It’s a nightmare for grocery stores, but it might make your groceries cheaper

One of Lidl's first U.S. grocery stores awaits customers June 18, 2017, in Virginia Beach (Chet Strange/Getty Images) It's a rough time to be a grocery store, with competition from new rivals squeezing margins on all sides. But it's a killer time to be a grocery store shopper: They've never had so many companies vie to offer the lowest price. The expansion of foreign discount stores Aldi and Lidl — the latter of which just opened its first U.S. stores last week — are challenging traditional grocery stores on cost, with prices that beat those in existing U.S. stores by 20 to 30 percent, on average. On top of that, Amazon’s recent announcement that it plans to acquire organic giant Whole Foods threatens to take a bite out of grocers’ high-end business. (Amazon’s founder and owner, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.) To stave off the new competitors, chains like Walmart, Kroger and Albertson’s may have to make significant changes. “Prices will go lower — that’s for sure,” said Daniel Lucht, the global research director at ResearchFarm, a British retail consultancy. “There will be lots of promotions, lots of special offers, lots of brands being pulled in, as well. This will be a great year for consumers.” In some parts of the country, that great year has already begun — particularly where Lidl and Aldi have moved in. The two chains, both of which are German-owned, offer a limited selection of produce and packaged foods in relatively small, no-frills stores. That narrow focus has allowed them to optimize their supply chains and offer prices well below those of mainstream grocers. Historically, that hasn’t posed an existential threat to mainstream U.S. stores. Aldi has been in the United States for 40 years, for instance, and still represents a tiny portion of sales by volume. On June 12, however, the company announced plans to spend $3.4 billion over the next five years to open an additional 900 locations, which will make it the third-largest grocer in the U.S. At the same time, Lidl plans to have 100 U.S. stores by this time next year, and analysts are predicting that within five years it could have as many as 600. Conventional grocers have taken notice, spending millions of dollars on improvements to existing stores and developing new formats that emphasize offerings the discounters don’t have, such as prepared foods, coffee shops

One of Lidl's first U.S. grocery stores awaits customers June 18, 2017, in Virginia Beach (Chet Strange/Getty Images)
It's a rough time to be a grocery store, with competition from new rivals squeezing margins on all sides.
But it's a killer time to be a grocery store shopper: They've never had so many companies vie to offer the lowest price.
The expansion of foreign discount stores Aldi and Lidl — the latter of which just opened its first U.S. stores last week — are challenging traditional grocery stores on cost, with prices that beat those in  existing U.S. stores by 20 to 30 percent, on average. On top of that, Amazon’s recent announcement that it plans to acquire organic giant Whole Foods threatens to take a bite out of grocers’ high-end business. (Amazon’s founder and owner, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.)
To stave off the new competitors, chains like Walmart, Kroger and Albertson’s may have to make significant changes.
“Prices will go lower — that’s for sure,” said Daniel Lucht, the global research director at ResearchFarm, a British retail consultancy. “There will be lots of promotions, lots of special offers, lots of brands being pulled in, as well. This will be a great year for consumers.”
In some parts of the country, that great year has already begun — particularly where Lidl and Aldi have moved in. The two chains, both of which are German-owned, offer a limited selection of produce and packaged foods in relatively small, no-frills stores. That narrow focus has allowed them to optimize their supply chains and offer prices well below those of mainstream grocers.
A recent analysis by RBC Capital Markets, which compared Lidl sale fliers with those of other stores, found that its prices were about 22 percent cheaper than Food Lion's and 20 percent cheaper than Kroger's. Scott Mushkin, an analyst with Wolfe Research, has said that Aldi products typically cost about 20 percent less than Walmart’s. For brand-name products — think Coca-Cola or Oreos — analysts have found as much as a 200 percent gap between Aldi-bought products and mainstream-grocery-bought ones.
Historically, that hasn’t posed an existential threat to mainstream U.S. stores. Aldi has been in the United States for 40 years, for instance, and still represents a tiny portion of sales by volume.
On June 12, however, the company announced plans to spend $3.4 billion over the next five years to open an additional 900 locations, which will make it the third-largest grocer in the U.S. At the same time, Lidl plans to have 100 U.S. stores by this time next year, and analysts are predicting that within five years it could have as many as 600.
Conventional grocers have taken notice, spending millions of dollars on improvements to existing stores and developing new formats that emphasize offerings the discounters don’t have, such as prepared foods, coffee shops and pharmacies.
Many have also begun aggressive pushes to lower their prices relative Lidl and Aldi.
“That is probably the most immediate effect you’re going to see,” said Bill Urda, a retail analyst at the Boston Consulting Group. “There are many factors that go into customer loyalty, but price is always up there.”
To wit, Walmart, the country’s largest seller of groceries, embarked on a three-year, multibillion-dollar plan in February 2016 to lower its prices. While the company would not elaborate on the details of that project, citing competitive interests, Reuters reported that Walmart significantly dropped its prices in more than 1,200 North Carolina and Midwestern stores earlier this year. In the cities where Walmart was running the price experiment, Reuters found, a basket of its products cost 8 percent less than their Aldi equivalents.
The company has also been in talks with thousands of its suppliers to reduce costs. Phillip Keene, a spokesman for the company, said its price reductions intensified this year and will continue into 2018.
“We welcome competition because it makes us stronger,” Keene said in a statement.
Other stores are expected to take similar steps to keep in line with both Walmart and the new discounters. Mushkin, of Wolfe Research, has estimated that Kroger will spend $450 million this year to keep its prices in line with Walmart’s.
The company declined to expand further on its plans, and neither Albertson’s nor Kroger responded to the Post’s request for comment. But it’s easy to see how this will play out, said Lucht, particularly if they follow the model that’s been perfected by years of competition in Europe.
Unable to compete on price across the board, most stores will try to drop the prices of consumer essentials, such as milk and bread, and aggressively promote sales and deals on brand-name products. They may also expand their lines of in-house, private-label products or reformulate them to bring quality on par with competitors’.
In a June 15 webinar for mainstream grocers, Brick Meets Click, a prominent industry consulting firm, warned stores that they “will have to learn quickly or experience significant losses.” The number one way stores can compete, the webinar continues, is by “blunting” discounter’s price advantage.
That can be difficult for traditional stores though, Lucht said. If Kroger drops the price of its eggs to compete with Aldi, Aldi can drop the price of its eggs even lower. In the event of a price war, the discounter has a distinct advantage, in that its overheard and logistics are already far lower.
“Everything we do — from the size of our stores and the number of items we carry to the quality controls we have in place — is designed to keep shoppers’ costs down,” said Scott Patton, the vice president of corporate buying for ALDI US, in a statement to The Post. “We are able to deliver everyday low prices other retailers simply can’t match.”
When you see these low prices, of course, may depend on where you live. Right now, price competition is fiercest in the Mid-Atlantic, where both Lidl and Aldi now have a presence. In markets where these stores don’t exist yet, change may come slower. Howard Elitzak, an agricultural economist who tracks food prices at the Department of Agriculture, points out that Walmart, Kroger and Albertson’s still dominate the national market.
“I would anticipate that this situation will hold for the foreseeable future,” he said.
Still, there’s little doubt that the industry is changing — and at an unprecedented pace. Only 24 hours after Lidl opened its first U.S. stores, Amazon announced its intention to acquire Whole Foods, the country’s largest seller of organic groceries.
Although it’s unclear what Amazon intends for Whole Foods, analysts agree that it will only exacerbate the pressure on traditional grocery stores. Initially, there will be pressure on stores to improve their delivery and digital operations, said Urda, the BCG analyst. Eventually, Amazon’s Whole Foods will also put downward pressure on food prices, as it has with products as diverse as sports bras and books.
“You’re about to see the best operators in the country, if not the world, butt heads,” Urda said. “There will always be losers. But the consumer wins.”
Read more:
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The bizarre thing that happens when grocery stores can't sell booze
People are worried Amazon will replace Whole Foods workers with robots


Lidl grocery store begins operations in US.

The German discount grocery chain began operations in northern Virginia in 2015.  Of interest are the grocer's plans to expand and compete with traditional grocery stores.  Exclude documents referring to the year 1980.

Find articles discussing this grocer's expansion plans related to the question.

