields in the rhine valley to save the crops authorities approved the widespread use of a new kind of pesticide neonicotinoids for me a corn farmer was sowing in front of me and then suddenly one moment the bees just stopped flying it was beautiful weather nectar gathering time everything was wonderful and while the farmer made his tracks it just stopped no more beasts the poison cloud killed 12 000 colonies in just two days more than 500 million bees died in agonizing death it was the world's biggest bee poisoning by legal means since the advent of bee conservation it was hugely frustrating and emotional it really got to me i couldn't even get to the bees anymore because of the smell of decaying bees when i drove up to the apiary i couldn't get over it during sowing the red pesticide had broken away from the corn grains and spread into the environment it was sewn in with the crop here the corn grains treated with insecticides okay what was the problem you see this red dust that's what's rubbed off the coating that's no longer on the corn grain has gone into the flying bees that flew through the fog died immediately the really bad thing was that the dust also got on the pollen of flowering plants then the bees collected the contaminated pollen the seeding method was supposed to be a revolutionary development in safe pesticide use instead of being sprayed the poison was almost always coated onto the seed machines then planted the seeds in the soil allowing the neonicotinoids to act on the plant from root to stem this makes the crop immune to pests both below and above ground but something had gone wrong the agriculture ministry was charged with investigating the bee deaths beekeepers were astonished when the seating machines were blamed as the main cause that was also the position of buyer the pesticide manufacturer even so neonicotinoids were banned in germany but only for use on corn bayer offered beekeepers emergency aid of 2.2 million euros but only on one condition in return i relinquish all existing or future claims for damages to the state of baden-wurttemberg the investigating authority would now become the compensation middleman it was also strange that buyer's emergency aid was submitted via the agriculture ministry the state of baden-wurttemberg and wanted to buy their way out of course it was sold as immediate aid for beekeepers the joke was that there was so much pressure to settle quickly but actually if there hadn't been any poisoning then we would have waited a lot longer before we saw a financial return many beekeepers accepted the compensation for buyer the ban on using the insecticides on corn was bearable because they could still be used on many other crops in germany alone about 3700 tons of the ingredient were sold between 1992 and 2017. buyer and other manufacturers such as syngenta supply these insecticides to over 100 countries a trade worth billions of euros scientists accuse the producers of putting profits before the environment that's because studies show that neonicotinoids don't just kill pests dutch researcher hank tenekis spent years studying the topic he concluded that there's never been a more dangerous insecticide b deaths are just a symptom the whole environment is affected we meet tennis in a clinic he agreed to see us despite suffering from pneumonia the name neonicotinoids are water soluble and relatively mobile in soil so when it rains they're easily washed into the ground water and surface water zoom so they spread throughout the environment they're taken in by wild growing plants too through the roots this leads to a whole landscape that's toxic for insects one can assume that there will be a die off of insects [Music] and when the insects disappear the system collapses and its ecological armageddon we are about to destroy all of nature hank tenecus is convinced that neonicotinoids are the main factor in declining insect numbers worldwide and because of the food chain he also believes they're responsible for the deaths of birds reptiles and amphibians what's more there's evidence that they harm humans so why are these insecticides being sold in fact since 2018 the european union has withdrawn approval for three out of five neonicotinoids because of the bees but france had banned a product containing these poisons back in 1999 why did french authorities act so much earlier and another pressing question if these pesticides are causing so much damage above ground what impact do they have on life in and below the topsoil on earthworms centipedes and the other organisms that decompose matter surprisingly there are few studies on how pesticides affect life in the soil at switzerland's research institute of organic agriculture some fields are farmed conventionally and others organically the tandem research has been going on for over 40 years the project is unique nowhere else in the world have researchers studied the development of soil biodiversity and crop yields over such a long period off the right side here on the right we have an organic field it's interesting to look at the soil structure we can poke into it and see what the soil is like you can see it breaks apart very easily it's crumbly very rich in nutrients it wouldn't need much harrowing to get the soil ready to plant soybeans the fact that the soil in the field is so crumbly is due in large part to earthworms organically farmed