Thanks to the Center for Biological Diversity (@CenterForBioDiv) this nice bit of reporting ran across my desktofrom the Guardian’s Environmental Editor, Damien Carrington (@dpcarrington article linked below). He presents a great summary of a recent scientific review of pesticide/fungicide/herbicide impacts on soil invertebrates. Sadly there were no surprises, with the vast majority of impact categories studied showing harm.
A healthy soil biome is the pre-requisite to growing healthy food, sequestering carbon, minimizing erosion, increasing rainfall infiltration, nutrient retention and cycling–in short without healthy soil, you can forget about farming long term.
The most surprising thing I learned from this article was that, in the US, the only insect tested for negative impacts by ‘*any*-cides’ was the honey bee. Which means there’s no standards for testing or protection of your soil life.
Is this what you see when you turn over a stump near your garden? It should be.
Checkout the article here, and spread a little compost around today!