Safeway workers prepare for strike vote as contract negotiations remain stalled

The union representing more than 10,000 Safeway grocery store workers is moving closer to a strike that could disrupt operations at 116 D.C.-area locations, union representatives said Friday, as a disagreement with the company’s private equity-owned management over pensions remains unresolved.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, which represents workers at Safeway and Giant stores in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, has been negotiating with Albertsons, a management company owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, since September 2019. A temporary extension has been in place since the contract expired in October. A meeting between union and company representatives Friday did not resolve the dispute, and negotiations were expected to resume Monday, the union said.
To trigger a strike, a majority of Local 400 members would have to reject the company’s offer, and then two-thirds would have to vote to strike. The vote is scheduled for March 5, and a strike could begin the next day.
The pension dispute at Safeway is in many ways a microcosm of the broader retail industry, where automation, outsourcing and thinning profit margins have weakened the hand of organized labor. Pensions have been phased out across the business world as financial managers favor employee-managed 401(k) plans that entail fewer long-term liabilities for managers.
Grocery stores also face new competition as gas stations, drug stores and delivery services enter the market. Amazon opened its first cashier-less Amazon Go grocery store this week, marking the latest major foray into the industry by the online giant, which bought Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion in 2017. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)
European discounters Aldi and Lidl also have expanded rapidly throughout the country, adding further pressure to traditional chains.
Private equity firms and hedge funds have been aggressively buying up supermarket chains since the mid-2000s, when a strong economy and low interest rates made leveraged buyouts attractive. They often used large chunks of debt to finance the deals, putting pressure on grocers as increased competition was cutting into sales.
Local 400 officials say Cerberus, which bought Safeway in 2015, is offloading its financial responsibilities to take the company public.
“Since Cerberus has taken over Safeway, thousands of jobs have been lost at these stores," said Jonathan Williams, communications director for the Local 400.
“We think that has everything to do with the company’s brutal efforts to reduce its costs as it pursues this [initial public offering],” Williams said. "That’s why when you walk into Safeway these days you see emptier shelves, you see poorer customer service, and that’s the fault of the owner.”
Christine Wilcox, group vice president for communications at Albertsons, said any job losses at Safeway are due to “business decisions” to close under-performing stores in order to invest in new ones.
“It’s completely inaccurate to say that the reduction in the number of employees in Safeway’s Eastern division is related to anything other than business decisions to close under-performing locations,” Wilcox said. “Doing so has allowed us to invest in remodels and new stores in the Washington D.C. area.”
Such arrangements often have resulted in tremendous job losses followed by bankruptcy: At least nine private equity-owned grocery chains have filed for bankruptcy since 2015, including A&P, Tops Markets and Southeastern Grocers. Fairway Market and Earth Fare filed for bankruptcy last month.
Albertsons and the union are at odds over whether the company should be required to fully support some 50,000 retirees and employees who draw or plan to draw their benefits from the fund. The fund took a hit after the 2008 financial crisis and is short $1.7 billion. It is expected to become insolvent next year.
Union representatives say the contract requires Safeway to increase its contributions to the pension plan when and if it is depleted to ensure its retirees receive the same level of benefits they’ve been getting. The company disagrees.
“We’re just not even in agreement about the basic facts,” Williams said. “Our demand is that they fulfill their obligation to our pension, which means fully funding it to ensure the benefits continue.”
Wilcox said that Safeway has been “thoughtful and reasonable” throughout its negotiations with the union and hopes to arrive at an agreement soon.
An Albertsons spokesperson said earlier to the New York Post that the company would keep contributing to the pension at its current rate but would not cover the additional unfunded amount of the pension plan. Fully funding the pension plan "is neither required by law nor by any agreement we have with the union,” the spokesperson said.
A copy of the union’s collective bargaining agreement reviewed by The Washington Post includes a provision that “if and when the [pension fund] becomes insolvent and benefits are reduced ... a benefit will be effective ... that is equal to the amount of the benefit that would have been provided by the [pension] absent any reduction.”
The agreement also states that “when the benefit protection provision is effective the cost of this new benefit will be incorporated into the Mid-Atlantic Fund hourly contribution rate.”


What is Lidl? 5 things the German grocer is bringing to America

Lidl opened its first 10 U.S. stores Thursday, including this one in Virginia Beach, Va. The German grocery chain plans to open 100 U.S. locations within the year. (Steve Helber/Associated Press) German grocery powerhouse Lidl arrived in the United States on Thursday, opening 10 new stores along the East Coast and putting big-name companies like Walmart, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s on high alert. The company, which has 10,000 locations in 27 countries, is hoping to win over Americans with its sweeping discounts, modern stores and carefully-curated wines. Its newest supermarkets are concentrated in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but 90 more East Coast locations are planned for the coming year. The company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Arlington, has been quietly testing its plans for the American market for over a year, using a prototype store in the Fredericksburg, Va., area in Spotsylvania County to understand its newest shoppers. (Among other things, executives say Americans expect chilled beer and free bakery samples, which Lidl is adding to its U.S. stores.) But what exactly is the Lidl (pronounced lee-duhl)? And what will its U.S. stores bring to America? 1. Even lower prices in an industry that is already offering huge markdowns In an industry marked by cutthroat competition and mounting markdowns, Lidl executives say they plans to offer even larger discounts, with prices that are up to 50 percent lower than at rival stores. The grocery business is a notoriously tough one — nearly 20 U.S. grocers have filed for bankruptcy in the past three years — and the introduction of Lidl and fellow German discounter Aldi, which is investing $3.4 billion to open 900 U.S. stores, is set to intensify that battle. Roughly 90 percent of Lidl’s products are in-house brands. Brendan Proctor, the U.S. chief executive of Lidl, highlights the company’s selection on opening day. (Steve Helber/AP Photo) 2. Smaller stores that feature in-house brands Lidl’s first U.S. stores are about 21,000 square feet — about the size of many Trader Joe’s stores, but considerably smaller than grocers like Whole Foods, Safeway and Giant. But no matter, executives say, you’ll still be able to find what you need. The company’s stores have just six aisles, and 90 percent of its shelves are filled with its own brands. Tomatoes are sold in the boxes they were shipped in. (Steve Helber/AP Photo) 3. More efficient displays and practices

Lidl opened its first 10 U.S. stores Thursday, including this one in Virginia Beach, Va. The German grocery chain plans to open 100 U.S. locations within the year. (Steve Helber/Associated Press)
German grocery powerhouse Lidl arrived in the United States on Thursday, opening 10 new stores along the East Coast and putting big-name companies like Walmart, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s on high alert.
The company, which has 10,000 locations in 27 countries, is hoping to win over Americans with its sweeping discounts, modern stores and carefully-curated wines. Its newest supermarkets are concentrated in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but 90 more East Coast locations are planned for the coming year.
The company, which has its U.S. headquarters in Arlington, has been quietly testing its plans for the American market for over a year, using a prototype store in the Fredericksburg, Va., area in Spotsylvania County to understand its newest shoppers. (Among other things, executives say Americans expect chilled beer and free bakery samples, which Lidl is adding to its U.S. stores.)
But what exactly is the Lidl (pronounced lee-duhl)? And what will its U.S. stores bring to America?
1. Even lower prices in an industry that is already offering huge markdowns
In an industry marked by cutthroat competition and mounting markdowns, Lidl executives say they plans to offer even larger discounts, with prices that are up to 50 percent lower than at rival stores.
This week’s offers, for example, include 99 cent red bell peppers, 89 cent pineapples and 39 cent butter croissants (which a spokesman says have twice as much butter as the typical croissant). The company’s circular is also touting jars of peanut butter for $1.19, chicken breasts for $1.29 per pound and frozen pizzas for $2.99.
The grocery business is a notoriously tough one — nearly 20 U.S. grocers have filed for bankruptcy in the past three years — and the introduction of Lidl and fellow German discounter Aldi, which is investing $3.4 billion to open 900 U.S. stores, is set to intensify that battle.
Roughly 90 percent of Lidl’s products are in-house brands. Brendan Proctor, the U.S. chief executive of Lidl, highlights the company’s selection on opening day. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)
2. Smaller stores that feature in-house brands
Lidl’s first U.S. stores are about 21,000 square feet — about the size of many Trader Joe’s stores, but considerably smaller than grocers like Whole Foods, Safeway and Giant. But no matter, executives say, you’ll still be able to find what you need.
“A lot of the supermarkets are so large, it’s a challenge for people to go shopping,” Brendan Proctor, the U.S. chief executive of Lidl, told The Washington Post earlier this year. “If I wanted to go in and get a bottle of ketchup — first of all, there are probably about 24 aisles in the store. I have to find what aisle it’s in. I get there, I find that there’s 50 types of ketchup. Who honestly needs 50 types of ketchup? We can streamline that.”
The company’s stores have just six aisles, and 90 percent of its shelves are filled with its own brands.
Tomatoes are sold in the boxes they were shipped in. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)
3. More efficient displays and practices
Lidl is able to keep prices low in part by cutting waste in every step of the process, spokesman William Harwood says.
“We look at waste differently,” Harwood said. “It’s not just what ends up in the garbage can at the end of the day, but also about any inefficiency along the way that ends up costing the customer more.”
In practice, that means having paperless offices and stores that rely heavily on natural light. Another example: You won’t find onions, oranges or other produce stacked in intricate (and sometimes precarious) pyramid formations. That mainstream practice is inefficient, Harwood says. It can keep prime produce buried, affect the freshness of fruits and vegetables and require employees to spend a lot of time positioning products just-so. Instead, Lidl’s produce is often displayed in the same cardboard boxes they were shipped in. The boxes are stacked so the freshest items are on top. Once those sell out, employees can easily rearrange remaining boxes as necessary.
4. A chance to buy to pick up men’s leather shoes for $34.99 and an inflatable kayak for $59.99
In addition to meat, fruits and vegetables, Lidl also offers a rotation of “in and out specials” that are released every Monday and Thursday. But you have to act fast.
“As soon as they’re gone, they’re gone,” Harwood said of the “Lidl surprises” section, which currently includes $8.99 leather wallets, $11.99 chest waders (a similar pair is $14.88 at Walmart.com) and $19.99 charcoal grills.
Lidl wines recently won 104 medals at the 2017 Indy Independent Wine Competition. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)
5. (Cheap) Award-winning wines
It’s no secret that millennials love wine — one study estimates they drank 42 percent of the country’s supply in 2015 — and Lidl is hoping to lure them in with its line-up of cheap, award-winning varieties. The company plans to stock 120 varieties, starting at $2.89 a bottle, in its U.S. stores.
Wine director Adam Lapierre, one of 356 certified Masters of Wine worldwide, estimates he tasted more than 10,000 bottles of wines to come up with Lidl’s line-up, which includes an $8.99 bottle of prosecco that was recently named Sparkling Wine of the Year at the 2017 Indy Independent Wine Competition.
Read more:
Walmart’s answer to Aldi and Amazon: ‘designer cantaloupe’
Wawa is coming to Washington — but won’t be selling gas
Wegmans to open its first Washington store
A man is suing Hershey for ‘under-filling’ his box of Whoppers


Describe how best to protect insect pollinators like bees and butterflies.