soil usually has twice as many earthworms as conventionally farmed soil opposite is an identical field except it's been intensively farmed using pesticides and mineral fertilizers here far fewer organisms burrow through the soil craft it takes much more force the soil is more compact i have to make sure i don't bend the trousers essentially it takes a lot more force to plow and get ready for seeding algae growing because the water can't drain away soil like this is more prone to surface erosion conventionally farmed soils dry out faster during drought and they can't absorb as much water during heavy rain one goal of the soil scientists is to strengthen crops so they can defend themselves against pests without pesticides that requires a fundamental understanding of the soils microbiological processes no easy task billions of organisms live in the dark often invisible to the naked eye environmental scientist nora ifosa rinses out samples she's especially interested in studying roots under the microscope because the health of a plant depends on what its roots absorb we look at the appearance of the roots if it's formed a lot of roots and has a large root mass then it's better suited for drought it can reach more areas of the soil from which to draw nutrients we also look at the quality of the roots how good are they how thickly formed how strong healthy soil provides roots with everything they need tiny fungi called mycorrhizae help they live in symbiosis with 80 of all land plants the plant supplies the fungus with sugar to build cells in return it receives nutrients like phosphate to grow scientists see a large number of mycorrhizal fungi as a sign of particularly healthy soil for the simultaneous this symbiosis is very important for the soil's immune system you can think of these mycorrhizal fungi as a dense network in the soil they exist partially around the roots protecting them from pathogens and other harmful organisms organisms interference from outside such as plowing the soil too deeply or using pesticides attacks the fungal network that can destroy its cooperation with the plants only about 10 percent of organisms living in the soil have been identified but that knowledge is already benefiting organic farming there are no major calamities no mass occurrence of pests or of weeds that shows that organic farming is very sustainable of course it also has great potential in terms of promoting biodiversity which is important organic farming leads to harvests about 20 percent lower than those of industrial agriculture which relies on highly toxic pesticides to ward off crop failure europe's pesticide market is dominated by the corporation's bayer basf and syngenta about 000 pesticides are registered for use in germany including herbicides fungicides and insecticides around 90 000 tons of pesticides are sold here every year a pesticide consists of a toxic active ingredient and a secondary ingredient that's often also toxic and can make the active ingredient water-soluble for example well-known active ingredients include glyphosates and neonicotinoids these nerve agents are the cause of massive bee mortality in the summer of 2008 about 500 million bees were poisoned in pricegal it had long been suspected that neonicotinoids kill not only pests but also other species nevertheless manufacturers including the insecticide's inventor bio were able to keep it on the market at least until 2018 when the eu withdrew approval for three out of a total of five neonicotinoids in paris we meet toxicologist jean-marc von matar and beekeeper henry clement they played a major role in france's 1999 ban on the first neonicotinoids it came after beekeepers complained of mysterious bee deaths bon matar then proved that buyer's pesticides were to blame the corporation was quick to respond to his findings very quickly buyer tried to pressure us beekeepers to silence us because we were getting in the way fire dragged me into court for defamation even though i don't make sunflower or rapeseed honey i was president of the professional beekeepers at the time but they sued me as an individual not in my official capacity our lawyer defended us and we won they didn't appeal but i wasn't the only one the scientists also came under pressure the goal was to stop the whole debate because the company wanted to keep selling its stuff all they care about is making money the bee deaths also alarmed france's agriculture ministry which commissioned a study before we even started our study buyer tried to impose their methodology and their thresholds on us through the agriculture ministry so it began badly when we had the results they came to our lab to check my analysis again to find a mistake they really wanted to find an error but they had to accept our results because we accurately proved that the poison reaches the flower when i told the newspaper liberacion about buyer's pressure campaign i got two letters from the company's lawyers one to me and one to the institute's management so they'd use their influence over me to keep my mouth shut so i the scientist was supposed to keep quiet and hide my results so as not to disrupt buyer's business jean-marc matar works at one of france's most prestigious government research institutes he was one of the first to critically examine neonicotinoids in the mid-1990s the agriculture ministry commissioned the toxicologists to