This Saturday, April 22 was the 53rd annual Earth Day, now celebrated in over 190 countries with one billion people participating around the world. I’ve had two interesting conversations in light of Earth Day that I would like to share with you.
In this week’s newsletter from our friends at Birds & Beans (who sell some pretty awesome coffee), I learned that since 1970, the average annual bird population in North America has shrunk by 25% – an astonishing three BILLION individual birds!
A significant contributor to this population decline is the use of chemicals in agriculture.
This is why we are committed to feeding organic feed to our chickens and pigs. Our animals are all raised without the use of antibiotics or hormones, and the land used to grow the grain is not treated with harmful chemicals that kill birds, insects and other wildlife. 🦉
Organic grain means no chemical pesticides, no chemical herbicides, no chemical fungicides, no synthetic fertilizers. All of which are carbon intensive to manufacture and are destructive to the ecosystems they are applied to.
Here in the Adirondacks we also see insect populations declining, especially pollinators like the honey bee. I was recently chatting with a friend of mine who knows much more about the science of these things. She was telling me about a paper she had just finished reading that showed how treated seed, which commonly contains an insecticides called neonicotinoids, releases enough residue into the air during planting to kill significant numbers of bees.
It is easy for farmers to think it’s just a little treatment on the seed to protect my investment… but it turns out that a little neonicotinoid goes a long way towards killing bees and other pollinators. Here is a paper published in 2021 on the direct links of corn planting and bee mortality. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2022 that 98% of corn seed was treated (see this paper page 11), so just about every acre of corn planted in the US is having this effect on our pollinators.
Join us in turning the tide, less than 1% of corn production in the US is Organic and most grain production goes to feeding livestock.
We are celebrating Earth Day special savings on our PRO Chicken, Turkey and Pork (fed organic grain). Our sale prices are effective until April 30.
Reber Rock Farm Blog 