Monsanto killed all of the Lightning bugs

Surrounded by corn and beann fields and lots of lightning bugs, once its warm enough.

When spraying a bean field for aphids the available insectides get all bugs, beneficial and harmful. So there's a trade off period to let the lady bugs have at the aphids first and sometimes they control the aphids without chemicals. When a farmer sprays with only the first attack of aphids, killing off the beneficial insects he often has to spray again.

Might it be in town that the mosquito sprays also got the lightning bugs, lady bugs, and other things fed on by birds?

Gerald J.

GMO corn soybeans canola and now allfalfa and sugar beets we are in serious trouble dont kid yourselfs about the safty of these crops they will be the biggest threat to mankind and the animal kingdom. On the surface they seem great but really do your homework with an OPEN  mind and connect the dots you will soon feel sick to your stomach for us and our kids and grand kids what we have allowed thru our ignorance oon this matter  not many lighting buggs not many birds either

Biotechnology  is here to stay . Locally we have what they call they 300 bushel club .. We are almost there .

I am concerned of the lack of bees in general .. Hopefully that will stabilize

Getting a bit off topic in this part of the forum but GMO crops have lower nutritional value compared to traditional counterparts. Also, we would not be at war if we didn't have GMO crops. Look at all the land we waste on growing corn ethanol when American farmers are supposed to be "feeding the world." Almost 40 percent of the US corn crop goes to ethanol production... think of all the mouths we could be feeding if that had been planted as proper food-grade corn or better crops. Non-GMO crops have been and are more than capable of doing the job. It just depends on how responsibly we utilize the land.

 

Plenty of lightning bugs out here but not as many as we used to. Very very few Monarch butterflies compared to 10 years ago. Fish kills are up in my area with all of the idiots dumping on chemicals since their darling Roundup doesn't work any more.

 

I'll stick with cultivating my open-pollintated corn, thank you. Sorry for the rant.

There is nothing nutritionally different in GMO crops. The food values are the same. And of that 40% of the corn crop that goes to ethanol, a third of that comes out of the ethanol plants as protein enriched distillers dried (or wet) grains that is super animal feed. More can come out as corn oil, only the starch is used up.

That corn based ethanol used has cut gas prices in the US by more than a buck a gallon compared to burning pure petroleum based gasoline and also has cut air pollution by being a safer oxygenator than ground water polluting EDTA.

So you are jealous of the corn farmer making a living, not selling grain for less than the cost of production like it was 6 or 8 years ago? Corn farmers can't sell cheap forever and stay in business.

A major part of the price rises has come from speculators e.g. commodity funds playing the markets with more money than the market is truly worth. And they make money with options for rises and falls. Corn farmers make money only when the value of the crop when sold exceeds the cost of production and the makers of farm chemicals, fertilizers, and seed have arbitrarily raised their prices to increase their "share" of the proceeds. But us corn farmers have to sell at what the market will pay, we can't demand a higher price just because the price was too low for break even. We can only HOPE for a better price by not selling at harvest but by paying for elevator or our own bin storage, we can't demand a higher profit making price.

As for shortages and surpluses a few years go with corn surpluses with cash prices in Iowa at $1.45 a bushel nobody made money on growing corn, so we invented alternative uses and now you are jealous? We had to increase demand.

And we aren't getting those magic $7 a bushel prices, the elevators that bought earlier at $5 maybe selling at a profit, but with last year's harvest price about $5, we've been selling increments of the new crop and averaging maybe $5.80 a bushel. We don't have any left from last year to sell now. Bins are all empty because our crystal balls were cracked. There were no hints last October that while the futures price for January wasn't higher enough from October to pay for storage, shrink and drying (storage usually costs an extra percent drying over immediate sale), that in January the cash price was a buck higher. So we sold at harvest, the highest price of 2010.

Gerald J.