shed light on the mysterious deaths of bees buyers neonicotinoid emidocloprid was under suspicion bon matar says that buyer employees were also involved in the study at the request of the ministry normal company i think it's normal for a company like buyer to be informed that a study is underway on one of its products but it's absolutely not normal that representatives of that company whose products must ultimately be decided on are involved in the study design down to the last detail including funding and even the publication of the final results the study called for bees to be sent to sunflower fields treated with neonicotinoids and also to control fields without any insecticides one area with the poisons and one without at least that's what jean-marc bonmatar and his colleagues thought they were to analyze only the fields treated with the buyer poison but not the control field but later they noticed that the control field was also contaminated with an insecticide we scientists complained about this series of experiments when we saw that the control fields had been treated with fungicides and other insecticides that didn't seem normal for a test of this quality but the studies committee wouldn't hear our complaint we now know the comparative study was worthless but at the time its results were interpreted as showing that a midoclopid was harmless to bees in the public eye the poisons were suddenly above suspicion and a ban was off the table for the time being but jean-marc bonmatar's institute undertook its own studies on behalf of beekeepers this time without bio the results were clear we were subsequently able to show that the corn sunflowers pollen nectar water everything concerned with the bees was contaminated we showed that the levels that could be found out in the world were so high that they were sufficient to kill bees or at least cause severe long-term effects [Music] in 1999 france withdrew approval for neonicotinoids but initially only for use on sunflowers for beekeepers that wasn't enough they wanted a ban on all neonicotinoids they raised money and hired a paris lawyer bernard iv he has been litigating against the manufacturers including bayer ever since he's even gone as far as the highest administrative court the uncovered just how cleverly manufacturers exploit regulatory weaknesses to bring their products onto the market european directives have something called a hazard quotient if it's exceeded the manufacturer must carry out a field test under real conditions to prove the product is safe we noticed that this control test which is obligatory for approval hadn't taken place if the controls required by the european directive had been carried out the product partly thanks to the lawyers perseverance in 2020 france became the first country in the world to ban the use of all neonicotinoids on open fields so what about germany where buyer syngenta and basf do a lot of business and where the pesticides have been used since the mid 1990s the french findings didn't alarm german authorities even though beekeepers here also complained of inexplicably high death rates vata hefficker is president of the european professional beekeepers association in 2004 it welcomed a german study to shed light on the bee losses but suspicions soon arose the storches german bee monitoring came into being following fears that germany might go the way of france bayer and syngenta also took part in the study soon the beekeeper's representative noticed that something wasn't right above all he said the study's design was flawed a different creature was presented as the culprit every year there was an annual report and every year the same news came out the varroa mite is really terrible unfortunately we can't find anything to do with the pesticides and it worked perfectly of course we were increasingly critical about the way the whole project was set up the methodology meant you would never find a connection even if it were there the conclusion that neonicotinoids weren't linked to bee mortality was largely accepted until the mass deaths in prisco beekeepers were outraged especially as the study had been fully financed by the industry to the tune of half a million euros if you look at the funding of the project there is a relatively obvious explanation whoever pays the piper calls the tune the money for german bee monitoring came more or less exclusively from the pesticide manufacturers the professional beekeepers left the project in protest meanwhile other studies deepened suspicions that neonicotinoids could be harmful to other organisms too in munich's botanical garden we meet francisco sanchez bar the toxicologist traveled here from australia he caused a global sensation with a major study on insect mortality the results are alarming so when you published your study at the beginning of this year what was the conclusion we found that in this in the countries where this has been studied which is mostly european american but also countries around the world like brazil or japan 40 of the species of insects are declining and among those one third of them are really declining rapidly and they are threatened with extinction he too believes that neonicotinoids play a big role not just in killing insects but in causing major damage to entire ecosystems sanchez-basho demonstrated this studying irrigated rice fields in japan between 2002 and 