There continues to be a significant loss of pollinators, like bees and butterflies, that are critical to our food supply.  They need to be protected to ensure sustainability of food production systems, to avoid additional economic impact and to protect the health of the environment.  Bees and butterflies are particularly threatened by neonicotinoid pesticides.  People can help by planting bee and butterfly-friendly plants, like nectar-rich flowers, milkweed and dill, and not using harmful pesticides. Relevant documents will include butterflies.

Find information online that addresses this environmental question.

Michelle Obama makes the pitch for pollinators

First lady Michelle Obama at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Whitney Museum Of American Art on April 30 in New York. (Ben Gabbe/Getty Images) President Obama isn't the only member of the First Family preaching the gospel of pollinators: On Wednesday Michelle Obama explained to a group of school children gathered on the State Floor as they prepared vegetables from the White House garden. As the schoolchildren flapped their hands in a butterfly motion, the first lady explained why the administration was joining with outside groups to launch the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge on Wednesday. The initiative, which features more than a million seed kits donated by W. Atlee Burpee & Co., aims to expand the amount of habitat available for species that pollinate fruit and vegetable crops nationwide. "Butterflies, bats, bees, birds: all of those they get attracted to the gardens," she explained, "and then they go sprinkle life around so that food grows." The event was initially planned to take place outside, but given the threat of rain, White House officials harvested vegetables in the morning and then convened the group of children indoors, where they assembled five different vegetables in honor of the fifth anniversary of the first lady's "Let's Move!" initiative. [READ: How the White House aims to help the bee keep its buzz] White House chef Cristeta Comerford explained to the kids that they would be consuming "grilled soba chicken salad with chopped White House garden vegetables," along with a dressing that used honey from the White House's apiary. The chickens, however, were not produced in-house. "Is it good?" Comerford asked the children as they dined, prompting a round of murmured assent. "Okay, thank you."

First lady Michelle Obama at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Whitney Museum Of American Art on April 30 in New York. (Ben Gabbe/Getty Images) As the schoolchildren flapped their hands in a butterfly motion, the first lady explained why the administration was joining with outside groups to launch the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge on Wednesday. The initiative, which features more than a million seed kits donated by W. Atlee Burpee & Co., aims to expand the amount of habitat available for species that pollinate fruit and vegetable crops nationwide. "Butterflies, bats, bees, birds: all of those they get attracted to the gardens," she explained, "and then they go sprinkle life around so that food grows." The event was initially planned to take place outside, but given the threat of rain, White House officials harvested vegetables in the morning and then convened the group of children indoors, where they assembled five different vegetables in honor of the fifth anniversary of the first lady's "Let's Move!" initiative. The chickens, however, were not produced in-house. "Is it good?" Comerford asked the children as they dined, prompting a round of murmured assent. "Okay, thank you."


The $15 billion bee in President Obama’s bonnet

A bumble bee collects in Berlin on July 11, 2011. (WOLFGANG KUMM/AFP/Getty Images) Honeybees have a sweet new ally: President Obama. Plans for a “Pollinator Health Task Force” to help save bees from their mysterious decline were announced Friday in a presidential memorandum. Why Obama’s worried: The decline of bees could sting the economy. “Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States,” the administration said in the release. “Over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies, from the environment. The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.” Last winter, 23.2 percent of the country’s managed honey bee colonies died, according to a report by the Bee Informed Partnership, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Deaths are fewer than during the 2012-2013 winter, but still higher than the “acceptable” rate of about 19 percent, the report said. The task force will have 180 days to create a strategy to prevent future bee loss. Specifically, the task force will investigate how to reduce pollinator exposure to pesticides found to harm bumblebees by interfering with their homing abilities, according to two studies detailed by Reuters. In a 2011 United Nations report, U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner said “the way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century.” Steiner said in the report that of 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees. “Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature,” Steiner said in the release. “Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.” The bee team will be co-chaired by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy. Related: “We all get stung by bee colony collapse”

A bumble bee collects in Berlin on July 11, 2011. (WOLFGANG KUMM/AFP/Getty Images) Honeybees have a sweet new ally: President Obama. Why Obama’s worried: The decline of bees could sting the economy. “Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States,” the administration said in the release. “Over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies, from the environment. The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food production systems, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment.” Steiner said in the report that of 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, more than 70 are pollinated by bees. “Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature,” Steiner said in the release. “Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.” The bee team will be co-chaired by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.


Maryland’s honeybees are being massacred, and the weapon might be in your house

a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey. Neonicotinoids were introduced to agriculture in the 1990s and made available to the general public more recently because it was thought to be safer for bees than other pesticides. They seep into plants rather than simply coating the surface. Although some researchers insist the chemical doesn’t cause bee mortality, other scientists are gathering evidence that it does. The Environmental Protection Agency launched a review to determine if several varieties of the insecticide have contributed to the collapse of bee colonies. Its findings are due in 2018. The Obama administration announced the first national strategy to promote the health of bees and other pollinators, following the sharp decline in colony numbers in recent years. USDA bee scientist Jay Evans explains why honeybees are so important and how bees affect food prices. Two years ago, an team of global, independent scientists that formed the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides concluded that neonics are a key factor in bee declines after reviewing a thousand studies. The report said they should be restricted. Maryland’s Department of Agriculture disagreed, saying that they too care about the decline of bees but that there is little scientific evidence linking it to neonicotinoids. A spokesman at the department declined to comment on the legislation but provided its testimony from a committee hearing opposing it. A beekeeper uses a lift to stack beehives onto a truck before transferring the bees to another crop after they pollinated a blueberry field near Columbia Falls, Maine, on June 23, 2014. (Adrees Latif/ Reuters) Agriculture “has not documented any cases of neonicotinoid pesticides negatively impacting honeybees in Maryland,” the agency’s statement said. It cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture National Honeybee Survey data for Maryland saying “no neonicotinoids were found in Maryland pollen samples, and fewer pesticides overall were detected when compared to the national average.” The department was also concerned about the $200,000 allocated in the House bill to implementation and enforcement. Agriculture said it would likely cost more than $1 million the first year and nearly that much every year afterward. Keeping tabs on homeowners would be a major headache, officials at the agency said. Homeowners would be banned from buying products containing neonicotinoids such as Knockout Ready-to-Use Grub Killer, Ortho Bug B Gon, All-In-One Rose & Flower Care, Lesco Bandit Insecticide and other products at 3,000 hardware stores, garden centers, nurseries and other outlets

