Canada's Ontario Province to Cut Neonicotinoid Use by 80%

Canada's Ontario province has announced plans to reduce the acreage sown with crop seeds treated with neonicotinoid-based insecticides (neonics) by 80% up to 2017.

Plans call for the new rules to be in place in time for the 2016 planting season. The province would be the first jurisdiction in North America to restrict neonics. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has only begun reviewing the situation.

The European Union in December 2013 placed a two-year moratorium on the use of neonicotinoid products on all but crops unattractive to bees, such as sugar beets.

Ontario's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said it is drawing consequences from a link found between bee deaths in the province and the planting of corn and soybean seed treated with the insecticide.

The ministry hopes in this way to reduce the over-winter honeybee mortality rate to 15% by 2020 - in some places, mortality is more than double that rate. It also wants to set up a comprehensive plan to preserve the health of pollinators.

Ontario beekeepers reported the loss of 58% of their bees last winter in Ontario, and many of them said in a provincial government survey they suspected that chronic pesticide damage contributed to the loss.

The beekeepers are already suing global producers Syngenta and Bayer for $450 million, alleging that their neonic pesticides are responsible for the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder.

As expected, insecticide producers have reacted negatively to the Ontario proposal. Swiss-based Syngenta, which manufactures the pesticide ingredient thiamethoxam, said it was "extremely disappointed." A spokesman asserted that insecticide-treated seed reduces the quantity of pesticide used and provides targeted protection of crops.

"A decision to implement arbitrary reductions on the amount of neonicotinoid-treated seed planted in Ontario would not be supported by science," Syngenta said.

Germany's Bayer, which also manufactures neonic-based insecticides, said there is "no science" to back the decision, and Barry Senft, CEO of Guelph-based Grain Farmers of Ontario, told Canadian news media that the decision could reduce soy and corn yields by as much as 20%.

Ontario produced 7.4 million t of corn and 3.6 million t of soybeans in 2014, according to an October 2014 report by Statistics Canada.