2004. these ecosystems are also home to water fleas crayfish and a further particular type of fish one day rice farmers noticed that except for the water fleas many other animals especially the crayfish were dead a team at chiba university were asked to investigate before long the same neonicotinoid that had killed bees in france came under suspicion we nevertheless observed a very curious thing the medaka they were in the in the mesocostumes treated with him exactly where all absolutely all hundred percent of the fish were contaminated with a protozoan parasite and of course we put it down to the fact that imidacloprid like other neonicotinoids inhibits the immune system so it's all species who are sensitive to the insecticide except daphnia so that was the unusual thing so daphne was an anomaly and the unfortunate fact is that this anomaly had been used as the reason to say that this insecticide was safe for the environment when it was a complete anomaly so the toxin was killing much larger species it weakened their immune systems enough to make them highly vulnerable to parasites sanchez-basho thought the results were clear but he hadn't reckoned with bioscientists who had helped develop the neonicotinoids and who put the toxicologist under massive pressure the day i explained the results of the first year mesocosm studies to the the whole group and to the faculty at the end he just couldn't understand the results himself and he asked me so what are you going to do with these results and i said well the first thing i'm going to do is to publish them because it's something a novelty and he really didn't know what to say he was speechless and said do you really want to publish it and say yes i think it's important to let the world know was happening but they wanted to keep it secret they didn't want to publicize something which would be damaging for the company francisco sanchez-basho tells us how his employer fired him as a result he published his results anyway the incident shows that at least one biased scientist knew as early as 2004 that neonicotinoids could cause harm in ecosystems many people's trust in conventional agriculture has been shaken not least because of this so wouldn't it be a good idea if much more farming was done in an organic sustainable and carbon neutral way the eu is also reconsidering in 2009 european commission president ursula fondelion announced the so-called green deal our goal is to reconcile the economy with our planet to reconcile the way we produce the way we consume it could be the start of a big agricultural shift by 2030 the eu aims to halve pesticide use and increase organic farming to 25 across the block first and foremost achieving this will require funds to be diverted europe's farmers currently receive billions in subsidies from the eu budget the problem is that most of it goes to those farmers with the largest fields of the nearly 58 billion euros of annual subsidies 44 billion have so far been handed out purely as land subsidies without any ecological conditions from 2023 up to 20 percent of this will be tied to eco schemes environmentally friendly and climate friendly measures another factor is that most of the subsidies continue to support industrial agriculture and that has a deep and lasting impact that's because pesticides often remain in the soil for a long time in switzerland's bernies oberland region groundwater is taken from underneath fields for many decades limits on pesticides and drinking water weren't exceeded but for a few years now there's been a problem with the fungicide for water engineer roman vigit it's a serious situation this water tower supplies up to 100 000 people here in the district all the catchments have a problem with chlorothalonil residues this intake here complies with all regulations for consumption it's a 400 to the next intake is enough to raise the level of the most concentrated chlorothalonil residue considerably next to the fields the other canal flows from here water seeps into the ground through bank filtration at the extraction point beside the water no pesticides are measurable but on the way to the water tower the groundwater is gradually contaminated by agriculture the food safety authority says the drinking water can still be consumed without any problem but of course the fact that the maximum level has been exceeded is unsettling for people another problem is significant nitrate pollution thanks to fertilization like in many regions of europe multi-million euro purification systems are now being planned to clean the drinking water the problem is that the pesticide residues that are filtered out end up being discharged back into rivers the focus is clearly on long-term damage the doses are relatively small and they get consumed every day or at least frequently but over time they have an effect we excrete part of these toxins but part of them gets stored in our body they remain there and they also remain active over time the harmful effects build up and the diseases simply increase you could call it a civilization of diseases many independents studies have linked pesticide use to cancers and neurological diseases like parkinson's [Music] our research suggests that bayer has worked for years to prevent a general ban on neonicotinoids but what does buyer itself have to say we were in communication with the company as early as 2019 but we