One place where Americans need to start choosing differently is the grocery store. Right now many of us eat produce slathered in pesticides every day, because that’s how our food is grown now unless it’s grown “organically.” But here in the US, at least we have some minimal laws and regulations that prevent the use of the most deadly pesticides on food.
This is not so in many places from which we import food, however. Our pesticide manufacturers are happy to sell insanely toxic and deadly chemicals -- which they are banned from selling here in the US -- to farmers in Mexico and Central and South America. We might think it’s great that we can buy tomatoes and other out-of-season vegetables at the supermarket all winter, but much of this imported produce is grown with pesticides deemed “illegal” here.
Whatever we put into the environment will surely end up in our bodies. And along the way some of these crazy substances can deal death to a wide range of other living beings. In the case of our winter veggies, the death bell rings first for our birds.
Indeed, the mainstream US media is finally picking up on this issue, which conservationists have been warning us about for some time. An excellent recent article in The New York Times titled “Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?” sums up the situation. You can read it here: view link
What birds are affected?
Any and all birds and other forms of life (such as farmers and their children) that live and work near fields sprayed with deadly pesticides are affected by them. These include many tropical and sub-tropical resident birds that we don’t see this far north. They also include many birds that we know and love because the breed here in the U.S.
One bird whose pesticide-fueled decline is well-documented is the Bobolink. Once a common bird in American grasslands (aka “future shopping malls”), their population is half what it was in the 1970s, based on data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey.
While land use practices in the US are partly to blame, Bobolinks are also being killed in their winter habitat by highly toxic pesticides. Another open-country bird dramatically affected by pesticides is the Swainson’s Hawk, which benefits South American farmers by eating grasshoppers in their fields all winter. The farmers appreciate the birds, but unfortunately they killed much of their global population in just a few years with the pesticide monocrotophos. (This tide is now turning, thankfully.)
Why has this happened?
Pesticide use across Latin America has skyrocketed in recent decades. The reason is the demand in the US and Europe for nontraditional foods in winter. These crops are often sprayed intensively with the most toxic pesticides obtainable. The result is an environmental problem that is affecting not only birds but humans -- and not just Latin Americans but North Americans, too.
As enumerated in the aforementioned New York Times article: “Testing by the United States Food and Drug Administration shows that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three times as likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce, but tests by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of pesticides in their blood.”
What can we do about it?
American consumers are creating the economic demand for these environmentally deadly foods -- and we can change the situation by changing our choices and buying organic.
The foods most deadly to the birds are also the most harmful to humans, of course. These are the most important foods to buy organic. Most experts agree that the “top two” most ecologically devastating crops are coffee and bananas.
Much coffee is now “sun grown” (a more “efficient” method that can boost short-term profits for big business) by wiping out the forest and dumping fertilizers, herbicides, etc. on the coffee plants. Traditionally, coffee is grown in small plots under a canopy of trees, which eliminates the need for chemicals. This organic “fair trade” coffee is now widely available and is both affordable and vastly superior taste-wise. You can buy it online in many places such as here: view link
The other most “fatal food” is bananas. They require more pesticides than almost any other crop, resulting in massive environmental contamination. Their cultivation also entails the use of plastic bags around the fruit; when harvested, the bags are tossed on the ground, to be washed along with the soil into the ocean to wipe out sea turtles and coral.
In many cases, you won’t be able to find organic foods grown in Latin America, in which case you should not buy them. It’s a miniscule “sacrifice” to pay for helping our birds and our Biosphere.
Links of interest
Bridget Stutchbury, the author of “Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?” is an ornithologist who has written a highly relevant and widely acclaimed book called Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them: view link
Another highly recommended (and very accessible) book about how our choices can help birds -- and humans, too, of course -- is 101 Ways to Help Birds by Laura Erickson: view link
An outstanding book that discusses the birds themselves and why they’re at risk is the Birder’s Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk by my fellow Maine birder Jeff Wells: view link
Now that spring is here and the migrant songbirds are returning to enrich our lives, let’s do all we can to ensure our children or grandchildren have the same opportunity. This is by no means something we can take for granted anymore.
Peace and good birding,
Scott Cronenweth
Eons birding mentor
www.naturalpathwalks.com