Well said Gerald.  Alot a distillers being used to help cheapen rations. I like to say the corn is getting used twice same with the beans that go for soy desiel then soymeal.  Besides as long as the check clears the bank I don't care what they use it for.  Also the more fuel we produce here the less money we send to the middle east to support the terrorists.  If anyone is concern about a lack of wildlife come to MI we have plenty of deer eating the crops and barn swallows sh*tting on everything to go around.

Plenty of Lightning bugs, ticks, ants and bees everywhere here in NC.  Strange this is the second year with no Japanese beetles.  Read where bed bug infestations on the rise worldwide since almost eradicated by DDT thirty yrs ago.

Observation isn't cause and effect. Although important, opinion often isn't fact. We all have preferences which are right for us but not all. It isn't the difference of opinion that concerns me but the attachment of evil to that with which we disagree.  It just isn't the same!   

The bees have a virus from what I hear.  Not sure of what it's called at the moment.  Every thing goes in cycles.  Besides I think alot of the old timers are either dead can't or don't feel like bees anymore case in point my grandfather at 96 he doesn't feel like bees anymore.  Most of us younger pups are less diversified and are bees really are not that appealling.

We don't have any lack of fireflies here... but I do use a pretty aggressive method to control japanese beetles...  I took the target and bait off the silly little plastic baggie, and mounted it on a funnel, stuck into a 55-gallon plastic drum.  I put about 4 gallons of water in the bottom of the drum and a shot of dish-soap... that keeps the barrel from blowing over, and kills the beetles when they fall in.  Got one barrel on the south lawn (near the fishponds and flower garden, but downwind) and one in the north yard (near the veggie garden, but downwind).  I hafta empty 'em about once every two weeks, but at least the dead bugs burn well.  I have another target-on-a-tube stuck into the side of the chicken pen... when one falls down there, the girls fight to get it!

The biggest chemical concern I see (and I"m very agricultural, but the 'city' is trying hard to come this way) is the use of SEVIN... if the beehives disappear, it's either a virus, or SEVIN.  Extension office took samples, and in my hives, it was SEVIN. 

Too many people attempt to solve problems by buying chemicals at the big-box store, and hosing down their newly-built home... and more often than not, the attitude prevails in new developments, where land has been cleared, leveled, built upon, and sodded.  Next worst thing, is golf courses... god forbid, you can't go out in plaid pants and a silly hat and become a roost for insects.

I second the comment about commercial applicators, simply because of the way they handle the fields surrounding my house, and the job they did on the neighbors' fields.  They do an excellent job of spraying Roundup on my arborvitae... and it's 12' in on MY side of the fence.  Every year, he turns, and slams the boom into the fence, backs up, swings OVER the fence (still spraying) drives up on the berm (created by tillage) drives the OTHER boom into the dirt (still spraying) and hoses down all the grass and trees.  Gonna get it on video one of these days and send it to my neighbor- this guy doesn't belong in a machine, much less handling chemicals.

Plenty of fireflys around here in this part of the corn belt.  Also monarch butterflies.

     That boom crap doesn't cut it at our farm, when our waterways have been sprayed after our meticulous attention with herbicide, it was time to jump the hired sprayers asses. these are our well supplies since we have owned our farm (1918) 100 year centennial, our  waterways had been silted in, bricks, blocks, stone had been washed ahead of any preventive measure. Now, after a large dose of ass chewing we have the respect of  the contractors. However, this fall will require a new modified approach to our future needs. We see several issues that seriously need to be addressed. Our farm has never ran out of water, we are very lucky, when our neighbors wells have run dry, we always opened ours to them. The problem has been lack of reguard for waterways, my brother stopped a sprayer last spring as he was abourt to spray an obvious grassy waterway, and, the driver asked where the waterway was !!! Sorry for my inappropiate rant. YOU CAN NOT FIX STUPID !!!

Where I live the only crop that you could say is farmed would be hay, and it's mostly heavily fertilized coastal.I noticed several years ago there is very few lightning bugs left here.Don't know the reason but I don't think we can blame it on farm chemicals.

  here ya go

              http://www.firefly.org/why-are-fireflies-disappearing.html

There are plenty of them here at night.