Farmer Paul Schlagel reaches down into a row of sugar beets and pulls out a plant, exposing a dirt-stained husky root. The root weighs about five pounds and thousands like it are still waiting to be unearthed on a farm east of Longmont on parcels once tilled by Schlagel’s nose-to-the ground ancestors.
“They were German-Russians, and they first worked for the farmers, then they owned the farms they worked,” Schlagel said.
The sugar beets they harvested became among the main sources of table sugar and other forms of refined sugars throughout the United States. Schlagel remembers those previous harvests where laborers brushed off tiny rocks, mud and other debris off the sugar beet root to make it easier to process in towering mills that once lined the northern Front Range.
Most of those sugar mills are long gone, including Longmont’s. But modern harvesting has improved dramatically, as have the methods to keep the sugar beet root relatively immune from hungry bugs, Schlagel said.
But a proposal to eliminate a key pesticide that protects sugar beets for a ravenous insect could put future crops produced on Boulder County Parks & Open Space land at risk, Schlagel said. The health of local farmers who use neonicotinoid pesticides – or neonics – on those county lands could also be damaged if neonics are tossed out by the county, say detractors of the plan.
“This is a perfectly safe and effective product,” said Schlagel, whose 450 acres of corn and sugar beets includes about 100 acres of Boulder County Parks & Open Space parcels. “But there seems to be a movement that is determined to get rid of it.”
A joint meeting with the Boulder County Commissioners and the Parks & Open Space Advisory Committee on Oct. 19, will include discussion of a recommendation to phase out neonics use on county land, effective Dec. 31.
County farmers have used neonics for more than a decade. The pesticide is especially effective in protecting sugar beets from the ravenous beet leafhopper, which destroys beet plants as well as tomatoes, peppers and hemp, said Rebecca Larson, vice president/chief scientist for Western Sugar Cooperative. Schlagel and 750 other sugar beet farmers own the Western Sugar Cooperative.
Neonics can be applied at very low rates, lessening exposure to farmers, she said. The only other insecticide registered for use on sugarbeets with leafhoppers on the label is Counter, which is applied at 9.8 pounds per acre compared to 24 grams per acre for neonics, Larson said. Counter, she said, is also more prone to resistance development, so it is less effective.
Counter needs to be applied by the farmer, while neonics is applied for the farmer, Larson said. adding phasing out neonics is too great of a risk for local farmers.
“There is just great exposure and risk to the handler,” Larson said. “That’s putting our farmers and workers at risk, and there is no reason for that.,”
Neonics target neuroreceptors and are used to combat corn rootworm and other insects, according to a Boulder County Parks & Open Space staff report. They can be applied to plants as a leaf spray on soil, or used as a seed coating. Neonics are water soluble and can travel through plant tissue and soil.
The county is targeting neonics because the insecticide has been shown to be dangerous to native and beneficial pollinators, including bees, said Mike Foster, Boulder County’s agricultural resource manager.
“For this reason. It is important to eliminate their use,” said Foster in his staff report.
No other jurisdiction has moved against neonics except for the city of Boulder, Foster said. He admits the proposal has met with significant pushback from farmers, who may have to use a less effective pesticide over several times a year.
“Farmers are small business owners and they don’t want to apply pesticides over 15 times a year. That is very expensive for them,” Foster said.
Neonics have been targeted in the European Union for disrupting an insect’s central nervous system and have contributed to the collapse of swathes of France’s honeybee colonies, according to Radio France International. France banned the use of neonics in 2018 over those concerns.
But in June 2020, the French parliament voted to temporarily re-introduce neonics into the country in an effort to save beet farms from ravaging aphids, RFI stated.
Colorado Department of Agriculture surveys of bee hives have shown no detection of neonics in hives, bees, bee bread or wax, Larson said via email. A sugar beet is also a biennial, “therefore it does not flower – no flowers equals no pollen, equals no bees feeding,” Larson said.
Sugar beet farmers, she added, are highly concerned about best practices, which includes using the less-impactful neonics.
“I just hope the county will not cut off an important option for them to protect their crops,” Larson said. “Farmers need all the options they can get.”