Bees tend to honeycomb cells in a colony in Frederick, Md. (Linda Davidson / The Washington Post)
In the end, Maryland lawmakers couldn’t ignore the same haunting story from beekeepers. “I go into winter with a really strong population, managed them to be fat and healthy, treated for mites, with plenty of food,” said Bonnie Raindrop, a keeper in Baltimore County. “But at the end of winter, you open your hives and they’re all dead.”
The keepers joined academics and conservationists in convincing the state General Assembly that the mass deaths over the past four years are likely tied to widespread use of household pesticides linked to honeybee mortality. Both chambers recently passed bills that would ban stores from selling products laced with neonicotinoids to homeowners who tend to lather too much on trees and gardens.
The similar bills  are expected to be forged into a single piece of legislation for Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to sign within two weeks. Hogan’s signature would make Maryland the first state to take the harmful pesticides away from amateurs. Farmers and professionals who better understand how to apply them in a way that poses a lesser threat to bees would be exempted by the law when it takes effect in 2018.
Maryland lost more than 60 percent of its hives last year, each with up to 20,000 honeybees. About a dozen other states are considering taking similar steps as bees die and honey production declines. Last year, honey production fell  12 percent among producers with five or more colonies, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey.
Neonicotinoids were introduced to agriculture in the 1990s and made available to the general public more recently because it was thought to be safer for bees than other pesticides. They seep into plants rather than simply coating the surface. Although some researchers insist the chemical doesn’t cause bee mortality, other scientists are gathering evidence that it does. The Environmental Protection Agency launched a review to determine if several varieties of the insecticide have contributed to the collapse of bee colonies. Its findings are due in 2018.
The Obama administration announced the first national strategy to promote the health of bees and other pollinators, following the sharp decline in colony numbers in recent years. USDA bee scientist Jay Evans explains why honeybees are so important and how bees affect food prices.
Two years ago, an team of global, independent scientists that formed the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides concluded that neonics are a key factor in bee declines after reviewing a thousand studies. The report said they should be restricted.
Hogan has given no indication about his intention to sign or reject the bill, but Del. Anne Healey (D-Prince George’s), who authored the House version, said it had strong bipartisan support, and there appeared to be enough votes to override a veto. “I’m a little nervous talking about things that haven’t happened yet,” Healey said. “There were very strong votes in both houses. The public is very much in favor … of doing something to protect our pollinators in the state.”
Healey said a new law would “be a landmark, and it would set a standard that maybe other states would follow.” She called it a “step in the right direction.”
Maryland’s Department of Agriculture disagreed, saying that they too care about the decline of bees but that there is little scientific evidence linking it to neonicotinoids. A spokesman at the department declined to comment on the legislation but provided its testimony from a committee hearing opposing it.
A beekeeper uses a lift to stack beehives onto a truck before transferring the bees to another crop after they pollinated a blueberry field near Columbia Falls, Maine, on June 23, 2014. (Adrees Latif/ Reuters)
Agriculture “has not documented any cases of neonicotinoid pesticides negatively impacting honeybees in Maryland,” the agency’s statement said. It cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture National Honeybee Survey data for Maryland saying “no neonicotinoids were found in Maryland pollen samples, and fewer pesticides overall were detected when compared to the national average.”
The department was also concerned about the $200,000 allocated in the House bill to implementation and enforcement. Agriculture said it would likely cost more than $1 million the first year and nearly that much every year afterward. Keeping tabs on homeowners would be a major headache, officials at the agency said.
Homeowners would be banned from buying  products containing neonicotinoids such as Knockout Ready-to-Use Grub Killer, Ortho Bug B Gon, All-In-One Rose & Flower Care, Lesco Bandit Insecticide and other products at 3,000 hardware stores, garden centers, nurseries and other outlets in the state. But it can’t stop them from buying it out of state and on the Internet. Usage would be banned, but a small crew of state enforcers isn’t likely to catch gardeners red-handed.
Other opponents said honeybees are suffering from problems that have nothing to do with insecticides. Poor nutrition and the varroa mite that infects them with a pathogen are two.
Sen. Shirley Nathan-Pulliam (D-Baltimore County), who authored the companion bill, dismissed those arguments as “intellectually dishonest,” saying, “We should do what is in our power to help save the bee population and not shy away simply because a given measure is not a global solution.”
Steve McDaniel, owner of McDaniel Honey Farms, agreed. He has lost 50 percent of his hive where he lives in Manchester, Md., and 100 percent in downtown Baltimore since 2012, about 20 each year. Hives with up to 20,000 bees cost about $1,200. “It’s been awful,” McDaniel said.
“I’ve had them there for 30 years,” said McDaniel, a master beekeeper, and in the last four years, “I can’t keep them alive no matter what I do. The trouble is they started selling these pesticide to homeowners. They put these things on flowers that bloom within a mile of the beehive. No one can offer me a reasonable explanation of any other cause for what I’ve been seeing.”
When she searched her hive this year, Raindrop found piles of dead bees or their rotting remains. Out of about 10,000 bees in a hive she kept in Baltimore County, only a few survived. “Sometimes it’s just a big handful, that’s all,” she said.
Read More:
Butterfly declines signal trouble in the environment
The Monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished
Frog, toad and salamander populations are plummeting, study finds
California’s rural poor hit hardest as drought makes remaining water toxic

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Bumblebee habitats are shrinking at an alarming rate, and scientists are blaming climate change

A red-tailed bumblebee from Denmark. By analyzing 110 years of biological observations across North America and Europe, a new picture of climate change impacts emerges. As temperatures warm, bumblebee species are declining rapidly from warm areas but failing to colonize new areas in the north. (Photo by Jeremy T. Kerr)
There’s no doubt that bees have had their share of the spotlight lately. The pervasive collapse of honeybee colonies, in particular, has captured national attention. But other bee species are starting to get their share of recognition, too. Wild bees, which are not managed by humans like honeybees are, are also declining, due to factors such as habitat loss and the effects of pesticides.
Now, there’s evidence that bumblebees, at least, are suffering at the hands of yet another environmental crisis: climate change. A study, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that climate change is causing the geographic range of bumblebees — the area the bees live in — to shrink in both North America and Europe.
The study’s authors analyzed data on 67 bumblebee species in Europe and North America, examining changes in their northern and southern range limits. They found that bumblebees on both continents were experiencing dramatic losses in the southern parts of their ranges. In other words, climate change has been driving the southern edge of the bumblebees’ range northward.
According to the study, bumblebees have lost up to 300 kilometers (more than 180 miles) of their southern range in both continents over the past 110 years. “This is a huge loss, and it has happened very quickly,” Jeremy Kerr, lead author and a professor of biology at the University of Ottawa, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Climate change has been known to affect other organisms in similar ways, so in one sense the loss of the bees’ southern ranges makes sense. Bumblebees evolved in mild, temperate climates, so as things heat up near the equator, it’s logical that conditions might get too warm for them to survive, driving them northward.
“They may not have the ability to adapt to changing climate in the way that some organisms that have a tropical evolutionary history are able to adapt,” said Leif Richardson, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics and another one of the paper’s authors.
In many cases, if an animal’s southern range moves up, so does its northern range, so that its entire geographic range shifts. But the researchers in this study found this was not the case for bumblebees. While the southernmost edges of their ranges have been creeping northward, their northernmost edges have not moved. This means that the total geographic area the bees occupy has been shrinking.
Shrinking geographic ranges could put major pressure on already vulnerable bee populations, driving them closer to the edge of endangerment or extinction. And the shifting ranges could also be a problem for both wild plants and crops at the bees’ southernmost limits if the bumblebees aren’t around in the future to pollinate them, said Richardson.
“There certainly is a threat to human agriculture,” he said. “What we know from research is that this can lead to lower crop yields, higher food costs, and there are all these consequences for the human food supply and the economy.”
Wild plants tend to be important components of their ecosystems. If they start to decline because of a lack of pollination, other species that depend on them for food or habitat could suffer, too. It’s unclear whether other pollinators, such as other wild bee species or butterflies, could adequately step up to fill the void left behind by bumblebees in these cases.
Since bumblebees are known to be vulnerable to other environmental influences, the researchers wanted to be sure that climate change was the culprit behind their geographic shifts. So they analyzed the bumblebees’ range shifts with data on land use changes (essentially the alternation or destruction of bee habitat by humans) and pesticide use. They found that neither of these factors correlated to the changes in the bees’ geographic ranges.
This is not to say that these factors don’t have negative impacts on bumblebee populations, Richardson said. They can still hurt bees’ local populations — it’s just that they don’t appear to be responsible for the bees’ larger geographic shifts.
The scientists aren’t sure why bumblebees haven’t been able to expand their northern edges. According to Kerr, there are two reasons a species might not shift well in response to climate change: Either it has problems actually moving from one place to another, or it has problems building its population up once it gets to a new place. “Clearly bumblebees are pretty good at getting around,” Kerr said at the press conference, since they can fly. Rather, the scientists suspect that they’re having trouble growing their populations at their northern range limits. The reason remains unclear.
More research is needed into the bees’ behavior and the biological and environmental factors that may be causing them problems. In the meantime, there are some actions humans can take to try to help out their struggling populations.
The obvious course of action is to keep up with efforts to mitigate climate change so that rising temperatures don’t continue to drive the bees out of their historical southern ranges, Richardson said. But there are some other strategies conservationists can try in the meantime.
One fairly drastic solution is assisted migration, which is when humans physically relocate bumblebee populations to a new area. “It’s certainly a possible solution on a case-by-case basis or a site-specific basis for bumblebees,” Richardson said. “However, it will be expensive to do this, and it’s not really a solution to what is probably a global problem for many hundreds of species.”
Simply trying to protect local populations is another option. Stricter policies on pesticide use can help keep minimize declines. And citizens can even help out by diversifying the plants they grow in their own back yards to attract more pollinators, said Laurence Packer, another author on the study and a professor of biology at York University, at Wednesday’s press conference. “The way you plant your garden can make a very big difference,” he said.
With concern over the health of pollinators at an all-time high, this study highlights the impact of climate change on an already vulnerable (and economically important) organism — and underscores the fact that its consequences are already noticeable.
“The impacts are large, and they are underway,” said Kerr.
Also in Energy  Environment:
Scientists have discovered that living near trees is good for your health
Why the Earth’s past has scientists so worried about sea level rise
Many Americans still lack access to solar energy. Here’s how Obama plans to change that
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Why are the monarch butterflies disappearing?

Every November, millions of monarch butterflies arrive at the Oyamel fir forests in central Mexico, where they migrate to survive through the winter. Or at least that's what's supposed to happen.