weren't allowed inside the factory gates and bayer refused to take part in any on-camera interview all our written questions went unanswered instead the company criticized what it called unfair media treatment and wrote us a general statement bio continues to believe that the application of neonicotinoids is safe for humans and the environment when used responsibly and according to instructions buyers own studies say that neonicotinoids don't kill bees insects or fish even in the long term they had no response to the accusation of manipulation our investigation leads us back to hank tenecus the toxicologist came across two of buyers own studies and their content is explosive in one study a bioscientist describes the negative effects of imidacloprid the first neonicotinoid on the nerve cells of a fly species he calls it irreversible imidacloprid is the first highly effective insecticide whose active principle is based on an almost total and nearly irreversible blocking of receptors [Music] one of the bias studies dates back to 1991 a year before the first eu-wide approval when hank tenekis confronted bio with his findings he got an astonishing response buyer now claims that the receptor binding is reversible so they're contradicting themselves but with reversible binding the effect depends on the concentration which is required to define a threshold this means you can't actually define a threshold and that has cumulative effects irreversible means that the toxins don't break down inside nerve cells they can be fatal no matter how low the dose immediately operates a midi clopid alone has sales of close to a billion euros i think that led them to just claim something in order to save the product if they thought about the consequences of this substance they would have to have taken it off the market mission we asked buyer about its own studies too but there was no response on that either there is plenty of evidence worldwide about how dangerous neonicotinoids really are but regulatory authorities have reacted hesitantly if at all to understand why it's worth looking at how pesticides are approved in the eu for eu-wide approval the manufacturer can pick out any eu member state in the case of the first neonicotinoid it was france it's then the manufacturers not the authorities who test their own active ingredient in that country the authorities merely take care of the administrative side in germany the lead agency for approval is the federal office of consumer protection and food safety along with three other regulatory agencies the manufacturer's own studies are decisive when it comes to approval for beekeeper association president walter hifiker the system leaves the door open for industry manipulation of alan in the first place they get to have a say at every conceivable level in how the mandatory tests are designed and so far it's been the case that the study created or ordered by the manufacturer was considered its own trade secrets so the details couldn't be published which meant that outsiders couldn't understand what was actually being checked that also makes it very easy for the approval authority because nobody can really check the decisions so there was a very convenient interplay between industry and the regulatory authority industry and that's still the case today wouldn't it be better for the common good if approval studies were carried out by independent laboratories instead of powerful chemical companies we wanted to put that question to germany's agricultural minister we tried to get an interview for weeks eventually we were allowed to speak to a ministry staff member but without cameras and without the minister we were told that the minister was committed to further developing approval and licensing procedures in line with developments in science and technology but an eu directive aimed at tightening pesticide approval regulations has been on hold since 2013 and germany is partly responsible for the delay for critics like french lawyer bernard iv it's the result of successful lobbying from companies like bayer we can't be naive the goal and purpose of these companies is to make money from their products and they do that with all the means at their disposal up to that point it's normal what's not normal is breaking laws suppressing things and stalling for time to prevent harmful products from being taken off the market the industry keeps finding new ways to sell neonicotinoids they're now being used on sugar beets after a so-called emergency regulatory approval and manufacturers are allowed to continue exporting them around the world but do we really need these pesticides could humanity also be fed through chemical-free agriculture if there were less meat on our plates and we wasted less food those working in organic farming say it's possible modern agriculture doesn't need living soil they're happy to replace the life with chemical aids but we'll have to do everything we can to restore that life so that we can actually solve the problems we have around climate change clean water and biodiversity

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 305,194

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2021, extinction, glyphosate, neonicotinoids, pesticides, agricultural policy, EU, environmental disaster

Id: UavrCMXP2H0

Length: 42min 25sec (2545 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021