Monarchs, to be or not to be?
Monarchs coming in to roost for the night
Our rewilding is paying off on the Naylor organic farm. (See photos.) The end of the day offers the beautiful sight of monarchs roosting in clumps in our grove and windbreak before their migration to Jalisco, Mexico. Seems like more this year than ever. The pollinator habitat (CRP) and 85 acres of oats/red clover provide milkweeds for reproduction and sources of nectar for the long journey. When I windrowed the oats, I dodged patches of milkweed. Patti provides flowering herbs, too. Our many trees in the old grove and windbreak provide shelter towards evening (as in photo). We saw them head in from the clover at sunset. Wow, can they fly! This is one of the many pleasures enhanced by going organic.
But will Monarch oases like ours be enough to save the species from extinction? Their threatened status was announced recently by appearing on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Notice the photo of a neighbor’s soybean field. Undoubtedly varieties from GMO Enlist or Extend technologies were used. The first offers soybeans genetically modified to survive being sprayed by the powerful herbicides glyphosate and 2-4, D. Extend soybeans can escape glyphosate and dicamba (referred to as herbicide resistance). In these systems, very few annual weeds like waterhemp or foxtail escape. You will find NO perennials like milkweeds or other flowering plants, which Monarchs depend on for reproduction and nectar. There are undoubtedly other chemicals used in this barrage, especially in no-till fields. GMO corn fields are similar. (There were many milkweeds in my oat field, because I have never raised GMO crops on principle.)
Patti and I drove to the National Family Farm Coalition meeting in Gloucester, MA this summer seeing continuous fields of the same kind of corn and soybeans all the way, even in New York State. Is there any doubt that GMO Roundup Ready crops, and now Enlist and Extend, are the reason that Monarchs are a threatened species? Often times Monarch extinction is blamed on “herbicides and pesticides and loss of habitat” that don’t really explain much to the typical reader. I read an article recently that blamed climate change. I think this illustrates a threat to ecological understanding by our citizens. So much gets blamed on climate change, eliciting solutions that won’t work or won’t work for decades—many involving huge tax credits to corporations for expensive technological fixes. The loss of biodiversity is staggering and right before our eyes due to the agricultural system we have, yet this doesn’t register in the media and surely not in the average person’s repertoire of discontent—even here in Iowa.
To me, it’s clear that it’s no time to end the fight against GMO crops. We need to talk about changing our agriculture system to stop fencerow-to-fencerow planting of GMO corn and soybeans—much fewer acres of corn and soybeans, period and an elevated status of family farmers as stewards of the land. We need more acres of hay, pasture, oats and other small grains with clover and other legumes underseeded and more land thoughtfully devoted to restoring biodiversity. We should get livestock out of CAFOs and giant feedlots and back onto family farms with diverse crop rotations. These kinds of rotations will sequester carbon in the soil naturally. (The latest boom in farm prices has resulted in more grassland plowed up and more trees and abandoned homesteads bulldozed to plant more corn and soybeans.)
As we move nearer to the extinction of Monarchs (and family farmers), I hope my 46 years of farming at ground zero offers a much-needed perspective for the environmental/political challenges we face. We cannot afford inadequate explanations that will only lead to confusion and resignation of “the inevitable.” More organizations need to be forthright in pinning the blame for ecological and social disaster on our agricultural system which can only be changed by dramatic democratic policy.