In recent years, however, scientists have noticed a disturbing trend. The number of butterflies migrating to Mexico has been dropping sharply. Last winter, just 60 million butterflies arrived at their overwintering habitats, a record low. And early signs suggest that this winter's population might be even lower — though, do note, we're still awaiting final numbers.
To get a sense why the monarch butterflies are in decline, I called Lincoln Brower, a professor of biology at Sweet Briar College who has studied the monarch migrations for decades. In a paper last year, he cited three major factors: Deforestation in Mexico, recent bouts of severe weather, and the growth of herbicide-based agriculture destroying crucial milkweed flora in the Midwest.
So is it too late to stop the monarch butterflies from vanishing? Or are there still things we can do to reverse the decline? A transcript of our conversation follows:
Brad Plumer: What do the numbers tell us about the decline of monarch butterflies so far?
Lincoln Brower:
The total annual area occupied by overwintering monarch butterflies from 1994 through 2013 has declined significantly, with the all-time smallest area reported during the 2012–13 overwintering season. (Source: Brower et. al 2012 updated with data from the author for the past two years)
The colonies are spread across twelve mountain ranges in Mexico, and in the biggest year on record they covered 21 hectares. Two years ago, that was down to 2.89 hectares. Last year, it was down to about 1.19 hectares. That's a highly significant trend.
We don't yet have full data for this year, but the number of trees occupied by butterflies on Nov. 12 was way low compared with what it should be. It's possible that even fewer monarch butterflies are reaching Mexico this year than last year — and last year was the lowest it's ever been since the butterfly colonies were first discovered in 1975.
BP:
LB:
BP: We're still waiting on complete data for this year, right?
LB:
BP: Why has there been such a sharp decline in monarchs?
LB:
BP: Let's take these one at a time. What's happening with illegal deforestation in Mexico?
LB:
A man cuts down an infested tree in the monarch butterfly reserve near Ocampo, Mexico. (Gregory Bull / AP)
Since then, there's been heavy deforestation from illegal logging. The World Wildlife Fund has published quite a bit of documentation of that. In 2000, a new decree was announced by the president of Mexico, but even after that, there was still illegal logging, with several hundred hectares of forest clear-cut. The Mexican government in the last five years has made a strong effort to stop illegal logging, but there’s still small-scale logging going on, with a few trees taken here or there. This progressively deteriorates the forest.
The forest serves as a blanket and umbrella for the butterflies. Even though the area is in the tropics, because it’s such high elevation, 11,000 feet up, it gets cold during January and February. The temperatures can drop to 10°C below freezing. Butterflies can tolerate that provided they're not wet — but if they get wet, they lose their resistance.
In 2002, [the overwintering habitats had] the worst storm on record. We counted the number of dead butterflies in the colonies and estimated that about 75 percent of the population was killed, by a combination of rain, snow, and freezing. If that were to happen again this year, it could be catastrophic.
BP: You mentioned severe weather as another factor in the last two years. What happened?
LB:
That was a really serious drought. There was a very strong possibility that not enough butterflies made it to Mexico with enough energy to survive the winter.
Then, this year, the numbers were already down, only about 60 million. So the migration comes back at the end of February and the middle of March and they move northward. These are the 5-month-old survivors that leave Mexico, migrate up through Texas, and lay eggs on milkweed. And the new generation that's produced in about three weeks moves all the way up to Canada. But when that new generation tried to migrate this spring, they were held back by a cold front that was in place for a long time. And that prevented a really good spring re-migration up into the northern breeding range.
Normally over the course of the summer, that first spring generation will produce two more summer generations. But data indicates that the butterflies are missing a whole generation this year. And reports coming all over the Eastern range, from the Rockies all the way to Maine and Virginia, there are very few butterflies breeding anywhere. So the numbers getting back to Mexico are really low. And that's what we're waiting to hear, just how low are they?
BP: Is climate change expected to affect the butterflies in any way?
LB:
BP: You also mentioned Midwestern agriculture as a third factor in the decline. What's happening there?
LB:
These crops are planted in the grassland ecosystems of the United States, where the monarchs do most of their breeding. And normally in that area there are milkweed growing all over the place on the agricultural fields and the edges of fields and the sides of roads. There are 108 species of milkweed in the United States — the whole monarch migration evolved in relation to evolution of this milkweed flora.
Anyway, where they use these herbicides, it kills all emergent seedlings and all the emergent perennial plants. A paper last year by John Pleasants of the University of Iowa and Karen Oberhauser of the University of Minnesota estimated that 60 percent of milkweed has been eliminated from the grassland ecosystem. We're not just talking about one species, we're talking about the entire native flora being eliminated.
The other thing herbicides do is kill sources of nectar. This is important: When monarchs come back [to the United States] they lay their eggs on milkweed, the caterpillars hatch out in four or five days and develop over a period of two or three weeks, then form the chrysalis, then a week later it hatches into an adult. These adults initially have about 20 milligrams of fat in their body that's carried over from larval development. But the butterflies that migrate back [to Mexico] have about 125 mg of fat. All that additional fat is gotten from drinking nectar from wildflowers. And this agriculture is killing off the wildflowers.
BP: Why should we care about the decline of monarch butterflies? Because they're an iconic species? Or are they important to broader ecosystems?
LB:
There's also the fact that monarch butterfly is used in teaching biology to kids on a scale that's unequaled by any other insect in the world. So it's an incredibly strong educational tool. And the biology of the migration is absolutely unique.
So you get back to the philosophical aspect of it: How many natural phenomena are we going to kill off? I think the monarch is the canary in the coal mine telling us that things are beginning to go really wrong, when you can take a widespread migration of this sort and completely dismantle it as a result of human activity.
BP: What's the best-case scenario for the monarch butterfly?
( Lisa Bolton / The Washington Post ) - At the monarch butterfly way station in Morven Park, Nicole Hamilton is happy to find that a monarch butterfly has laid an egg and that the caterpillar is healthy and strong.
LB:
So if the conditions are right, the monarch has the chance of coming back fast. If we have really good weather and healthy milkweeds and no freezing in Mexico and no drought in Texas... they may be able to come back. But I’m beginning to have doubts.
BP:
LB:
So the question is how do they find the same trees year after year? Our hypothesis — for which there is weak evidence, no specific chemical evidence yet — is that they may be marking the trees chemically, so that they can orient themselves when they come back the following year.
My concern is that if that hypothesis is true, then the signal could get so weak because so few butterflies are getting back that next year the butterflies might not even be able to find the area. The whole migration could collapse. This is a real concern, but it's going to be controversial, because we don't have hard evidence for it. We're working on it.
BP: Are there things people could do to halt the decline in monarch populations? You mentioned deforestation in Mexico above. What about here in the United States?
LB:
You can also look at highways. Drive along Interstate 81 through south Virginia, there's tons of milkweeds growing in the median, and much of that is being eliminated over such a huge area by highway departments. One of the problems is that they mow the sides of the road, and if they hit that area during the peak of monarch breeding, that can kill everything.
So one of the things we've suggested, there are millions of miles of roadside in the eastern United States, and if we could get highway departments everywhere to manage roadsides for wildlife rather than just cutting them down when it's convenient or spraying them with herbicides, that could be a boon to insects in general. That's the one mitigation I can think of.
The other is to try to get the people using herbicides in agriculture to have a system of not spraying 100 percent of their fields. Don't spray along 100 feet along the edge of everyone's field, so that there's some native habitat left. So there are some things that can be done.
Interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Related:


7 milkweed varieties and where to find them

Showy milkweed Asclepias speciosa. ( Terry Glase/Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center)
Milkweeds are not the most spectacular of flowering perennials, but they can look highly effective as fillers and textural foils in plant combinations. They are a must in any sunny herbaceous garden where the gardener wants to attract monarch butterflies.
Three or so species are typically found in home gardens, but others deserve to be grown as well. As a group, they have two things against them: They can be hard to find and there’s that word “weed” in their name.
They are wild plants, growing on disturbed land, and some species will spread if unchecked, but their “weed” label is for the most part a throwback to an age when native flora was undervalued and naturalistic gardens were generally unknown.
Some milkweeds will probably never be valued garden plants, but it is interesting that a dozen species are known to grow in the Mid-Atlantic.
Asclepias verticillata. (James Gagliardi/Smithsonian Gardens)
Here are ones of particular value to gardeners who want to support monarchs and other pollinators:
1. Butterfly milkweed
2. Swamp milkweed
3. Whorled milkweed
4. Common milkweed
5. Purple milkweed
6. Balloon plant
7. Tropical milkweed
Where to find milkweed
Obtaining milkweed for the garden can be challenging. Even if you have a friend with milkweed to spare (don’t collect from the wild), established plants are deep-rooted and won’t move well.
Seed may be stubborn to germinate and may need a period of cold treatment.
Another consideration: Plants at garden centers may have been treated with pesticides that could harm feeding caterpillars. Plants that have been sprayed with contact insecticides will produce fresh, untreated growth, but plants raised with systemic pesticides such as neonicotinoids will remain toxic to monarch larvae. Ask what pesticides have been used in growing the plants.
These specialty nurseries and native plant groups sell milkweed plants, typically the swamp milkweed, common milkweed and butterfly milkweed. Check hours and plant availability before setting out.
→Nature by Design
300 Calvert St., Alexandria. 703-683-4769. www.nature-by-design.com.
→Hill House Farm and Nursery
631 Scrabble Rd., Castleton, Va. 540-937-1798. www.hillhousenativeplants.com.
→Earth Sangha
Franconia Park, entrance at the end of Cloud Drive, Springfield. 703-764-4830. www.earthsangha.org.
→Watermark Woods Native Plants
16764 Hamilton Station Rd., Hamilton, Va. 540-441-7443. www.watermarkwoods.com.
→Abernethy and Spencer
18035 Lincoln Rd., Lincoln, Va. 540-338-9118. www.abernethyspencer.com.
→Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy
The conservancy is holding a milkweed plant sale Sunday at 12:30 p.m. at Morvern Park, 17263 Southern Planter Lane, Leesburg. 703-777-2575. www.loudounwildlife.org.
→Chesapeake Natives
The nonprofit nursery will hold a sale (nectar plants and some common and butterfly milkweeds) Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Rosaryville State Park, 9640 Rosaryville Rd., Upper Marlboro. 202-262-9773. www.chesapeakenatives.org.
→Monarch Watch
The organization sells 32-plug flats of milkweed, maybe too many for one garden but enough to share with others. 888-824-4464. www.monarchwatch.org/milkweed/market.
→Herring Run Nursery
Plant sales are staged in the maintenance area of the Mount Pleasant Golf Course in north Baltimore, 6131 Hillen Rd., Baltimore. This weekend and next, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Four species available. 410-254-1577. www.bluewaterbaltimore.org/herring-run-nursery.
— Adrian Higgins


