Pesticide Linked to Bee Deaths Does Not Improve Soybean Crops, EPA Finds [

Yale Environment 360: Coating soybean seeds with a class of insecticides that has been implicated in honeybee deaths and partially

Soybeans (left) and corn coated with pesticides

banned in the European Union does not increase soybean yields compared to using no pesticides at all, according to an extensive review by the the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Seed treatment provides at most $6 in benefits per acre (an increase in revenue of less than 2 percent), and most likely no financial benefit at all, the EPA analysis concluded. The insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, are only effective for the first few weeks after planting, studies have found, when soybean pests are not typically active. Neonicotinoid seed treatments could theoretically help fend off sporadic and unpredictable pests, the report notes, but that benefit would be small and unlikely to be noticed outside of the southern U.S.