Dairy farmers, seed dealers and beekeepers gave impassioned testimony at a recent hearing in St. Albans over proposed rules for using neonicotinoid pesticides.
Almost all corn seed in Vermont is coated in the chemicals, which are intended to kill pests like seed corn maggot, grubs and wireworm.
However, there is robust scientific evidence that they get into wildflowers and waterways, where they can kill bees and other pollinators and pose a threat to birds.
Vermont lawmakers have passed a law banning the prophylactic use of treated seeds starting in 2029, with restrictions on spraying the chemicals going into effect this year.
The Legislature decided to exempt orchards and golf courses from the ban — something that rankles dairy farmers, who use treated seeds to grow corn to feed their cows.
“Vermont is a tough place to farm,” said Harold Howrigan Jr., who owns a seventh generation dairy farm in Fairfield. “If golf courses and apple orchards and others can maintain the ability to use these products, why not dairy?”
The policy has divided Vermont’s agricultural community, with beekeepers pointing to science that shows the chemicals leach from seeds into the soil, water and nearby plants where bees can pick them up.
Beekeepers also point to research from Cornell University, including a review of nearly 300 academic studies, showing that the chemicals are harmful to bees and don’t increase crop yields for farms.
Meanwhile, dairy farmers say lawmakers acted too soon, and want to see Vermont-specific research confirming the ban won’t lead to crop loss. They say the soil and growing conditions in Vermont are different from many of the places where prior research has been conducted, and warrant their own analysis.
Wednesday’s meeting was over the state agriculture agency’s proposed best management practices for how the chemicals should be used in the years leading up to the 2029 ban, as well as how farmers should use the chemicals if they’re issued an exemption for exceptional circumstances.
The proposed best management practices largely suggest pesticide applicators follow the label guidance for the chemicals, which some advocates have pointed out farmers must follow already under federal law.
Michael Palmer has been keeping bees in Franklin County for more than 50 years. Speaking Wednesday, he said that a decade ago, he might lose 10% of his bees in a bad year. Now, he loses 70% of the bees across his 1,000 colonies most years. He sees neonicotinoids as a major threat.
“I have always supported you,” he said to the dairy farmers in the room. “I have always said that the farmer has a right to farm and has a right to use a product that is going to save their crop. I am still in that, but your product that you’re using is damaging my livestock, and my livestock is every bit as important to me as your livestock is to you.”
Environmental groups have rallied with beekeepers to call for the rules to be more prescriptive, by requiring farmers notify hive owners if they intend to use treated seeds, rather than suggesting they ought to. They say the seeds should only be used as a last resort.
“This routine and prophylactic use isn't just unnecessary, in many cases, it's also costly, not just in dollars to the farmer, but in harm to pollinators and harm to aquatic life and harm to other wildlife,” said Emily Mays, a scientist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
She points to evidence the chemicals are highly toxic for insects that prey on pests and benefit cropfields, like beetles. And she says, “A very, very small dose of one of these chemicals can kill a bee.”
Mays and others pointed to evidence from Quebec, which banned the prophylactic use of treated seeds in 2019, that shows no change in crop yields for corn.
But several farmers on Wednesday pointed to differences in the farming practices used in Quebec and the Midwest, where many studies have shown neonicotinoids do little to improve crop yields, and Vermont.
One way Vermont may be different from other research locations is that most cornfields here in Vermont are still tilled and have manure spread on them — two practices that bolster seedcorn maggot populations, says Heather Darby, a soil scientist at the University of Vermont who is collaborating with scientists at Cornell on local studies.
“It is absolutely plausible that we would have far more issues with these pests because of those two management practices,” Darby said. “And what we have seen so far, at least in our preliminary data, is that if there is tillage, there is greater risk of seeing the pest. That doesn’t mean there is crop failure — just more pest. And there’s more pest when you’re applying manure.”
Darby says this suggests more research is needed to understand how a ban on neonicotinoid coated seeds might affect crop yields in Vermont — even if bans elsewhere have had little impact on harvests.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Patrick Boucher, a seed dealer from Highgate, told regulators that Vermont and New York — which is also banning neonicotinoid treated seeds in 2029 — are such a small part of the national seed market, that large seed companies, which harvest, coat and sell seed varieties to local dealers like himself, could decide to offer only a limited set of varieties as untreated or refuse to offer alternatives to neonics.
Boucher argued less access to genetic diversity of seed could hurt farmers’ ability to be resilient to increasingly variable weather and pest pressure.
More from Vermont Edition: Vermont's first neonics restrictions go into effect
Last year, dairy farmers in Quebec, which banned the prophylactic use of neonicotinoid coated seeds in 2019, told Vermont dairy farmers at a roundtable hosted by UVM Extension that they had no trouble getting seed companies to supply them with suitable untreated seeds.
The deadline for public comment on the draft best management practices is Sept. 11.
Even after the current draft is settled, there are more decisions to be made. Environmental advocates, beekeepers, farmers and seed dealers agree the true teeth of the policy will be determined by what sorts of circumstances lead to an exemption from the ban when it begins in 2029. Farmers hope the agriculture agency will be lenient here; beekeepers hope it will be strict.
The state secretary of agriculture will decide what warrants an exemption, and the details will be hashed out at the Agriculture Innovation Board in the years to come.