Was a USDA scientist muzzled because of his bee research?

Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren blames overuse of pesticides and a lack of crop diversity for the dwindling honeybee population. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Jonathan Lundgren is buying
The land, rolling hillocks and flatlands alive with wildflowers and blooming weeds, includes a large house for his family and storage facilities he can convert into a lab. Even as this future beckons, however, his recent past still stings.
U.S. agriculture, says Lundgren, is in crisis. A lack of diversity in farming and a related overreliance on pesticides have triggered a host of negative effects, including the decline of pollinators, such as butterflies and bees.
Bees are vital to U.S. agriculture, pollinating foods that make up roughly a third, and the most nutritious portion, of our diet, such as fruits and leafy greens. But commercial beekeepers continue to report escalating losses of 42 percent or more, jeopardizing $30 billion in annual revenue and our health.
A couple of years ago, the now 40-year-old Lundgren — running a government lab, winning awards from both his agency and President Obama — occupied the right position to aid in this crisis. He says he was doing just that when the trouble started: a pair of suspensions — one for conduct unbecoming a federal employee and another for violating travel regulations.
In October, Lundgren filed a whistleblower suit alleging that he was disciplined to suppress his science. The government says the suspensions had nothing to do with his research. Today, he is the most outspoken of several scientists who say they feel muzzled by the government.
The lawyers who filed Lundgren’s suit allege that nine additional USDA scientists have been ordered to retract studies and water-down findings, or have faced discipline in retaliation for their work. They further allege that three of those scientists, beyond Lundgren, were also working on pollinator-related research. The USDA’s inspector general just announced an audit, to take place later this year, in response to the “significant volume” of complaints they’ve had on their office’s hotline, alleging scientific censorship on pesticides and other issues.
This dynamic of government scientists claiming suppression extends across institutions. Just a few months ago, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration alleged that the House Science Committee, led by Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), was attempting to intimidate researchers who had produced data indicating that global warming hadn’t slowed.
Such disputes show how complicated the intersection of government, science and industry can become when billions of dollars are at stake.
A mural at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., testifies to the importance of corn to the state. Corn is regularly treated with the neonic pesticides some say are dangerous to bees. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Lundgren, a husband and father of
Close associates, however, say he bears a profound stubborn streak. “When Jon thinks he is right about something, he’ll dig in,” says his old doctoral adviser at the University of Illinois, Rob Wiedenmann. “He’ll shift when he finds that he is wrong, but you need to prove it to him.”
As a USDA-ARS employee, Lundgren has run his own lab and staff for 11 years, wrote a well-regarded book on predator insects, published nearly 100 scientific papers and acted as a peer reviewer for dozens of publications. For years, his body of research was either neutral or favorable to farming policy and the chemical industry. But three years ago, he started cautioning against the overuse of pesticides. That shift, he says, triggered his suspensions and the downturn in his professional fate.
He believes the problem began in 2012, when he published findings in the Journal of Pest Science suggesting that a popular class of pesticides called neonicotinoids don’t improve soybean yields. He also served as a peer reviewer for a Center for Food Safety report on the dangers of neonics. The next year, he published a paper suggesting that a new genetic pest treatment, dubbed RNAi pesticides, required a new means of risk assessment.
The publications drew media interest, and after an interview with an NPR affiliate, Lundgren was brought into a conference call with his supervisor, Sharon Papiernik, and an area director above her, Larry Chandler.
“You shouldn’t talk to the press anymore without prior approval,” Lundgren says Chandler told him. “We’re trying to protect you.”
As a regulatory scientist, Lundgren believed that discussing his research was part of his job.
Neither Papiernik nor Chandler responded to requests for interviews. A USDA spokesman said the agency would handle all responses. The spokesman said that Chandler doesn’t remember the conversation and that ARS scientists often receive guidance or approvals from supervisors and can present peer-reviewed research results but cannot speculate on policies.
A few months later, in 2014, Lundgren gave an interview to Boulder Weekly. Within two weeks, he was the subject of a misconduct investigation over his office behavior. Lundgren was cited for dancing around the office and pretending to hump a chair. He allowed two employees with the same name to differentiate themselves by “AP” and “EP,” for “average penis” and “enormous penis.” He teased one employee about being so old she dated Napoleon. He was suspended for three days.
He says he never felt anyone on his staff was uncomfortable or he’d have stopped. “I’d lay down in traffic for my employees, and they know that,” he says.
After contacting all 11 of Lundgren’s then-staff members, as identified by staff members themselves, a complicated picture emerges. Eight requested anonymity, one spoke on the record and two declined to be interviewed — one invoking a nondisclosure agreement many staffers claimed they were asked to sign; the other saying, “If other staff members are talking to you, you’ll find out what you need to know.”
Collectively, Lundgren’s staff members described the work environment as loose, sometimes juvenile, but said the whole group participated. They even collaborated on a letter to management decrying the investigation.
Lundgren says he feared they might face reprisal and declined to pass the letter to his supervisors. But a former staff member supplied a copy, along with contemporaneous emails in support of it from the two staffers who declined to be interviewed. The letter states that “what management construed as behavioral misconduct” was “not offensive to those immediately involved.”
USDA officials cannot speak on the record about personnel matters, but a spokesman said the investigation was conducted after management received a complaint from an employee in Lundgren’s lab and bore no connection to his interviews or research. The USDA spokesman also said there was no nondisclosure agreement.
As a manager, Lundgren couldn’t be represented by the union, but his staff sought out Sheila Sears Wichmann, a now-retired ARS union rep, to guide them as witnesses. “I was a union rep for 35 years,” says Wichmann. “I’ve seen sexual harassers and serial harassers, the kind of things where even I — as the union rep — would think, ‘Go on and knock his block off.’ But this, was nothing.”
Wichmann believes Lundgren was the real victim. “I don’t know why they did it,” she says, “but it seemed that they wanted to get him and were out to find some way of doing it.”
Lundgren with Janet Fergen, his lab manager for 10 years before retiring. He was suspended for misconduct in the office. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Janet Fergen, retired after 30 years
“There were questions from management about how the study was conducted,” she says. “That hadn’t happened before.”
She also questions the timing of the USDA’s investigation, saying the incidents they asked about had occurred “many months earlier, so if it was so serious where was the urgency?”
Lundgren says the tumult left him stunned. “At first, I couldn’t believe this was happening,” he says. “But as time went on, it seemed like anytime my work got media attention, they came after me.”
It happened again, he says, when he submitted a paper to his supervisors early last year, describing how clothianidin — another form of neonic pesticide — harms monarch butterflies. Papiernik returned the paper, asking for minor revisions. Following standard USDA-ARS procedures, Lundgren says, he made the requested changes, then submitted the paper to a scientific journal for publication. He also supplied an interview on his as-yet-unpublished results to an NPR affiliate.
Almost immediately, an ARS national program leader in pest management emailed him for more information and compared the paper to a different scientist’s discredited study. Two weeks later, Lundgren says, Papiernik came into his office “visibly angry,” questioning why he’d given the interview and telling him the paper wasn’t approved. Lundgren says he reminded her that she had reviewed the paper and requested only minor edits.
A week later, in March last year, he was in trouble again. Lundgren says he was late filing a travel request before a trip to Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., to address a group of farmers and the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and forgot to sign the form. After his flight landed, Lundgren says he received a text from Papiernik advising him that his trip was not approved and declaring him AWOL. He was suspended for two weeks.
“Dr. Lundgren failed to seek the necessary approvals for travel, thereby violating the agency’s guidelines,” a USDA spokesman said. “He submitted an unsigned request to accept contributed travel for that meeting on the day of his departure, leaving insufficient time to ensure the travel met ethical and other agency guidelines.”
In his whistleblower complaint, Lundgren’s attorneys cite three USDA scientists who committed similar infractions without being disciplined (two took trips without having their paperwork countersigned; another filled out paperwork after the trip). A fourth scientist, Jian Duan, said in a phone interview that he forgot to fill out paperwork until after a trip but faced no penalty.
After this, Lundgren says, he became the subject of his supervisors’ unrelenting focus: investigating his grants and his use of government vehicles, reviewing his slides for a presentation and even requiring him to retract his name from an article on the adverse consequences of increased U.S. corn production because it seemed to comment on policy.
By this time, he says, he started thinking about his next steps.
Lundgren, in fact, first tried working through the USDA’s standard procedures to get his career back on track. After his first suspension, he filed a scientific integrity complaint, according to USDA-ARS procedures, alleging that his research and attempts to communicate his findings to the media had been disrupted. The USDA rejected the complaint, and after an appeal, a five-member panel convened by the agency recently confirmed that decision.
