Betel nut trees continuously sprayed with pesticides; lab tests detect residues of four pesticides including the highly toxic carbofuran
The government has long ignored the pesticide crisis in betel nut cultivation, harming not only the ecosystem but also home health. At the end of September this year, residents in Nantou, unable to bear the stench and toxic fumes drifting from a nearby betel nut plantation, immediately after spraying collected weeds under the betel nut trees and provided them to News&Market for testing. The results detected four insecticides: the highly toxic carbofuran, butyl carbofuran, deltamethrin, and permethrin, all of which are broad-spectrum insecticides.
This Nantou resident said that every time the betel nut palms bloom, spray trucks come to the plantation and use high-pressure spray guns to shower the trees with pesticide. After spraying, insects can be seen everywhere near the home struggling and dying. The victims include bees bought by nearby vegetable gardens for pollination; a casual sweep yields a pile of them.
Several broad-spectrum insecticides sprayed together, insects die indiscriminately
Pesticide spraying during betel nut flowering season has caused mass bee deaths for three consecutive years, with beekeepers suffering heavy losses. Multiple pesticide residues have been detected in dead bees and pollen inside hives. However, the authorities have never thoroughly investigated which betel nut plantations are responsible, who is doing the spraying, or what pesticides are being sprayed.
On August 14 this year, News&Market collected dead bees and pollen in Puli, Nantou, and submitted them for testing. Every sample tested positive for fipronil, which is highly toxic to bees, and its water suspension formulation has been banned. In addition to fipronil, multiple insecticides were detected, showing that the bees were poisoned by a pesticide cocktail.
The weeds under betel nut trees after spraying tested this time directly prove that betel nut pesticide spraying involves mixing multiple insecticides and applying them simultaneously. The detected carbofuran and butyl carbofuran belong to the highly toxic carbamate class. They are broad-spectrum insecticides and acetylcholinesterase-inhibiting neurotoxins, with contact and stomach toxicity to all insects, extremely toxic to bees, and are systemic pesticides (they translocate within the plant).
The other two insecticides, deltamethrin and permethrin, belong to the synthetic pyrethroid class and also have broad-spectrum insecticidal effects, so bees naturally cannot escape. Moreover, these two chemicals have the same mechanism of action; using them simultaneously is simply duplicate dosing.
Carbofuran banned for killing eagles; butyl carbofuran still permitted, and it metabolizes into carbofuran
Carbofuran, commonly known as "Furadan," is widely known. Because of its extreme toxicity, farmers in the past often soaked rice seeds in carbofuran and then broadcast them in fields to poison birds, causing the deaths of many small birds. Birds of prey such as eagles that fed on the bird carcasses were also poisoned and died as a result.
As environmental and ecological awareness grew, carbofuran was banned. The Council of Agriculture announced that starting in ROC year 106 (2017), the sale and use of 40.64% carbofuran water suspension, 44% carbofuran water suspension, and 37.5% carbofuran water-soluble bagged wettable powder were prohibited. Now only the low-concentration 3% granule formulation is still in circulation.
So why does the highly toxic pesticide carbofuran still appear in the test results? Apart from the possibility of illegal use, Zeng Deci, adjunct professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at National Chung Hsing University, analyzed that carbofuran also has a derivative product: butyl carbofuran. This pesticide has not been banned, but after application, a certain chemical bond in its molecular structure breaks, converting it into carbofuran. Therefore, both may appear simultaneously in a test report.
Zeng Deci stated that the pesticides detected are all fast-acting and broad-spectrum older chemicals whose global market share has gradually declined. In Taiwan, because they are cheap, they are used in large quantities, making pesticide reduction difficult to achieve.
Spray trucks frequently coming and going; affected beekeepers criticize: officials dare not regulate
Although the government claims it will establish recommended pesticides and guidance for betel nut, before that any pesticide spraying on betel nut is illegal. However, the Nantou resident who reported this time said spray trucks can still be seen coming and going from betel nut plantations from time to time, even spraying right beside major roads.
Many farmers have outsourced the management of betel nut plantations. The spray trucks all come from elsewhere, often in groups of two to three people, including both locals and foreign workers, usually with their faces covered. They first mix pesticides near a water source close to the betel nut plantation, then enter the plantation to spray.
"We all feel the authorities simply dare not regulate!" Affected beekeepers in Puli, Nantou, also said that after bee poisoning incidents appeared in the media, the government sent people to look into it, but betel nut spray trucks still enter and leave Puli every day with no sign of decrease, and the bees kept by beekeepers continue to die. Some who originally kept more than 200 hives now have only 40 left, suffering heavy losses. What is even more heartbreaking is that there is simply nowhere to turn for help.
Puli beekeeper Liang Qingkai said bluntly, "We are not demanding that betel nut trees cannot be sprayed. If you want to spray, that's fine, but notify us before spraying." But currently betel nut spraying is illegal, and there is no channel of communication between betel nut farmers and beekeepers.
Bees pollinate one-third of the world's crops, which is crucial to food security. The European Union protects bees by law. For example, Italy uses police forces to thoroughly investigate bee poisoning deaths and strictly enforces the law against farmers whose pesticide use inadvertently harms bees.
But in Taiwan there is virtually no regulation in this regard. Routine spraying by ordinary vegetable and fruit farmers inevitably harms bees, and beekeepers can barely tolerate it. However, for betel nut, where pesticide use is completely unregulated, even if spraying is infrequent, the spraying period each year still causes large-scale bee casualties. This shows that the method of pesticide use has a huge problem and has left beekeepers with nothing but losses.
Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine: Betel nut pesticide regulations still under study; pesticides highly toxic to bees will be excluded
How exactly is the regulation of betel nut pesticide use progressing? Feng Haidong, Director-General of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, said that harmful organisms of betel nut have now been inventoried, and a list of pesticides commonly used by farmers has also been compiled. However, to list recommended pesticides and methods of use, further in-depth assessment is still needed. "To achieve the goal of environmental safety, some operational models that are unfriendly to the environment cannot be approved by us."
So will pesticides highly harmful to bees be excluded in the future? "If they can be avoided, avoid them; at least they cannot be used during flowering." Feng Haidong said pesticides extremely toxic to bees will be excluded first, but in fact most insecticides are toxic to bees, so other control methods must still be sought, such as biological control methods like pheromone attraction as substitutes.
Regarding insecticides such as carbofuran and permethrin detected in the Nantou samples this time, Feng Haidong reiterated that any pesticide spraying on betel nut now constitutes illegal use, and police have been asked to cooperate with county and city government personnel to crack down. In the future, they hope to use inducements to encourage betel nut farmers to switch to pesticides less harmful to the environment, and will cooperate with field collection stations and end-point random inspections to control pesticide use on betel nut.