The internal report, deemed confidential by the USDA but released by Lundgren’s attorney, states that “the scientist’s written complaint did not provide credible and verifiable evidence that his research was impeded and that he was restrained from communicating with the media.”
The report cites multiple instances in which Lundgren was allowed to publish research and give interviews or travel to present his findings.
Jeff Ruch, the executive director at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility who has been representing Lundgren, says the report reveals a systemic problem inside the agency: “No witnesses named by Lundgren were interviewed,” Ruch says. “The panel was told not to even consider allegations of reprisal. And they also repeated USDA’s position that they can prohibit any scientist from talking to the media even about already published research, which completely undermines any claim of scientific freedom.”
A USDA spokesperson said: “The documents that this organization has released affirm that the referenced allegation of scientific misconduct at USDA is untrue and misleading. Both the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Agency scientific integrity officer and an independent USDA scientific integrity review panel have reviewed the allegation and found it to be unsubstantiated. The scientific integrity review panel has spoken, and we stand by their decision. We will have no further comment on this matter.”
Commercial beekeepers continue to report escalating losses of 42 percent or more. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
To this point, Lundgren stands
There are signs, however, that this could be changing. Data seems to be mounting suggesting that pesticides are a significant contributor to bee declines.
A recent scientific literature review conducted by researchers in the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Italy determined that pesticide exposure renders bees more susceptible to disease and increases mortality rates. Pesticides have also been linked to harming bees’ memory and navigational capabilities.
“No one would describe them as the driver,” says Lundgren, “but they are significant, and the government doesn’t seem to want to do anything about them.”
Most of the attention has focused on neonicotinoids. Entering broad use here in the late ’90s, neonics’ global share of the pesticide marketplace ballooned by 2008 to roughly 25 percent and $2.5 billion. Neonics can be implanted directly on the seed and are classified as a “systemic” insecticide because they are fully incorporated into the plant’s tissue, remaining present in pollen and nectar.
Two key studies have found that feeding neonics to bees, even in amounts so low they couldn’t be detected afterward, render them more susceptible to infection. The co-author of one of those studies, Jeffrey Pettis, is joining Lundgren in speaking out.
Pettis is a highly respected entomologist and led the USDA’s bee laboratory in Beltsville for nine years, through April 2014, when he testified before the House Agriculture Committee.
Pettis had developed what he describes as a “significant” line of research showing that neonics compromise bee immunity. But in his opening remarks before Congress, he focused on the threat posed by the varroa mite, often put forward by chemical company representatives as the main culprit behind bee deaths.
Only under questioning by subcommittee Chairman Austin Scott (R-Ga.) did Pettis shift. Even if varroa were eliminated tomorrow, he told Scott, “we’d still have a problem.” Neonics raise pesticide concerns for bees “to a new level,” he said.
About two months later, Pettis was demoted, losing all management responsibilities for the Beltsville lab.
Dave Hackenberg, a central Pennsylvania beekeeper and longtime friend of Pettis’s, says Pettis confided in him that the official reason given for his demotion — poor performance as an administrator — wasn’t the real one. The real reason was his congressional testimony.
Pettis, 61, has never provided a full public account of his side of the story. But with Hackenberg talking he decided to respond. “Dave and I talk a lot,” he said, “and I cannot be sure what I might have said to him around the time of my demotion.”
But, Pettis said, the USDA’s congressional liaison told him that the Agriculture Committee wanted him to restrict his testimony to the varroa mite. “In my naivete,” he said, “I thought there were going to be other people addressing different parts of the pie. I felt used by the whole process, used by Congress.”
The hearing was “heavily weighted toward industry,” he said, “and they tried to use me as a scientist, as a way of saying, ‘See, it’s the varroa mite,’ when that’s not how I see it.”
As for his demotion, Pettis called himself a “bad administrator.” But did he think the hearing played a role?
Pettis delivers an elliptical answer. He said he walked up to Scott afterward, to make small talk, and the congressman “said something about how I hadn’t ‘followed the script.’ ”
A spokeswoman for Scott said the congressman no longer chairs the same House agriculture subcommittee and referred questions to the committee’s professional staff. A spokesperson there declined to make anyone available for an interview.
“In my gut,” said Pettis, “I feel I pissed someone off with my testimony. Beyond that I have not felt or seen the big hand of industry saying, ‘We’re going to make you pay for this.’ I have seen more direct evidence that Congress was influenced by industry than I ever felt with regard to the USDA.”
A USDA spokesman said Pettis’s demotion was in no way linked to his research or testimony, and points to USDA studies on the varroa mite, sublethal pesticide effects and preserving genetic diversity as examples of “breakthrough studies” the agency has conducted.
Lundgren is planning a farm where he says he can demonstrate the viability of crop diversity in large-scale farming. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The dispute hit a new low
RNAi pesticides work by attaching a molecule to the target pest’s DNA, keeping specific, vital gene sequences from functioning.
Lundgren and postdoc Chrissy Mogren used computer software to mimic the action of 21 such pesticides to determine if any threaten honeybees. What they discovered is that each pesticide might bind with some section of the honeybee’s DNA. Lundgren himself describes this result as not so dramatic as it sounds. The honeybee genome is vast, and any overlap between the pesticide and the bee’s genome might prove innocuous and unrelated to survival.
Still, Lundgren thought of this research as a step to encourage further study. He also knew the data would likely spark more trouble with his bosses, so he sent the paper to seven colleagues for informal peer reviews. Five suggested relatively minor revisions, checking one of two boxes indicating the paper as “acceptable” for submission. Neil Hoffman and John Turner, both managers for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, referred to the paper as “trivial” and didn’t check a box.
Hoffman and Turner said the paper offered no evidence of “meaningful” interactions between the pesticides and the honeybee genome. Lundgren’s supervisors made the same argument and refused him permission to submit the paper to an outside journal.
“The whole process seemed tainted to me by then,” says Lundgren. “They were suppressing science. This was a ‘proof of concept’ paper” — a pointer to areas scientists might research further — “a standard part of science.”
Greg Heck, Monsanto’s weed control platform lead, with an expertise in RNAi technologies, believes Lundgren is too alarmist about the new technology and says Monsanto is conducting tests to make sure the pesticides are harmless to bees. But, hearing what the paper contains, he said he believes submitting it for publication was appropriate. “I haven’t seen the study, but I am a firm believer in getting research out there,” he said, “because then we can discuss the results and say, ‘Hey, is any of this truly meaningful?’ ”
At this point, Lundgren started planning a lab outside USDA, with some of the people he calls his “professional family,” including a pair who worked with him when he was suspended for unbecoming conduct.
He accompanied me to the site, a half-hour jaunt from his ranch home across the flatlands and open highways of Brookings. The farm, Blue Dasher, is named after Lundgren’s favorite dragonfly species. Ecdysis is the process of molting, when an insect sheds its skin and transforms, a period of great promise and vulnerability. The symbolism is entirely conscious.
“I don’t think science can be done, at least on this subject, in any of the conventional ways,” he says. “I think we need truly independent scientists — not funded by government or industry.”
Bee declines, says Lundgren, are not difficult to understand. “Yes, the bees are in crisis, and we need to help them,” he says. “But what we have is not a bee problem. What we have is a biodiversity problem.”
U.S. corporate agriculture tends toward monoculture farming — in the simplest terms, one giant farm specializing in one crop. The two key monoculture crops are corn and soybeans. Corn alone takes up 30 percent of the country’s crop space, an area almost the size of California.
Soybean acreage is nearly as vast. The corn rootworm, the Colorado potato beetle and soybean aphids all thrive best on the crops that give them their names. And so monocultures have allowed, even caused, says Lundgren, pest populations to explode.
“We’re using all of these pesticides because we’ve created a pest problem,” Lundgren says, “and bee health is a symptom of this underlying cause.”
He says the solution is to diversify American farming. “Any other course is unsustainable,” he says. “Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides should be something we resort to, not a first option.”
Lundgren says he will use Blue Dasher to prove farmers can produce high yields, big profits and enough food by rotating crops, which will suppress pest populations naturally.
As he stands at the edge of what he hopes will be his new operations, the land spread out before him, he looks happy.
“This,” he says, “is the future.”
In November, when he accepted a civic courage award in Washington from the Shafeek Nader Trust for his stand against the USDA, he evoked the future as a talisman, a future in which bees and our food supply will no longer be under threat. This time, as if sensing skepticism, he goes on: “I really believe it,” he says. “We can do it through science.”
Steve Volk is a writer at large for Philadelphia Magazine and a contributing editor for Discover.
Editor’s note: A version of this story appears in the print magazine of March 6, 2016. After this story was printed, a five-member panel convened by USDA ruled that Lundgren’s claim has no merit. That development has been incorporated into this version.
A cutline in an earlier version of this story said bees are critical to corn. Corn is wind-pollinated.
E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com.
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How to get the pollinator garden of your dreams

Butterflies are attracted to flowers with nectar and bright colors. (Hans_madsen /AP) On “Ask This Old House,” landscape designer Jenn Nawada constructed an instant pollinator garden for D.C. homeowner Amy Enchelmeyer. The Michigan Park home’s landscape now hosts classic long-flowering native perennials for butterflies and bees, including coneflowers, Stokes aster, false indigo, hyssop and penstemon. We asked the Boston-based designer to share some ideas for achieving a butterfly-attracting space: ● Pollinators such as butterflies are attracted to flowers with nectar and bright colors. Plant a variety of native flowers that have a succession of showy, colorful blooms throughout the season and are rich with pollen and nectar. This will accommodate different pollinators during different life cycle stages. Similarly, using trees, shrubs or perennials that have spring, summer and fall blooms will provide multiple food sources and habitats for the pollinators to thrive. ●Depending on your space, plant clusters of one type of plant for better foraging efficiency. Designing these groupings of plants will create more of a visual impact and larger cafeteria for the pollinators. ●Select a sunny area to start your garden and be patient as it develops. Plants take time to grow and become established. ● Plant a variety of flower shapes and sizes to attract a wide range of pollinators. Different kind of pollinators all interact with different shapes and sizes of flowers. Bees usually like small clusters or open-faced flowers, while hummingbirds typically like tubular blossoms loaded with nectar. ●Urban gardens with little space can grow herbs, annuals and perennials in containers. ● Avoid using pesticides and herbicides that can be harmful to the pollinators. If necessary, use the least-toxic solution possible and spray at sundown when the pollinators are not active. ● Have fun observing all of the activity and movement in your new garden. Take time to notice which pollinator travels where and how they interact with the flowers.


How the White House plans to help the humble bee maintain its buzz

An Hairy-Footed Flower Bee prepares to burrow in the soft clay at the home of USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center biologist, Sam Droege in Upper Marlboro, Md. One of the environmental issues President Obama cares most about is something that's barely on most American's radar screen: The impending collapse of the nation's pollinators. (Doug Kapustin/For The Washington Post)
The humble bee — nuisance, threat, and linchpin of the American food supply — has won over the leader of the free world. And now President Obama is intervening on the bee’s behalf as its habitat dwindles.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration will announce the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a bureaucratic title for a plan to save the bee, other small winged animals and their breeding grounds. The initiative may feel like the kind of niche interest a second-term president devotes his time to, but scientists say his attention to the busy workforce that sustains many American crops is critical. While bee colonies regularly die off during winter because of stressful conditions, their sharp decline has been called a potential ecological disaster by some environmentalists and academic experts; conservative Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) described it in an interview as “an essential thing [that] we need to pay attention to.”
The strategy, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, will seek to manage the way forests burned by wildfire are replanted, the way offices are landscaped and the way roadside habitats where bees feed are preserved.
It is also the culmination of a years-long fascination Obama has had with the bee and its worrisome fate.
“I have to say that it is mighty darn lovely having the White House acknowledge the indigenous, unpaid and invisible workforce that somehow has managed to sustain all terrestrial life without health-care subsidies, or a single COLA, for that past 250 million years,” said Sam Droege, a U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist and one of the country’s foremost experts on native bee identification.

Bees — along with birds, bats and butterflies — play a key function by pollinating commercial fruit and vegetable crops; alfalfa and clover that provide feed for cattle; and the nuts, seeds and fruits that sustain massive grizzly bears and delicate songbirds. Some estimates put the economic value of their activities at roughly $15 billion a year.
But over the past five years, winter losses of commercial honeybee colonies have averaged roughly 30 percent. A consortium of universities and research laboratories announced last week that beekeepers lost 42.1 percent of their colonies between April 2014 and 2015, an 8 percent spike from the previous year, and that the number of summer deaths exceeded winter deaths for the first time since the survey began in 2010.
A similar problem exists with the monarch butterfly, which undertakes an arduous annual migration from sites in the Northern United States and Southern Canada to Mexico. The butterflies have been hit hard by the decline in native milkweed that has come from shifts in farming practices, as well as by climate change and exposure to insecticides. During this past winter, the butterflies occupied just 10 percent of the habitat in Mexico that they did a couple of decades earlier.
John P. Holdren, assistant to the president for science and technology, said in an interview that the president is concerned about the issue not just because of bees’ economic impact, but also because of the “canary in the coal mine” phenomenon. “If honeybee colonies are collapsing for a reason we don’t understand, what is that telling us about our overall impacts and understanding of the ecosystems on which we depend?”
Obama has signed off on the placement of a beehive and then a pollinators’ garden on the South Lawn. When National Medal of Science winner May Berenbaum, sporting a Fortunoff blue sapphire honeybee pin on her lapel, thanked him for caring about bees as she shook his hand on Nov. 20, he replied, “I do care about bees — and we’re going to fix them!”
Long before Berenbaum broached the subject, the issue made it to the Oval Office. Sam Kass, then the president’s senior policy adviser on nutrition and the first family’s personal chef, frequently discussed bees with Obama. After reading a New York Times article in early 2011 about honeybee colony collapse disorder — where many bees die and others abandon the hive — the president asked aides for a memo. Two years later, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack authored another memo, accompanied by one co-written by Holdren and Obama’s domestic policy director, Cecila Muñoz.
The Obama administration announced the first national strategy to promote the health of bees and other pollinators, following the sharp decline in colony numbers in recent years. USDA bee scientist Jay Evans explains why honeybees are so important and how bees affect food prices.
“What are we doing on bees?” Obama asked Holdren as they prepared to wrap up an Oval Office meeting in the summer of 2013. “Are we doing enough?”
That discussion led to the launch of the White House Pollinator Health Task Force, whose recommendations are being unveiled Tuesday. The federal government has undertaken two targeted initiatives in the past: a 2007 action plan on honeybee colony collapse disorder and 2008 North American recovery strategy for monarch butterflies. But this one, which has drawn on the work of 14 agencies as well as the private sector, is more ambitious.
It aims to reduce honeybee colony losses during winter to no more than 15 percent within a decade, and increase the Eastern population of the monarch butterfly so that 225 million butterflies occupy roughly 15 acres of wintering grounds in Mexico by 2020. The government and private entities will also restore or enhance 7 million acres of land for pollinators over the next five years.
Environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice have been pressuring the Environmental Protection Agency to outlaw neonicotinoid pesticides, which are banned in Europe, on the grounds that they are toxic to bees. In March, the EPA issued a moratorium on approving any new use permits for these kinds of insecticides, and on Tuesday, it will announce it’s accelerating its review of their impact. The agency will issue its first assessment at the end of this year — two years earlier than scheduled — and will finalize regulatory action by the end of 2018, a year ahead of schedule.
The agency will also impose new restrictions on what pesticides farmers can use when commercial honeybees are pollinating their crops.
CropLife America chief executive Jay Vroom, whose group represents pesticide manufacturers and participated in the task force, said that while his members might disagree with the EPA at times, they’ve “continued to be science-based and balanced” at the agency.
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Agriculture subcommittee on biotechnology, horticulture and research, said he’s “glad the administration is putting an emphasis on the pollinator issue,” even though he thinks the EPA is unduly focused on pesticides’ impact compared with the varroa mite, a deadly parasite.
Davis noted that the EPA recently concluded soybean producers received little benefit from seeds coated with neonicotinoids, while the Agriculture Department disagreed. “We need to know what the best avenue for success is,” he said.
Simon Fraser University biology professor Mark Winston, however, said the administration is not pushing big agricultural producers hard enough to grow diverse crops and dramatically cut the amount of toxic pesticides they put on crops.
“If you don’t change farming and you don’t change pesticide use, you’re not going to make substantial changes in the health of pollinators,” Winston said.
But others describe these efforts — especially on habitat — as significant. W. Atlee Burpee & Co. has donated more than 1 million seed packets that the White House, National Park Service and Agriculture Department are distributing to Americans to plant in their yards, and most have already gone out the door. George Ball, the company’s chief executive, explained they called it a butterfly and bee garden because “there are people who are afraid of bees, so we had to shade it a little bit to ensure it was widely distributed.”
”It’s not like wolves, it’s not like we’re saying we’re going to have to set aside a couple of counties in Maryland,” said Droege, who has devoted years to collecting and identifying native bee species at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md.
And while Yoho said he might press for the next president to reverse the new policies if “you’re having politics dictate policies, versus scientific research,” USGS Associate Director for Ecosystems Mission Area Anne Kinsinger said she thinks that is unlikely.
“These are changes to our basic guidelines on how we do things,” she said. “They’re in the fabric of the organization.”